What can medicine teach us to deliver successful business restructuring?
Business restructuring projects face similar challenges to those in medicine. The skills and behaviours demonstrated can be leveraged to build merger, acquisition, and divestiture strategies that drive success.
Business restructuring is a key strategy that management can follow to derive maximum shareholder value. To minimise the risk of failure, key challenges need to be managed:
Businesses are complex by nature with a high level of functional interconnectivity comparable to the functionality of the human body.
Like a surgeon, business restructuring consultants are required to open up the inner workings of a company, delicately dissect and disentangle the business processes and integrate them into the acquirer’s functions.
In medicine, the first contact is made when the patient visits with undesired symptoms to seek diagnosis and treatment. Similarly, in business restructuring, the company usually presents with some undesirable symptoms – i.e. growth challenges or increased competition. They will initiate a due diligence process and strategic analysis to diagnose the problem and select an appropriate solution to maximise shareholder value.
Careful planning and precision is a necessity in both fields to ensure that all functions are working together to execute the desired solution.
Patient treatment requires selecting the right care pathway and engaging with the correct highly skilled teams. The same applies to business restructuring. Empowering specialists to make decisions within their areas of expertise ensures buy-in to a shared purpose.
Close alignment between different functions is vital to ensure that workload is shared efficiently and enhanced synergies are achieved.
Like any major operation, the goal is to execute the process flawlessly and within the shortest time frame. Prioritisation in the project management process is critical to ensuring efficiencies are maximised and the expected value is delivered free of complications or additional costs.
In medicine, monitoring the ongoing health and wellbeing of a patient is vital to ensuring a full recovery. In any successful M&A transaction, continuous monitoring and optimisation of business processes to implement corrective actions is key to ensuring continuity is maintained.
Healthcare professionals are required to act within the strict boundaries of regulations and legislation, designed to protect the patient and the wider community.
In business restructuring projects, a congruent approach is taken, with regulating bodies imposing tight restrictions on the processes involved in any merger or acquisition.
Patient care pathways involve a number of specialist departments with associated overheads. Early closure is imperative to ensure that costs are minimised to be redistributed to other patients.
In any restructuring project, the associated costs are significant, requiring focus throughout the project lifecycle to prevent costs escalating and requiring diversion of investment from other worthwhile activities.
Our professionals have led a significant number of global merger, acquisition, and divestiture projects for our clients. We will partner with you through your journey to provide:
