November 19, 2025 | By: Saranya Chopparupu, Managing Director, Head of Integration & Separation Advisory

In today’s fast-paced deal environment, organizations invest significant time and resources in evaluating strategic fit, synergies, and valuation to get a transaction signed. Yet, too often, the focus on capturing value ends at the signing table.

The reality is that signing a deal is only a part of the story. The real challenge often lies in how the expected value is delivered. This is where integration and separation planning becomes pivotal.

Without early and deliberate planning, companies risk eroding the very value they set out to achieve. Misaligned operating models, unclear decision rights, and disconnected functional priorities can slow down Day 1 readiness and delay value capture.

In our experience advising clients across multiple industries, one of the most consistent challenges we see is that they often underestimate just how early the value-delivery work needs to begin. We’ve worked with organizations where functional teams weren’t engaged until weeks before close resulting in rushed decisions, unclear communication, and unnecessary duplication or rework. These early missteps create ripple effects that can jeopardize Day 1 readiness.

We often see this translate into common Day 1 pitfalls such as:
  • Operational Disruptions: When planning is siloed, Finance, HR and IT teams become overextended. These support functions often face the “double-whammy” of trying to absorb new team members, systems and processes while simultaneously fielding an increased volume of service requests from other departments.
  • Leadership and Decision-Making Gaps: Lack of clear decision rights and governance structures causing confusion on approvals, spend authority, and day-to-day business decisions.
  • Employee and Customer Uncertainty: Poor communication and lack of role clarity can fuel rumors about job losses, prompting valued employees to leave. This instability, combined with inconsistent messaging, often creates confusion for customers and disrupts service delivery.
  • Disrupted supply chains: Unclear communication and uncertainty over payment or points of contact can leave suppliers unsure where to send invoices or deliver services, often causing delays, withholding deliveries and straining relationships.
By contrast, establishing a dedicated Integration Management Office (IMO) or Separation Management Office (SMO) early enables:
  • Clear governance and accountability to accelerate business decisions, avoid early-stage leadership bottlenecks, and align both leadership and functional teams around shared goals.
  • Structured planning and mobilization to sequence activities effectively, prevent operational disruptions mentioned above, and give functional teams the capacity and focus to be ‘Day 1 ready’ and hit the ground running.
  • Early synergy and/or value identification and tracking to align leadership and functional teams on the highest-priority initiatives and provide clear focus on what will drive value first and track progress against targets.
  • Proactive risk management to anticipate challenges, surface critical dependencies, and maintain business continuity by reducing employee and customer uncertainty, preventing supplier disruptions, and avoiding last-minute escalations.
  • Centralized communications to all stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and staff reduce uncertainty, builds alignment, enhances employee morale and supports cultural and operational integration

In one integration with an unusually short sign-to-close window, the client developed an overly ambitious Day 1 plan that included far more activities than were realistically feasible or necessary. Once we were brought on to lead the IMO, we narrowed the scope to the true critical-path activities such as maintaining payroll, customer service, supplier continuity, and system access, and sequenced all non-essential work for the post-close phase. By focusing Day 1 on what was truly critical given the tight timeline, we supported the client and delivered a smooth transition despite the accelerated pace.

Research shows that 70–90% of M&A deals fail to achieve the desired synergies, highlighting the importance of structured integration planning to safeguard and accelerate value capture.

Research also shows that unprepared sellers are often burdened with stranded costs related to redundant overheads like IT infrastructure or corporate functions that no longer fit the size or complexity of the remaining business, leading to eroded margins.

Looking ahead, accelerated deal timelines and increasingly complex cross-border transactions make early integration and separation planning more critical than ever. Companies that wait until post-close risk missing opportunities to capture synergies, retain talent, and maintain customer confidence.

When done well, integration and separation planning doesn’t just safeguard value, it accelerates it. It creates clarity, reduces uncertainty, and gives teams the confidence to move decisively from signing to closing to full value realization.

Thoughtful planning is not an administrative exercise, it is a strategic enabler of deal success.

Discover Leo Berwick’s Integration & Separation Advisory offerings and speak with our team to see how a structured approach to integration or separation planning can help you realize the full value of your next deal.