M&A, Business Models, platforms and ecosystems in the software industry

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M&A Automation: Finding potential acquisition targets

Findin potential acquisition targets - a task definition

Why a task definition?

To enable digitization, we have to define tasks in the M&A process in detail. We use goals and objectives, a description of the task and data objects used by the task. In addition, we list questions used during execution of the tasks to provide more context. In addition we can have a look at the automatability of the task and the automation in practice. That will show us the automation potential we have today. More details will be published in my new book “Automation of M&A: Due Diligence Tasks and Automation“.

  The task has the following goal(s):

  • Longlist of targets:  created

 The task has the following objectives:

  • Information asymmetry:  minimized

 Automatability

This task is partially automatable.

Tools are available.

 Task description

 Finding targets requires a selection of the righ sources, ad definition of selection criteria followed by detailed walkthrough of target candidates and decision which candidates make it onto the longlist of potential targets. You can look for acquisition targets in the company ecosystem, e.g. partners, suppliers and in adjacent markets.

 The task consists of the following actions

Define selection criteria and market

  • Scan sources for potential targets

  • Review candidates

  • Decide longlist

The task works on the following data object types, among others:

 Target company, Target company, Target locations, Buyer, Longlist of targets, Ecosystem, Product of the target, Sales of the target, Target employees, Target business model.

This is an excerpt of my new book “Automation of Mergers and Acquisitions“.

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