M&A Advice – The Principles of Successful Transactions
Getting good advice from M&A professionals can make the difference between a successful deal and one that falls apart. These strategies can help reduce the risk of problems and minimize their impact when they do occur.
The most important principle is to create transactions where everybody wins. This does not mean that every person has to be happy with the transaction, but rather that the net benefits outweigh the detriments.
1. Offer Value for Money
In a transaction, it’s important to offer value for money to both parties. If one party thinks they’re getting ripped off, it can derail the entire deal. You can offer value by implementing efficient operating procedures before you sell the business, such as by investing in new equipment or technology, by adding or reducing staff.
Reserving a flight over the Internet, buying a movie ticket, and launching a missile all require the use of computerized transactions. Principles of Transaction Processing for the Systems Professional explains how these and many other tasks are managed by using the ACID principles (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable). This is a specialized area of systems design that is becoming more popular.
2. Be Flexible
A successful sale of a business is often a matter of negotiating many different points. It is a good idea to be flexible with certain aspects of the transaction, such as the closing date, in order to free up your ability to be tough on other important points like the price.
In computerized transactions, the ACID principle describes how a database transaction must be atomic, consistent, isolated and durable. The atomic property means that the changes to data made by the transaction are indivisible, like an atom; the consistency property ensures that the state of the data is the same before and after the transaction; the isolation property prevents other processes from making changes to the data while the transaction is happening; and the durability property guarantees that the changes made by the transaction will persist to the database even in the event of a system failure.
4. Be Honest
The old saying that honesty is the best policy applies when you are trying to sell your business. By being completely transparent with buyers, you can help to lower their perception of risk and increase the value of your business.
In addition, honesty can also save you time as it reduces the thoroughness of the due diligence process and makes negotiations far less contentious. However, if you discover that someone is dishonest with you, don’t retaliate against them. This only pulls them into a lower consciousness state and doesn’t teach them to change their ways.
Encourage a culture of honest communication by creating an environment that is safe to communicate. Non-judgmental listening is one of the best tools for fostering honesty and open dialogue.
5. Be Concise
What do reserving a seat on an airplane, buying a movie ticket over the Internet, and launching a missile all have in common? These and many other computerized tasks rely on transaction processing. Despite the fact that this previously specialized field has become widespread, there are still some core principles that must be followed to make it work. This book describes those principles in a style that is accessible to the non-technical reader. The ACID properties—atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable—define the essential characteristics of a successful transaction. This book covers these and other fundamental concepts of transaction processing….
This is a great source for those looking to learn about this important topic.