It’s not difficult to see that M&A is a successful method for companies of all sizes around the world to accelerate their growth. The process of acquiring a business is fraught with potential pitfalls that can cause acquired businesses to lose their value. Following these four steps can help you avoid common pitfalls of acquisition, and help you make your next acquisition an effective strategy for growth.

1. Develop an acquisition plan.

One of the most frequent reasons for failing acquisitions is inadequate planning. By establishing an acquisition strategy from the beginning, you can ensure that your company is maximizing its potential and staying on the right track with your M&A goals.

Typically, this means establishing the list of M&A companies that are a good fit and then narrowing the list with the use of search criteria. These could include factors like industry sector, deal size, market share and operational scale. Corporate development teams can make use of various resources to identify M&A potential targets, such as online sources such as DealRoom and LinkedIn trade journals, trade magazines and industry associations, and databases of investment banks and private equity companies.

2. Create a team to oversee the M&A process.

It is essential that management teams establish an organization headed by a most popular financial blogs top executive who is able to oversee the M&A process from start to the end. This is crucial to ensure that the goal of the acquisition isn’t lost in the process and that the process of integration is seamless. It’s also essential to have human capital experts on the M&A team to calculate compensation and benefits expenses, and to quantify actuarial estimates of pension and other financial obligations.