Acquisition Strategy essay
Nowadays we live in a highly developed and competitive business environment. The main reason for the merger or acquisition should be the purpose to achieve synergy, i.e., to achieve an effect, when the value of the combined entity is greater than the sum of its parts, from which it consists of. It is a true that synergy is not always achieved, either because the union of the two companies initially did not make a sense, or, more commonly, because the available opportunities for synergies are not realized. Thus, we are going to prove a thesis that acquisition strategy is a good way to strengthen company’s positions and to add the company more competitive capabilities.
Identifying two companies in different industries that are using acquisitions to strengthen their market positions, we should mention that these companies are Citrix Systems and Spectris. It seems that both companies are successful in their decisions, and we are going to look at them with more details for the purpose to understand this fact.
Beginning with Citrix Systems, it is possible to note that on October 13, 2011, the company Citrix Systems announced the acquisition of ShareFile, a leading vendor in the market of safe cloud storage solutions, their sharing and collaboration. ShareFile company’s products allow companies of all sizes to securely store, synchronize and share business documents and files in the office of the company and outside it. The centralized data storage, implemented in ShareFile, also allows users to use the files on a variety of devices collectively and access them from anywhere.
Explaining the necessity of the acquisition and perspectives of this step, we can say that Citrix, exactly with this strategic acquisition, will provide customers with unparalleled availability and performance on all types of devices of all three components needed to create a ‘personal cloud’ – facilities of combined work of applications and data. This strategy ‘follow-me-data’ means that the data can be shared among 1) different people, 2) different applications, and 3) on different devices. Using this platform, users can easily add services of follow-me-data to their software; use the data from other applications and receive immediate benefits of such infrastructure as manageability, portability and scalability that ShareFile has. Thus, there is no doubt that the implementation of acquisition strategy will lead Citrix to a great success in its segment of services.
Thinking about the company Spectris, it is also understandable that the company uses acquisition strategy only for the own profits. For instance, Spectris has transformed itself from an ordinary mechanical engineering business to a group of many market leading companies exactly due to the proper use of acquisition strategies. This company introduces a decentralized structure which helps many companies (that are considered to be a part of Spectris group) not only to have real ownership and responsibility, but also to focus on own priorities and work for the achievement of general success for Spectris (as their main company) with doubled force. To sum up, Spectris, using acquisition strategy, helps many companies to become more successful for the purpose to develop own strength and increase own competitive capabilities.
In conclusion, we have observed the variations of acquisition strategies on the examples of two companies, such as Citrix Systems and Spectris, and proved that acquisition strategy is a good way not only to strengthen company’s positions, but also to add the company more competitive capabilities in contemporary business environment.
References
Birkler, J. et al. (2000). An Acquisition Strategy, Process, and Organization for Innovative Systems. Rand.
Hopkins, D. (2008). Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions: Do Strategy or Post-merger Integration Matter? International Management Review, Vol.
