PROTON's Global MDP - November 2008

Corporate Business Development

In today’s competitive era, it is better to expand our organization's scope through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), as compared to expanding through fresh business branches worldwide. But it is not as easy as it may sounds, and it need 'smarts' to do so. There are many points of concern while acquiring or merging with other organizations.

To have an in-depth learning on the hot topic Corporate Business Development, PROTON business school hosted Mr. Magnus Lutz in its Global Management Development Programme, Nov’08. Mr Lutz is a dynamic and extremely successful cross-border BD and M&A expert with successful transactions history across 25 nations.

The session provided various insights to aspiring leader-managers on various available business development opportunities. The speaker focused on the fact that the organizations should first deeply analyze their own working and only then they should consider the external growth opportunities.

The speaker suggested the chronological order for proper Corporate Business Development:

1. Know your own organization, positioning & competitors
2. Understand the market, trends and real customer needs
3. Identify a long list of general growth opportunities
4. Select the best growth opportunity to your organization
5. Have the most valuable portfolio in the market
6. Communicate your vision and strategy
7. Develop and enable the people for implementation
8. Be enthusiastic & highly innovative, but also conservative

The session even had discussions on few basic and common problems which organizations face when they go for mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Lutz with his vast experience took up few points which if taken proper care of, can lead to better results of M&As. Likewise, prior preparation, market analysis, due diligence etc. were dwelled upon.

Further, Mr Lutz continued the discussion on the importance of customer relationship management. It is very important to provide proper satisfaction to existing customers & at the same time focusing on expanding the customer segment. In simpler words, maintaining the customer relationship and simultaneously expanding in new markets and creating new customers.

Finally, the session dwelt upon some case-studies as part of its roadmap. Discussions on the same provided various dimensions to several possible outcomes. The session was winded up with an open house session in which Protons asked all the queries and questions, which Mr. Magnus Lutz answered with interconnection to authentic examples.