With 11 successful acquisitions in four years, EcoOnline is a true proof of business leaders' appetite for adding Mergers and Acquisitions as a key ingredient in their growth strategy. But what is EcoOnline's secret recipe to success?
According to Harvard Business School, the M&A failure rate is between 70% and 90%. At EcoOnline, the story proves to be the opposite. Since 2018 the company, developing software solutions that help business mitigate and reduce risks at work, has five-folded its growth. With annual recurring revenue of more than 500 mNOK, and a 45% CAGR, where 15% came from acquisitions, EcoOnline has successfully entered new markets and expanded its product portfolio.
In a recent podcast hosted by the SaaS Nordic community, Göran Lindö, CEO of EcoOnline, shares his pro tips on how to leverage a Merger & Acquisition strategy to fuel growth:
1. Start by analyzing the market you operate in and find answers to the following: How hard is it to expand your offerings across borders? How much organic investment do you need to make for a geographic rollout? If you find that it will take time to attract talent to expand organically, look at acquisition as an alternative to building leadership.
2. Be clear about what you want to achieve with the acquisition: is the main goal to expand your business footprint by entering new markets, or is the strategy driven by the pursuit of growing your product portfolio and scale in existing markets? Or maybe the goal is a bit of both?
3. Find common ground from the start and promote a welcoming culture. A source of success is to identify a common purpose.
4. Be open and transparent. Strive to have a consistent plan for communication and invite people from both sides to work together to create the best possible strategies for the path forward as one company.
Interested to learn more about EcoOnline's M&A journey, you can listen to Episode #43 of the SaaS Nordic Podcast by following any of the links below:
Spotify: https://sptfy.com/6Sbr
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/saas-nordic/id1538624456
Google Podcasts: https://cutt.ly/nn7J3UY