Joint Ventures: Driving Innovation While Limiting Risk

Companies may have to innovate their capital deployment strategies to remain ahead of the present enormous market and economic disruptions. But those capabilities cannot always be scaled in-property or addressed through traditional mergers and acquisitions.

CFOs are more and more using joint ventures to grow their enterprises while sharing risk and benefiting from optionality. Companies frequently use joint ventures to restrict danger publicity when they buy new belongings or enter new markets. A new EY survey of C-suite executives showed that 43% of businesses are thinking of joint ventures as an substitute sort of investment.

Even though businesses often flip to standard M&A to spur growth and innovation over and above natural and organic solutions, M&A can be tough in the present setting: potentially large funds outlays with a limited line-of-sight on return, inconsistent market progress assumptions, or merely a bigger threshold to very clear for the company case.

Balancing Trade-offs

Companies may need to weigh the trade-offs between managing disruption and risk as they take into account pursuing a joint undertaking or alliance, specifically, (i) how disruption will facilitate differentiated progress and (ii) the risk inherent in capital deployment when there is uncertainty in the market. The solutions to these inquiries will support notify the path forward (demonstrated in the following graphic).

  Balancing Market place Disruption with Uncertainty 

Analyzing a JV

Concur on the transaction rationale and perimeter. A lack of alignment involving joint undertaking partners pertaining to strategic goals, objectives, and governance structure may impact not only deal economics but also company efficiency. No matter if the hole is linked to the definition of relative contribution calculations or each partner’s decision legal rights, addressing the issues early in the offer process can help achieve deal goals.

Start due diligence early and with urgency. Do not underestimate the time and work required to get ready and exchange appropriate information with which your team is at ease. Plan for thanks diligence, as very well as prospective reverse thanks diligence, to include not only financial and commercial components but also practical diligence aspects, such as human resources and information technologies.

Outline the exit strategy before exiting. While partners may possibly exit joint ventures based on the achievement of a milestone or thanks to unforeseen situations, the perfect exit opportunity should be predetermined prior to forming the composition. Reactive disagreements, arbitration, or litigation threats over the mechanisms of JV dissolution and asset valuation can end result in not only economic but unnecessary reputational reduction.

Launching the JV

Once both companies have navigated the difficulties of diligence, the hefty lifting begins with standing up the entity. The CFO, critical in structuring the business’s economics, can also help ensure a successful close and realization of early-year objectives. Key areas of focus involve:

Defining the path to price development. In joint ventures, value development can come from accomplishing profits growth and reducing costs through combining capabilities. Building alignment and commitment inside the organization and dad or mum companies to recognize the growth plan may be critical. Organizations that fall short to create value often do so because they (i) insufficiently plan, (ii) lose focus after deal close, or (iii) establish poor governance linked to accountability and monitoring.

Developing the running model. A joint venture needs an operating model that combines the best capabilities of the partners while maintaining the agile nature of a startup. The combination can be tough to execute in a market that could have incumbent gamers with no incentive to encourage innovation or disruption. Companies often don’t invest enough time planning for a few critical and linked elements:  (i) defining how and exactly where the undertaking will operate, (ii) the market, and (iii) the venture’s sell capabilities. They should be synthesized into an running model and governance composition that complement each other.

Holding the society versatile. A joint undertaking culture that adheres to historical affiliations with either or both of those mother and father can inhibit how quickly the company will accomplish progress goals, particularly in customer engagement and go-to-market collaboration. Responding immediately to market needs and developing customer commitments require executives to rethink the optimal society for joint ventures versus how points have usually been performed in the previous.

Circumstance Research

An EY team recently helped an industrial company and an oil and gas servicer form a joint venture that shared operational capabilities from both of those parent companies to sell innovative, end-to-conclusion solutions to consumers. The joint venture was also considered to have an early-mover edge to disrupt an untapped and unsophisticated market.

One company had the domain know-how, and both businesses experienced a element of a new market offering. It would have taken each company more time to develop this market offering by itself. Each company’s objective was to strike a equilibrium involving managing the risk of going it alone with identifying a partner with a capability that it did not possess.

By coming with each other, the companies have been ready to enter new purchaser markets, deploy new product traces, explore new R&D capabilities, and leverage a resource pool from the dad or mum businesses. The joint venture also allowed for bigger innovation, given the shared functions and complementary suite of solutions that would not have been obtainable to either dad or mum company without substantial investment or danger.

The joint venture was ready to function as a lean startup though leveraging two multibillion-dollar parent companies’ assets and expertise and minimizing danger for both parent companies to bring progressive providers to the market.

CFOs can engage in a critical role in helping their companies pursue a joint undertaking, vet joint undertaking partners, and then act as an educated stakeholder across stand-up and realization activities. With continued financial and market uncertainty, it may be especially critical for CFOs to identify options like joint ventures that can support companies stay ahead of disruption, spur innovation, and manage risk.

Sonal Bhatia, is principal and Neil S. Desai a managing director at EY-Parthenon, Ernst & Youthful LLP. Specific contributors to this short article have been Ramkumar Jayaraman a senior director at EY-Parthenon, Ernst & Young LLP, and Caroline Faller, director at EY-Parthenon, Ernst & Young LLP.

The views expressed by the authors are not always individuals of Ernst & Youthful LLP or other users of the world-wide EY organization.

E&Y, EY-Parthenon, Joint Ventures, JV