Joint Ventures: Driving Innovation While Limiting Risk

Companies may have to innovate their capital deployment techniques to continue to be ahead of the recent huge sector and economic disruptions. But those capabilities cannot always be scaled in-home or tackled through traditional mergers and acquisitions.

CFOs are ever more using joint ventures to grow their enterprises while sharing risk and benefiting from optionality. Companies frequently use joint ventures to restrict chance publicity when they buy new assets or enter new markets. A modern EY survey of C-suite executives showed that 43% of corporations are thinking about joint ventures as an choice kind of investment decision.

Although corporations often turn to common M&A to spur growth and innovation more than and earlier mentioned natural and organic choices, M&A can be demanding in the recent environment: potentially large cash outlays with a limited line-of-sight on return, inconsistent sector advancement assumptions, or merely a larger threshold to clear for the organization situation.

Balancing Trade-offs

Companies may will need to weigh the trade-offs between managing disruption and risk as they take into consideration pursuing a joint undertaking or alliance, specifically, (i) how disruption will facilitate differentiated advancement and (ii) the risk inherent in capital deployment when there is uncertainty in the sector. The responses to these inquiries will assist tell the path forward (shown in the following graphic).

  Balancing Sector Disruption with Uncertainty 

Analyzing a JV

Agree on the transaction rationale and perimeter. A lack of alignment among joint undertaking associates concerning strategic goals, targets, and governance structure may impact not only deal economics but also organization effectiveness. Irrespective of whether the gap is related to the definition of relative contribution calculations or each partner’s decision rights, addressing the issues early in the offer process can help achieve deal goals.

Start out due diligence early and with urgency. Do not undervalue the time and energy essential to get ready and exchange appropriate information with which your team is relaxed. Plan for owing diligence, as well as potential reverse owing diligence, to include not only financial and commercial components but also functional diligence aspects, such as human resources and information technologies.

Define the exit strategy before exiting. While partners may perhaps exit joint ventures based on the accomplishment of a milestone or owing to unforeseen conditions, the ideal exit opportunity should be predetermined prior to forming the construction. 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 loss.

Launching the JV

Once both companies have navigated the troubles 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 concentration include things like:

Defining the path to benefit creation. In joint ventures, value creation can come from reaching profits growth and reducing costs through combining capabilities. Creating alignment and commitment in the group and dad or mum companies to know the growth plan may be critical. Firms that fail to create value often do so because they (i) insufficiently plan, (ii) lose focus after deal close, or (iii) establish poor governance related to accountability and monitoring.

Developing the running product. 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 players with no incentive to encourage innovation or disruption. Companies often don’t invest enough time planning for 3 significant and related parts:  (i) defining how and in which the undertaking will operate, (ii) the market, and (iii) the venture’s sell abilities. They should be synthesized into an running model and governance construction that complement each other.

Keeping the tradition adaptable. A joint undertaking culture that adheres to historical affiliations with both or both equally dad and mom can inhibit how quickly the organization will achieve advancement goals, particularly in customer engagement and go-to-sector collaboration. Responding promptly to sector desires and developing customer commitments require executives to rethink the optimal tradition for joint ventures versus how points have generally been carried out in the past.

Situation Examine

An EY team recently helped an industrial maker and an oil and gasoline servicer form a joint venture that shared operational abilities from both equally parent companies to sell innovative, end-to-conclusion alternatives to clients. The joint venture was also considered to have an early-mover gain to disrupt an untapped and unsophisticated sector.

One particular company had the domain experience, and both corporations had a part of a new sector giving. It would have taken each company more time to develop this sector giving by itself. Each company’s objective was to strike a balance among managing the risk of going it alone with identifying a partner with a functionality that it did not possess.

By coming with each other, the companies were ready to enter new shopper markets, deploy new products traces, explore new R&D capabilities, and leverage a resource pool from the dad or mum corporations. The joint venture also allowed for larger innovation, given the shared functions and complementary suite of solutions that would not have been accessible to both dad or mum company without major investment decision or chance.

The joint venture was ready to function as a lean startup even though leveraging two multibillion-dollar parent companies’ means and expertise and reducing chance for both parent companies to convey innovative companies to the sector.

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

Sonal Bhatia, is principal and Neil S. Desai a controlling director at EY-Parthenon, Ernst & Youthful LLP. Unique contributors to this report were 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 necessarily these of Ernst & Youthful LLP or other members of the world EY group.

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