Mergers represent advantages of growth without the entire burden of building from the ground up. For example, taking over a geographical area and the existing customer base, or sharing manufacturing equipment in order to expand the product line-up. Mergers mean streamlining of personnel, materials, and processes, providing expanded revenue at less time and cost than might be obtained from organic growth efforts.

However, this is not to say that undertaking a merger requires any less due diligence. It is not as simple as picking an attractive option and going with it.

First, the company desiring to grow must begin by understanding who they are as an organization, their mission and vision as a company, strengths and weaknesses, who ideal buyers are and who the competition is. These factors must be defined in specifics and concrete numbers, not just approximating and “We’ve always been about X.”

Next, the target of the merge must be understood at the same depth. I do not believe it too much to say that a merger requires as extensive an audit as recovery from insolvency would—that is to say, a working command of every system, resource, and outcome—for both companies.

When the numbers signal good possibility, and other tactical decisions seem reasonably reached, the merger needs to be agreed upon in comprehensive strategies. In addition to making the numbers work, management must be able to anticipate the practical logistics of merging such realities as leadership styles or equity arrangement. Financial, legal, structural, ethical, and every possible consideration needs to be addressed in terms of responsibility and checks and balances, technical or human.

At this point, leadership may look into other methods of offsetting cost and constraint by regulation. For example, a virtual merger may be able to provide the desired access to goods, personnel, location or knowledge, without the disruption of a physical and legal merger. Private equity, more and more available to small-to-medium-sized businesses these days, can be obtained where perhaps public equity is not ultimately desirable.

Past the discovery and planning, going forward with a merger is a relatively straightforward if complex matter of execution. The hardest part should already be done.

It is easy to underestimate the time and effort it takes to identify and plan a merger that has the best chance of success. A company management team may have to look at and discard any number of potential acquisitions before discovering the one that meets every single requirement. Locating ideal companies with which to merge may require persistent searching and thinking beyond the typical approaches to merger and acquisition. This said, I believe that mergers continue to be highly desirable options for growth, even for small-to-medium-sized businesses.