In any merger, acquisition, or joint venture, the sooner managers integrate their companies the faster they capture the expected synergies. So in the hectic days and weeks after a deal is announced, CFOs face a daunting list of responsibilities, such as managing the deal's financial aspects, justifying the strategy to investors, negotiating with regulatory authorities, and ensuring compliance with the regulations that come into force once a deal is announced. And CFOs must manage all this while essentially flying blind, without access to legally restricted data.

In our experience, establishing a clean team to support integration efforts before a deal closes can help speed up the completion of critical tasks and improve the chances of capturing the merger's synergies. Working under confidentiality agreements, such a team has unrestricted access to data from each of the companies involved—data legally off limits to the companies' employees until the deal closes. After compiling and analyzing this information, the team can quickly deliver aggregated findings that help decision makers plan the structure and operations of the merged entity even before the deal has closed.

Given such virtues, it's surprising that executives don't set up integration clean teams more frequently. Many CFOs tell us they...