It hard to miss the continuous stream of merger and acquisition announcements in the headlines lately. Whether it’s Dell buying Perot Systems, Pfizer buying Wyeth, Amazon.com buying Zappos.com, or EMC buying Data Domain, the pace of acquisitions has once again quickened. Apparently, companies are finding it easier to raise the millions or billions of dollars needed to finance their shopping spree.

As is always the case, the requisite press releases tout all the synergies that will be realized by making this or that acquisition. Unfortunately, the business landscape is littered with failed acquisitions. The reality is that most acquisitions and mergers fail. So, despite all the chest pounding and rosy press announcements about the gains that consolidation and economies of scale will bring, the majority of acquisitions across all industry sectors do not live up to their promises.

Let me be clear, I’m not against purposeful, strategic acquisitions. Quite the contrary. If carefully thought through and the rose colored glasses are tucked away, a well timed and carefully planned acquisition can provide significant benefit for all stakeholders. However, what concerns me is the very real challenge companies face integrating the acquired company into its going forward operations. Study after study of both successful and failed acquisitions show that to get it right, senior management must pay particular attention to integrating two cultures, communicating continuously, and building trust and transparency.

What’s interesting is that many companies have the expertise needed to get acquisition integration right – they just aren’t using it for that purpose – yet. Alliance managers are uniquely suited to guide their organizations through the challenging integration process. No other function in an organization has it as its charge to overcome organizational differences and get two companies to work as one. That is their job.

The opportunity for alliance management is to seize this immediate business need and to catapult into the strategic imperative of successfully integrating acquisitions. As the pace of acquisitions once again quickens, those who are skilled at bridging silos, connecting the right people, and avoiding implementation failures have an important new role to take on.