In today’s complex, highly competitive corporate development environment, it’s critical to deploy state-of-the-art dealmaking technology for M&A, partnerships, joint ventures, divestitures, and other high-value strategic pursuits. Without it, you risk missing out on lucrative opportunities and becoming obsolete in the marketplace. Digital transformation – in the form of process automation and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to interpret data and drive better deal outcomes – will increasingly impact the M&A process.
An intelligent, cloud-based dealmaking platform with real-time functionality based on modern technologies delivers critical benefits in four key areas: more efficient deal management, faster and more accurate decision making, increased workflow velocity and more robust security.
More Efficient Dealmaking
Corporate dealmaking and M&A specifically is a fast-paced, high-energy environment with exacting, constantly evolving requirements. A smart dealmaking platform with real-time data sharing and collaboration dramatically improves efficiency, reducing the need to share paper documents, send emails, and collate information from multiple sources. It enables M&A deal teams to respond with greater speed and accuracy to issues arising across the deal lifecycle and make immediate decisions about next steps.
For example, a smart Issues Log stores all issues in real-time and can be filtered by status, severity, and criticality. This enables managers to check the pulse of a deal at any given moment and instantly see where attention is needed and where requirements are not being met. Deal teams that have this insight can respond immediately to solve problems and reach desired performance standards.
A smart dealmaking platform applied to M&A can also track task progress, identify delays and bottlenecks, and link data and documents to specific tasks.
4 Ways Technology Can Accelerate Corporate Dealmaking
Faster and More Accurate Decision Making
“Data fragmentation” – casually duplicating and updating information in multiple places without version control – plagues deal teams that lack real-time data-sharing capabilities. Data fragmentation affects everything from valuation metrics and target contact information to due diligence and corroboration of evidence. A smart dealmaking platform with real-time data sharing reduces the risk of team members working on different versions of documents, accelerates the workflow, and provides a single source of truth to ensure everyone is responding to the same deal reality.
Increased Workflow Velocity
M&A deal teams must make decisions based on the most relevant and current information, and closing deals often depends on how quickly that information is made available. Uncertainty about the relevance or validity of data (e.g., whether a document is the latest version) can make it difficult for teams to answer even basic questions about a target or deal.
A single source of truth increases the velocity and heightens the conviction with which decisions are made. Information velocity is particularly important for cross-border deals in which global teams access data from multiple regions. A smart dealmaking platform ensures critical data flows efficiently to all team members and stakeholders, regardless of location.
M&A typically involves vast amounts of information, but a significant portion of that information adds no value to the deal process. The more complex the deal – such as cross-border deals involving multiple teams and data sources scattered across the globe – the more “wasted information” is generated. A smart dealmaking platform can eliminate this waste by delivering a more efficient information flow that creates synergy between team members and their tools and ensures the right information gets into the hands of those who need it.
Sharing and Accessibility – Two Keys to Dealmaking
Inefficient information sharing wastes time. Teams must frequently search for documents that are attached to archived emails, stored on local servers, or saved on personal computers. This inefficiency can even lead to vital information disappearing from the deal process. By contrast, information that is easily shared within a smart dealmaking platform is never lost and can be easily accessed by the entire deal team. It can then be easily incorporated into decision making or ignored if deemed irrelevant.
Analog vs. Smart – Slow vs. Fast
Analog approaches to M&A dealmaking, which rely on decentralized document storage, make it extremely difficult to track the thousands of documents and tasks in progress across most deals. This information bottleneck increases the risk of the deal team losing control of critical issues, including “deal-breakers” that aren’t properly flagged.
A smart dealmaking platform centralizes deal documents and other related materials, making it easy for team members to view information as soon as it’s received. A clear document and folder structure enables authorized team members to quickly find required documents, eliminating the need to wade through six-month-old emails. The Midaxo corporate dealmaking platform, for example, is integrated with Microsoft Office, so once documents have been uploaded, they can be accessed without leaving the platform.
More Robust Security
A decentralized approach to information storage and management – based on hard drives, shared folders, and a “jigsaw puzzle” of disparate tools – poses a tremendous security risk. Businesses struggle to control who can access what information, and when they update these devices or migrate to another system, little thought is typically given to how and where to dispose of the old hardware.
In addition, the confusing management environment often leads team members, stakeholders, and external advisors to revert to email communication and managing projects from their inboxes. Email, however, is highly vulnerable to hackers and accidental forwarding, increasing the risk that important deal plans, documents, and other data will wind up in the wrong hands.
4 Ways Technology Can Accelerate Corporate Dealmaking
The corporate development world relies on security to maintain confidentiality, and acquirers rely on software providers to facilitate that security. Security and confidentiality have been incorporated into every aspect of the Midaxo dealmaking platform’s design and development. It is built on a comprehensive security architecture based on proven and widely accepted products, methods, and protocols. With customizable permission rights, the platform ensures only authorized users have access to information.
The Midaxo platform meets the ISO 27001 standard, the internationally recognized benchmark for information security. While many corporate dealmaking software providers are ISO 27001 compliant or consistent, Midaxo is one of only a handful of M&A software platforms that are ISO 27001 certified. This means Midaxo has passed an internationally sanctioned audit addressing how well it executes processes around its technical application. ISO 27001 certification should be an important consideration when evaluating the security of dealmaking productivity software. A decentralized, analog approach to information management simply cannot provide this level of protection against data leaks and breaches.
In fact, with Midaxo, even if a laptop is lost or stolen, a project administrator can instantly remove access or change the effected user’s password, preventing confidential data from being accessed – while the information stored in the cloud remains completely safe. The Midaxo platform also provides automatic and comprehensive data backups, as well as a detailed audit trail of who has been active on a project and what tasks they have performed.
Creating value through efficiency
Deploying a smart, cloud-based platform to manage your M&A dealmaking processes has many advantages, including more efficient deal management, faster and more accurate decision making, increased workflow velocity, and more robust security. It also opens the possibility of benefiting from digital transformation and increasingly leveraging process automation and AI and ML to continue to accelerate your M&A processes. The Midaxo dealmaking platform shifts the focus of dealmaking teams from manual and mundane tasks to big-picture strategy and value creation. And that’s a smart thing to do.
About Midaxo
Midaxo is the productivity platform for dealmakers acquiring companies or other high-value business assets. The multi-module Midaxo SaaS platform can be custom configured for each customer to enable corporate development leaders at large and medium enterprises and Private Equity-backed companies to find, evaluate, and deliver deal value with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The deal sourcing module makes it possible to identify, evaluate, and prioritize 5x more targets. The collaborative due diligence module reduces diligence time 50% compared to traditional approaches. The integration module supports systematized post-deal management, accelerating time to value up to 40%. The platform functions as the system of record while reducing risk throughout the dealmaking process. Midaxo customers include Ascensus, Banner Health, Cognizant, Daimler AG, Professional Services Co., and United Site Services.