The due diligence process is crucial for any enterprise that completes complex transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In addition to M&A transactions, due diligence is also important for investment bankers, as well as companies who are about to launch initial public offerings (IPOs), fundraising campaigns, and much more. In a world where deals are conducted worldwide through remote means and where major deals need to get done quickly, you can’t rely on paper documents in a physical data room. Making interested parties wait for each reviewer to get done with documents before others can access them slows down due diligence, and it may even prevent an M&A deal from happening.
Instead, you need to be able to quickly share electronic documents in an online data room. You can’t afford to use traditional file-sharing options like Dropbox and Google Drive when you’re sharing sensitive documents because these options don’t provide encryption, and they open your business up to any security vulnerabilities that may be present on devices accessing your confidential information. Instead, you need a reliable due diligence data room. Here are some of the biggest reasons why.
Enterprise Security Levels
The last thing any business wants is a data breach when sharing important corporate documents. With the right virtual data room (VDR) for due diligence, you can share your documents with the necessary parties with confidence. A great feature of the best data rooms is built-in digital rights management (DRM). You’ve likely heard of this as a method for content creators to protect their intellectual properties from unauthorized distribution and use, and it’s become a standard for document security as well.
DRM makes it easy to protect the confidentiality of your corporate documents with encryption. Simply upload your documents to your virtual data room platform, and click “enable DRM” to ensure your sensitive data is secure.
Simple Permissions and Access Settings
One of the biggest things that can grind M&A to a halt is incorrect permissions or friction between interested parties. The best virtual data room providers help you avoid this by making it as easy as possible to add new users or define user groups and assign them appropriate levels of access.
For example, if you need to share confidential documents, such as financial statements, you wouldn’t want anyone other than accountants and financial advisors viewing them, would you? With the right due diligence software, you can group these professionals and ensure that only they have access to financial documents. If you want to add your own security features, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), you can do that as well. All of these measures help to protect your required documents and cut down on confusion, so your M&A and other deals can get done as quickly as possible.
Document Tracking in Real-Time
Speaking of keeping a good pace with your M&A transactions, the best data room providers also let you track exactly when your necessary documents are accessed, viewed, edited, or downloaded. This makes it easy to gauge the true interest levels for deals, and it gives you a convenient way of estimating the timetable for major transactions. If you notice that a user seems to be struggling with their documents, which can certainly happen considering that M&A documents can be thousands of pages long, you can direct them to the parts that need the most attention to keep the deal on track.
Naturally, creating this secure space online also saves a great deal of time and money for interested parties, since there’s no need to meet in a physical deal room in person. With the right due diligence data room, it’s easier than ever to keep your documents from falling into the wrong hands and complete your deals with timeliness.
