M&A Science

Synergies are the fruit M&A deals hope to capture. Understanding the types of synergies in mergers and acquisitions...

A thorough investigation into, and understanding of, a company during due diligence is essential to a deal’s success - whether you are buying a small business or a larger corporation. However, it is no secret that it can be hard to keep your head above water during diligence. 

What is management due diligence, and how does it differ from customary or traditional due diligence?‍

DealRoom was announced number 25 of the top 50 B2B technology companies in Chicago

Scott Kaeser, an Executive VP of Corporate Development at GardaWorld, discusses the tips and strategies for sourcing, negotiating, and closing successful deals.

Developing a Center of Excellence (CoE) is a practice many expert practitioners and large companies are engaging in because it accelerates M&A and yields successful deals where synergies once discussed on paper are actually captured. 

Due diligence is defined as the research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction..

A vertical merger is one form of transaction that holds a lot of strategic value for organizations looking to grow their presents in the marketplace. But what is a vertical merger and how do organizations decide to conduct these unique transactions?

Jill Harrison and Steve Siler discuss their perspectives on technology trends in the M&A industry and how this technology is innovating deal practices.

M&A refers to the combining of two companies - the buy-side, or the acquirer, and the sell-side, or the target. More specifically, a merger is combining the buy-side and the sell-side into one company...

M&A transactions are intricate and involve a lot of moving parts. Deal pipeline management helps teams keep track of where deals are in their lifecycle, what deals are coming up, and any areas of concern.

Equity research sell-side is related to investment banking, though it often does not get the same amount of attention. The research analysts relay information to the investment banks’ sales-forces and executives. We will discuss additional differences between these two areas in the career section below. 

Kelly Haggerty, Founder of Nearco Transaction Advisors, discusses the downfalls of traditional consultancy models and innovative approaches to important deal processes.

If you always use Excel for your M&A Due Diligence process, it’s time to research other options. Excel is an inferior choice when it comes to this massive amount of data. Not only does it slow work speed down....

In data rooms, the Q&A feature creates a way for users to ask questions regarding the folders and documents they have been given access to, without leaving the platform.

Whether you are on your commute to work, at the gym, or just relaxing, podcasts are a great way to educate yourself and stay informed about the latest happenings and trends in the finance industry, such as corporate development. 

Investment bankers are a key part of mergers and acquisitions because they work to determine the appropriate value of the companies involved in the merger or acquisition. In this case, the banker represents either the sell side or the buy side. However, investment bankers also participate in deal sourcing where they will research the market and initiate a conversation with companies, proposing potential deals

Merger and acquisition deals make the world go round and with time, deal values and complexities continue to increase. US companies have always been prone to M&A deals, and here are some of the largest M&A deals in our history.

Data room users tend to be busy people. They need their virtual data room to be straightforward, innovative, and easy to manage. Luckily, data rooms typically don’t take long to open. No matter which provider you use, you will need to follow these simple steps in order for your virtual data room to be active.

Podcasts are a unique and convenient way to stay informed about the latest happenings in the investment banking industry. Let’s take a look at the 10 best investment banking podcasts out there.Here's a quick look at the best investment banking podcasts.

Paul Koenig, Founder and CEO of SRS Acquiom, discusses developing meaningful solutions for the challenges faced by M&A attorneys and shareholder representatives.

Podcasts are a unique and convenient way to stay informed about the latest happenings in the financial world. Let’s have a look at the 10 best private equity podcasts available.

Deal software is designed to assist teams in the initiation, planning, execution, and closure of deals. Deal management software also helps teams manage diligence, integration, and deal pipelines.

Employee productivity is at the forefront of all business leaders’ minds, but what happens when working more doesn’t equate to being more productive?

With any business, keeping great records and staying organized is essential for success. Thanks to virtual data rooms, teams now have an easier way to store and access organized data. With a virtual data room index, you can have every document you need neatly organized and just a click away.

Corporate development teams work day in and day out building relationships and mastering a cadence of communication in order to favorably position themselves to prospective sellers. In this article, we will explore how the best corporate development teams identify their targets, move past “gatekeepers” to build relationships with sellers...

The legwork behind VDR shopping is of the utmost importance, and while it takes a bit of time, it does not have to be complicated and will surely yield positive outcomes for your business and its stakeholders. Here, we simplify and fortify the process of selecting a virtual data room.

From finance, to mergers and acquisitions, real estate, healthcare and more, VDRs have become a staple in how people all over the world gather and share information. Consequently, more VDR use means more VDRs are popping up on the market and finding the right one can be difficult- especially with the escalating number of fake reviews being placed to promote specific VDRs.

Thanks to virtual data rooms and the advances in technology, the document related portion of an M&A transaction is significantly more simplified. The due diligence process can now be performed in less time and for less money. With so many different VDR options available, it’s essential to look at the strengths and weaknesses of various providers.

Legal due diligence is an examination into a business by re-viewing documents and interviewing employees. Legal due diligence is completed when a company or interested party is looking to buy or invest in a business.

Jai Sundararaman, the Vice President of Business Transformation at IPG, discusses the best strategies of extracting and protecting value drivers during an M&A transaction.

Podcasts are a fun and convenient way to stay informed about the latest happenings in the financial world. Let’s have a look at the 10 best M&A podcasts available.

Virtual Data Rooms (or VDRs) are secure, cloud-based storage systems for confidential information. While they can be utilized for almost any data-sensitive application...

Virtual data rooms designed with M&A in mind allow stakeholders to work more collaboratively, effectively, and efficiently throughout the lifecycle of a deal.

Dr. Mark Goulston discusses how to effectively scale empathy and compassion in order to generate more successful deal outcomes.

A virtual data room is a cloud-based platform designed to organize and share data. And more modern VDRs help make the due diligence process smoother and more efficient.

Virtual data rooms have become increasingly popular over the past few years and the market doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

Virtual data rooms are the best place to store information online in a safe location. They not only speed up the due diligence process, but also help teams stay organized while sharing data and files.

Currently, one of the most underrated and poorly executed aspects of mergers and acquisitions is change management. However, what good acquirers realize is that people are their biggest assets because...

Free virtual data rooms may seem like an attractive option, especially to smaller companies. But here are the reasons teams should steer away from free virtual data room providers.

Dawn White, an M&A Integration Manager at Corning, discusses the importance of cultural assessments and how to best conduct them.

Over the last 15 years, Virtual Data Rooms (VDRs) have become one of the fastest growing and most powerful tools in computing software. They have stripped away all roadblocks between place, time and location, by bringing people together all over the world. The market for VDRs is at a steady increase and predicted to keep growing.

It goes without saying, the business landscape has changed greatly over the last two decades, but integration strategy, planning, and execution remain in the 1990s because they are all too linear in a world that is constantly changing. The takeaway here is value creation has shifted.

Deal management is the organization and processes behind deal workflows, that includes strategies, team members’ roles, software and technology, and more. Deal management is each and every step that gets a deal through the full lifecycle, from day one to close.

Richard Kasperowski, a Harvard instructor and author, explores the characteristics and patterns of high-performing teams.

By the time many deals get to the integration phase, team burnout and fatigue, along with all of the moving pieces of two companies coming together, can create some murky, complicated waters. Here are four common integration problems facing M&A practitioners.

Ben de Haldevang and David Boyd, Founding Partners of the M&A advisory firm, Agile Gorilla, discuss their modern, agile approach to deal and integration management. Through agile principles, such as backlogs and iterative learning cycles, Ben and David enable industry practitioners to conduct more successful, sustainable and equitable mergers and acquisitions.

Private equity vs. investment banking, which is better? These are age old financial questions that are dependent on the individual circumstances of the investor. The first thing to understand, though, is that both investment banks and private equity firms have their sights set on the same goal: maximizing profits for investors. But they do so from different directions.

Effective deal tracking is no easy task. It requires diligence and the proper tools to keep everything in order and flowing in the right direction. You have to delegate and communicate with the right people, all while conducting due diligence and managing different personalities and operations.

Nitin Kumar, a seasoned C-level operating executive and management consultant in the TMT sector, discusses how to create integration strategies better suited to modern business environments.

DealRoom's CEO and Founder, Kison Patel, was recently accepted into Forbes Technology Council

All aspects of the M&A lifecycle require employees to work in teams. The efficiency of these teams greatly influences the value extracted from the deal. There are two hundred and fifty characteristics of work teams that correlate to higher performance, but there are two primary ones that researchers have discovered lead to considerably higher, measurable performance.

Al Ansari, a veteran divestiture and integration advisor currently assisting Cisco with the development of their divestiture methodology, discusses the strategies, decisions and planning behind divestitures.

DealRoom's CEO and Founder recently presented on Agile M&A at the 2019 Silicon Valley Scrum(mit)

DealRoom was proud to sponsor Tutoring Chicago's inaugural Celebrity Spelling Bee! Tutoring Chicago is a private, non-profit organization that offers free one-on-one tutoring services to an average of 700+ students in grades 1 - 6 every week.

These DealRoom software help guides review the requests, documents, groups, and analytics tabs in detail.

Google's Principle of Corporate Development Integration discusses the company's modern approach to M&A, from due diligence to integration.

M&A professionals and stakeholders deserve a platform designed for their needs and specific pain points. While traditional CRM software can be useful to other industries, the high-pressure, complex and ever-changing nature of the M&A industry calls for something more advanced and targeted.

The lesson here is a simple one related to human nature: people will follow the leader if they believe in the leader and his/her mission.

SAFe is a framework for businesses that focuses on navigating “transformation challenges” in ways that allow for improved quality, efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. SAFe can be used to help integrate multiple legacy companies at once.

Virtual data rooms (VDRs) are quickly becoming synonymous with mergers and acquisitions, specifically, because of their capacity to transform and streamline the overwhelming and unwieldy process of due diligence. However, simply using a data room platform for M&A is not enough to truly reduce workload, raise transparency, and close deals faster. A detailed comparison of two major deal management platforms, DealRoom and Intralinks, proves all VDR systems are not created equally. 

DealRoom helps teams manage every part of due diligence from start to finish. Your data storage, diligence tracking, and communication tools are all on one integrated platform.

Typical VDR providers all offer the same thing and they have been the go to solution for data storage for years. But do they create more problems than they solve and is there a better process out there?

The value placed around integration must come from the top down. We already know the major reasons deals fail is due to poor integration planning and execution; therefore, in addition to developing proven, standardized templates and processes, companies must hold integration practitioners and practices in the highest regard.

Virtual data rooms can cost anywhere between $500 and $10,000. As data room evolve with new innovative technologies, are you left paying too much?‍‍

Innovating the M&A due diligence process has been slow moving. However, technology trends are evolving and creating deals that are more secure, successful and efficient. ‍

Without doubt, the single greatest barrier to the adoption of new IT tools is inertia. In many companies, employees have been using the same internal tools for many years.

Accelerating your integration often comes down to early planning, process management, and the tool, or tools, used to make your process management more effective.

Agile project management methodologies are more often embraced by the IT and manufacturing sectors than by Corporate Development teams. Further helping Agile’s cause in these disciplines is that their own products are developed in an Agile-like manner. This does not mean, however, that Agile’s principles cannot be applied to Corporate Development and the world of M&A and its stakeholders.

Data storage is everything. Most businesses are made up of information in the form of documents, graphics, emails, presentations, CRMs, spreadsheets and more. The applications that help a business run smoothly require copious amounts of storage.

Culture plays a critical role in deal speed and Agile methodologies can help. Moving away from a predetermined plan or chain of events and becoming more flexible, adaptive to change, and small-task oriented will help all stakeholders navigate the waters of M&A more effectively, saving both time and energy...and ultimately, money.

M&A is a meticulous business. It requires a thorough process, swift decision making, and strategic planning. During diligence, information that is highly confidential is gathered, which requires the utmost security and control.

If there ever was an industry that needed project management software, it would be M&A. Deals are infamously known for being time consuming, complicated, and extremely intricate, yet constantly happening.

Whether you are shopping for due diligence software for M&A or other data sensitive realms, there are four central areas to consider: security, ease of use, cost, and the opinions of industry insiders.

Our objective is to provide small, practical steps that can help executives as they work to introduce Agile into the workplace and disrupt the common Waterfall approach.

In business terms, due diligence is the research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction, such as a potential acquirer evaluates a target company and its assets.

In any deal, whether buy-side or sell-side, or if it involves an investment bank, private equity firm, or corporate development business, there are a lot of necessary steps to take. There are many hands involved, confidential information shared, and hard decisions to make.

As the capabilities of IT deployments and infrastructures evolve, so are the features that virtual data room providers offer.

Let’s be frank: change management is often the neglected child of the M&A family. Some might even view change management as trivial when compared with other burdensome tasks of M&A; however, this could not be further from the truth. In fact, poor practices related to change management have long been the achilles heel of mergers and acquisitions.

Most C-suite executives turn to mergers and acquisitions to jump-start growth or for financial gain, but without these clear systems in place deals often (70% of the time) fail - whether during negotiation, diligence, or integration.

The process of due diligence is often classified as chaotic, stressful, and fast-paced and, historically, nothing drastic has been done to disrupt the way this procedure is approached. We now know, however, Agile methodologies for M&A practitioners have proven to improve diligence speed and quality.

Investment bankers rely on data room analytics to gauge buyer activity. Some bankers even restrict bulk downloading to capture incremental download activity. Restricting bulk downloads makes the experience agonizing for buyers and slows down their diligence process.

Say goodbye to answering duplicate requests. With the help of machine learning, the system will pull up previously related documents and responses.

Unorganized communication is a common issue during due diligence. But it doesn't have to be. With the right project management software, communication can be efficient and organized.

Imagine a world where analytics can not only make work more efficient, but can also make banks smarter by providing data to help better understand buyer behavior.

It is predicted that in the next year we will see not only an increase in mergers and acquisitions, but also an increase in the size of these business deals. With more and larger deals taking place, organizations are becoming necessarily smarter about how to navigate the process of M&A.

In this episode, Kison interviews business consultant Joseph Feldman, who works with middle companies on acquisitions.

Typically when you hire an investment bank your looking at their track record, industry expertise, relationships with buyers, maybe even a culture fit. The following distinguish the difference between just good and great investment banks.

DealRoom vs. FirmRoom: Which platform is right for your business? At Day 1, we’ve launched a new stand-alone, enterprise-grade data room based on our successful project management platform, DealRoom. Both tools provide businesses with a centralized, secure, and transparent work location that can help them become more productive, methodical, and efficient.

In this episode, Kison interviews corporate and business development consultant Judah Karkowsky. They discuss best ways to approach cultural integration, handling ownership issues, due diligence surprises, confidential data protection, and more.

Using a per-page pricing model can be very expensive and can lead to unplanned additional costs. With the right flat-rate terms, you can avoid surprise bills and end the need to constantly monitor data usage.

M&A deals can overwhelm buyers & sellers, burying them in an avalanche of paper, repeat requests, & wait-time. However, with efficiency & effectiveness at its core, DealRoom provides a smarter approach to the complex practice of M&A.

Broken promises and technology that does not live up to the marketing hype are just two results of poorly chosen technology. The decision-making process is now more complex than ever since organizations want representation of all the stakeholders that will either use or benefit from the technology.

In this episode, we explore M&A in the tech world. Paul’s experience includes more than 25 years of experience in tech industry with companies such as Hewlett Packard and Adobe Systems. He shares his knowledge on common strategy errors that lead companies to failure and the best ways to build integration plans for acquisition teams.

There are 100s of documents to upload to a data room, a tracker to update with what’s been added, emails, follow-up emails, more uploads, updating a tracker again ect. The solution to this is to automate the workflow so management teams spend far less time answering requests and stay focused on running their business.

Agile M&A practices transform M&A into a simplified, efficient set of processes. Once a business adapts Agile M&A practices, the company can transform into an agile, data-driven enterprise without sacrificing quality or taking on additional risk.

Are you an “old school” M&A practitioner? Being “old school” means that maybe you are holding on to traditional practices, because they work for you. These methods are tried and true, and have been proven over the years. However, there are many new ways in which to approach the M&A process.

M&A professionals often find themselves jumping between spreadsheets, email, and the data room during due diligence.

Agile M&A promises to identify and eliminate waste that otherwise contributes to poor customer service, lost business, higher business costs and lost employee productivity.