From 5 Scattered Tools to One Central Platform: How Infoblox Streamlined their Entire M&A process in DealRoom

About the Company

Silicon Valley-based computer and network security company Infoblox was founded in 1999 and has since grown into an enterprise-level cybersecurity firm. Their core business area is DDI, an acronym for DNS, DHCP, and IP address management, and they offer several solutions for network modernization and multi-cloud networking. Their flagship product, Infoblox Threat Defense™, provides security solutions for a range of technical use cases. 

Backed by private equity (PE) firms Warburg Pincus and Vista Equity Partners, the firm has experienced rapid growth through strategic M&A transactions. Today, Infloblox serves more than 13,000 customers globally, including 75% of the Fortune 500. Well-known brands like Apple, Best Buy, Deloitte, Hershey, McDonald’s, Pfizer, Starbucks, and Walmart rely on Infoblox to keep their networks and critical information secure. 

Challenges

When Sabeeh Khan, Director of Corporate Development, started at Infoblox, deal data—from pipeline information and target outreach to diligence tasks and integration strategy—was stored across multiple disparate systems. He and his small team worked to build a deal management process from the ground up, using Excel, Smartsheet, and plug-and-play apps like Salesforce and Monday.com to manage each stage. 

Team members had to remember to update data in multiple places, leaving room for human error. Data easily fell through the cracks and there was no way to know whether any given item was accurate. Pulling together reports on pipeline and deal status was time-consuming and frustrating. Before every board meeting, Sabeeh found himself struggling to pull all of the relevant transaction information together. There was no single place to get a high-level overview of the company’s M&A pipeline, or even to see which deals they were working on that week. 

Negative Business Impacts

Wasted Time and Resources: The Infoblox team was spending days on mannual Excel updates and administrative tasks like pulling together reports and updating information across documents, and not enough on higher-value activities like sourcing potential deals.

Bottlenecks Delayed Deal Cycle: Disparate systems across 5+ tools introduced friction into every stage of the M&A cycle, increasing the risk of deal failure and making the critical due diligence and integration phases unnecessarily complicated. 

Poor Information Flow and Visibility: Stakeholders on both sides had no way of knowing the status of a specific deal or task, and Infoblox leadership had no overarching view of the company’s current and upcoming M&A transactions.

Low Confidence in Data Accuracy: Because the deal management process was almost entirely manual, the risk of human error was high, leading to uncertainties about data accuracy and the need to check and re-check information. 

To demonstrate ROI to investors and partners, Infoblox needed a solution that delivered full transparency across every stage of the M&A lifecycle. 

“When you have disparate systems and you're transferring information from one platform to another, it's a very manual process, and things can easily slip through the cracks. There's a greater chance of information not flowing the way that you want it to, not just to members of your deal team, but members of the steering committee, your board, etc. When you have one end-to-end platform, everybody has access to all the information that they need throughout the entire life cycle of the deal.”

‍- Sabeeh Khan, Director of Corporate Development, Infoblox

Solution

What the Infoblox team needed was an end-to-end M&A platform. However, Sabeeh was skeptical about the solutions on the market. Many solutions marketed themselves as “end-to-end” but really only did one or two things well. For example, some provided an excellent virtual data room (VDR) experience, but lacked strong reporting capabilities or pipeline management options. Many of the platforms the Infoblox team considered came with steep learning curves, leading to concerns about user adoption. 

When Sabeeh discovered DealRoom he was impressed immediately. The platform offered broad functionality across all deal phases and was easy to use even for non-technical stakeholders. The findings feature was especially valuable, as it surfaced critical deal information quickly and allowed the Infoblox team to customize the fields to their specific needs. Also, the platform offered significant flexibility when it came to building out deal stages, particularly during the pipeline phase. 

Why DealRoom?

Single source of truth for end-to-end M&A execution, with clear transparency around deliverables, deal stage, current pipeline, and upcoming milestones. 

Robust import/export functionality made it seamless to transfer data between DealRoom and Excel, streamlining collaboration with stakeholders who preferred working in spreadsheets and eliminating manual rework.

Intuitive interface made adoption quick and easy, even for external parties and non-technical users. 

Findings tab centralized and structured all critical deal findings, making it easy to surface key details with a single click, keeping everyone aligned and accelerating decision-making.

Easy categorization of pipeline stages, including prospects, engaged/contacted, LOI, due diligence, closed-lost, etc. 

Outcomes

With DealRoom, Infoblox was able to move its M&A processes from disjointed Excel spreadsheets into a true end-to-end platform—one that proved easy to adopt for everyone involved. The company experienced: 

Reduced Time Spent on Manual Tasks: By eliminating manual spreadsheet updates and scattered data searches, Infoblox’s corp dev team reallocated hours toward high-impact activities, like sourcing, outreach, and deal strategy, maximizing team productivity and accelerating pipeline momentum.

Faster Deal Velocity: With DealRoom’s built-in messaging and centralized Findings feature, Infoblox removed the delays caused by missing information and endless back-and-forth. The result: faster decision-making, smoother collaboration, and quicker time to close.

End-to-End Transparency: Infoblox executives, board members, and investors now have complete visibility into pipeline, seller engagement, due diligence, integration, strategy, and more.

Greater Efficiency Through Centralized Information: DealRoom became a single source of truth for all stakeholders, reducing the friction that came from trying to pull together multiple disjointed applications. 

Flexible, Tailored Processes: Infoblox created its own findings fields and pipeline “buckets” to fit the platform to their own M&A processes and better meet their team’s specific needs. 

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