How Liberty Company Insurance Brokers Streamlined M&A Management and Saved $200K with DealRoom

About the Company

Liberty Company Insurance Brokers is an independently owned insurance company based in Gainesville, Florida. Since 1987, the firm has offered commercial, employee, and personal benefits insurance for businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals. 

Through a series of successful acquisitions, Liberty has experienced impressive growth over the past several years. These transactions, along with a company culture that emphasizes innovation, have led to Liberty gaining recognition for its entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, Liberty was recently recognized as the fastest-growing privately held insurance broker in the United States by the Hales Report.

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Challenges

During its recent period of rapid expansion, Liberty was managing 20-25 acquisitions each year. Most of these were small “tuck-ins,” but there were a few larger transactions on the table as well. The data relating to these deals was spread out across multiple locations, including spreadsheets, OneDrive, SharePoint, and individual employees’ folders and devices. 

Looking up specific deal information took far too long, and executives had no way to view the “big picture” of Liberty’s M&A pipeline. As a company that embraced a buyer-led (rather than a banker-or seller-led) approach to these transactions, this lack of visibility was a major stumbling block. Collaboration was also a challenge, as the team had no centralized location to share their data and knowledge. In addition, sellers were becoming frustrated at the seeming lack of internal communication around important deals.

Negative Business Impacts

• Executives lacked visibility into the full deal pipeline, causing misalignment, frustration, and growth uncertainty.
• Teams had no central collaboration space, leading to duplicate work and unclear task status.
• Reporting accuracy suffered from unclear deal phases.
• Sellers grew frustrated with internal processes, resulting in distrust, increased risk, and culture clashes.

These issues created silos between departments, damaged communication with external parties, and led to a loss of productivity.

Solution

What the Liberty team needed was a single source of truth for all of their deal data. So, they began researching potential solutions and quickly discovered DealRoom. The platform stood out due to its ease of use and streamlined interface—two must-haves for a tool that both internal and external parties would adopt. In addition, DealRoom was designed for long-term transaction value, which is critical to the buyer-led M&A framework. In traditional banker or seller-led approaches, the focus is on getting the deal over the finish line. For the Liberty team, integration and ongoing synergies were the priority. 

DealRoom’s extensive functionality also drew them to the solution. Liberty managed each of its transactions in phases, such as sourcing, prospecting, due diligence, and integration. With DealRoom, they could customize their experience for each of these different process stages, filtering out unnecessary information and surfacing key details. 

“Integration doesn’t happen on day one. It doesn’t happen with the flip of a switch—it takes time and it takes a lot of pivoting. You have to stay agile. We’re able to customize each room based on the acquisition we’re working on.” - Amy Weck, Former VP, M&A and Integrations

Why DealRoom?

• No need to start from scratch—the platform came with helpful templates that were flexible enough to tweak to their specific use cases. 
• Intuitive UI meant the solution was easy to adopt both internally and for sellers.
• DealRoom could centralize all deal information, enabling accurate pipeline reporting and aligning stakeholders on upcoming deals. 
• The platform was structured to support the all-important integration phase of each transaction and move the company toward its strategic goals. 

All of this reduced time spent on manual tasks and streamlined communication and tracking task completion.

Outcomes

Liberty currently manages all of its M&A transactions with DealRoom and has seen several benefits:

• Tool Consolidation: The company was able to replace several other tools with DealRoom, reducing multiple software subscription costs.
• A Home Base: All critical data deal data is now housed in one place for easy reference.
• Cost Savings: In their first year with DealRoom, Liberty saved around $200K by switching to DealRoom’s all-in-one platform, eliminating redundant software costs and the need for a full-time hire, while streamlining workflows and reducing manual hours.
• Improved Communication: DealRoom streamlined the communication of deal information through chat, tagging, and other features within the platform. 
• Increased Adoption: An intuitive user experience drove high levels of tool adoption both internally and among sellers. 
• Easier Collaboration: Having a single source of truth led to a reduction in silos and an increase in knowledge transfer. ‍
• A More Mature M&A Process: DealRoom empowered Liberty’s internal team to execute transactions through the five pillars of the buyer-led M&A framework, including unified processes, tools, data, scalability, and win-win results.