About the Company

Qualfon is a customer experience (CX) platform that provides enterprise customer care teams with outsourced services. Their QCXi product suite offers 360-degree support for CS professionals, covering everything from lead generation to revenue operations. Founded in 1995 in Mexico City, the firm is now based in Highland Park, Michigan, and employs a global workforce of more than ten thousand. Their customer base spans the insurance, healthcare, retail, and telecom industries. Over the past decade, the firm has embraced M&A as a growth and diversification strategy, and acquisitions now account for more than half of its total revenue. Each year, Qualfon reviews 75-100 M&A opportunities and typically completes one or two transactions. 

Challenges

When Christina Ungaro joined Qualfon as the firm’s Chief M&A Officer, she discovered that the company had not one but two deal pipelines. One was in a legacy M&A platform, and the other was in Excel spreadsheets. While there was a high degree of overlap, the two weren’t completely identical. 

Confused why the firm had invested in an M&A platform to manage its pipeline, but was still working out of Excel, Christina did some digging. It turned out the software could not perform the required reporting and analytics. With refreshes taking 20-30 minutes, the platform was slowing down weekly updates wasting valuable time and resources. As a quick solution, the team was performing all analytics in Excel spreadsheets instead. 

On top of slow processing, the legacy M&A platform also used a per-seat licensing model. When deals went live and the team invited people to collaborate, they found themselves incurring significant costs. As a result, deals stayed stagnant, sometimes lingering for years without resolution. 

They also struggled with visibility. Stakeholders had no overarching view of the deal pipeline or way to prioritize the 15-20 transactions they had at any given time. Without an updated centralized platform the Qualfon team couldn’t structure their pipeline to match their specific processes, deal funnel labels, and internal nomenclature. 

Negative Business Impacts

Lost Time and Redundant Work: Customizing the pipeline, including adding new fields and phases, was cumbersome. Deals lingered without action, sometimes for years. When targets reappeared, teams re-created work because earlier analyses/decisions weren’t discoverable in a unified archive.

Slow, Outdated Legacy Platform Led to Operational Inefficiency: Admin/config changes (fields, phases) were cumbersome, slowing continuous improvement and preventing the Qualfon team from tailoring the pipeline to their specific needs and terminology. 

Inaccurate Data and Reporting Inefficiencies Delayed Progress: Without a single source of truth, deal data lived in personal drives, Excel spreadsheets, and the legacy M&A platform. Slow or stale refreshes delayed weekly updates/briefings, and deal data fell through the cracks during manual updates between tools. 

Poor Compliance Led to Risk Oversight: NDAs and other sensitive documents weren’t stored centrally, making it difficult to access them when needed and increasing the chance of unknowingly violating restrictions.

“We demoed some other platforms in addition to DealRoom to see what’s new and what else is out there. But we came back to DealRoom again because it’s really easy to use and intuitive, and the licensing model works for us.

‍-Christina Ungaro, Chief M&A Officer

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Solution

After realizing that the Excel-based pipeline only existed for reporting purposes, Christina decided to sunset that version and rely solely on the pipeline in the legacy M&A platform. They attempted to recreate all the necessary reporting in the legacy software platform, but its capabilities were still too limited. 

What Qualfon needed was a single source of truth for all M&A pipeline activity, from sourcing to target management and reporting. It was time to find a solution that could actually meet their needs. 

The firm demoed several platforms, and DealRoom stood out for its easy navigation, robust reporting capabilities, and transparent pricing model. When the time came to transfer their data into the platform, Christina was initially concerned about the potential complexity and length of the process. However, the transfer was completely seamless. 

After the migration, she focused on customizing the pipeline, aligning phases with their deal process, updating deal cards to capture the right data, and adding custom fields and categories for partnership development and monitoring. At every stage, DealRoom’s excellent support team was a huge help and made the transition as painless as possible. 

“We went in with a strategy of, ‘hey, let's replicate our environment in DealRoom, with the same fields and everything.’ And DealRoom helped us do that. It only took a couple of days.”

‍-Christina Ungaro, Chief M&A Officer

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Why DealRoom?

Intuitive and Fast to Adopt:  DealRoom’s simple, intuitive design made it easy for both internal teams and external stakeholders to get onboard quickly—driving immediate adoption and consistent use across the organization.

Collaboration Without Cost Barriers: The data-based licensing model enabled unlimited collaboration without additional seat fees, removing budget constraints and allowing every stakeholder to stay engaged throughout the deal lifecycle.

A Single Source of Truth for Every Transaction: With all transaction data in DealRoom, the team manages a single pipeline and can quickly access the history behind any decision.

Tailored to Fit Their Process: Fully customizable fields, groups, and labels allowed the team to mirror its internal terminology and workflows, eliminating friction and improving accuracy across all stages of the deal.

Real-Time, Reliable Reporting: With instant refreshes and no manual data entry, reporting became faster, more accurate, and always up-to-date—freeing the team to focus on analysis and execution, not spreadsheets.

Outcomes

Faster, More Accurate Reporting: Instead of taking 20-30 minutes to refresh, Qualfon’s DealRoom reports are ready instantly and all data is up-to-date. No manual updates required. 

Improved Scalability: Because DealRoom’s licensing model is based on data rather than the number of seats, the Qualfon team can collaborate with as many stakeholders as they’d like within the platform without incurring costs. 

A Single Source of Truth: With all transaction data now housed in DealRoom, the team only needs to maintain one pipeline and can easily discover historical context for specific decisions. 

‍Faster Deal Velocity: Deals no longer sit in the pipeline for months or years, allowing Qualfon to pursue additional transaction opportunities and get those in progress over the finish line more quickly.

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Want to learn more? Watch the entire Inside the Deal session now.