How SPS Commerce optimized M&A communication with DealRoom

‍About the company

• SPS Commerce specializes in helping retailers, suppliers, grocers, distributors, and logistics firms manage and optimize their supply chain operations and collaborate more effectively with their trading partners.

• Their solutions replace outdated methods like telephone and fax communications, bringing modern, digital solutions to the forefront of supply chain management.

• SPS Commerce is a major player in the IT services industry, particularly in the areas related to retail supply chain and eCommerce.

Challenges

Before DealRoom, SPS Commerce managed deals using various tools and platforms, including email, JIRA, Confluence, Excel spreadsheets, and shared drives. This made it difficult to manage communications and to locate and organize important documents.

Their difficulties became amplified during post-merger integration when hundreds of people needed to get involved in the process. Accessing essential documents and data was nearly impossible and inefficient.

They knew they needed to find a way to optimize the process and unify the experience to improve their data management and communication across the deal lifecycle.  

Negative Business Impacts

• As diligence tasks were assigned, users struggled to find the corresponding data.
• They lacked an efficient way to communicate with the target company for clarifications or updates on specific documents.
• Consolidating all documents manually from multiple tools was extremely time-consuming.
• Information was lost in translation when it was manually handed off to new contacts.

All these challenges caused delays in various work streams which slowed down the entire M&A process.

Solution  

As they worked to streamline their tools, they needed a solution capable of managing the entire M&A lifecycle, with a focus on increasing efficiency during diligence and integration handoffs.

After evaluating several platforms, they found that DealRoom was one of the few that could optimize their M&A process, resulting in streamlined communication and increased visibility for all stakeholders. 

Additionally, they felt confident in DealRoom's commitment to continuous innovation. Always open to feedback on the product roadmap and resolving inquiries, they knew they would be teaming up with a company that would continually improve its capabilities to optimize the way M&A teams do M&A. 

‍Why DealRoom?

• DealRoom was able to centralize all documents and workflows previously scattered across different mediums allowing for better organization and accessibility.

• The platform facilitated direct communication with target companies via task-specific threads, ensuring that all queries and updates were tracked and addressed in real-time.

• DealRoom doesn’t charge per user, allowing over 100 external users to work on the deal without extra charge. 

• DealRoom offered customizable BI reporting functionalities and dashboards, providing SPS Commerce with the ability to monitor the entire M&A process at a glance.

• The intuitive, color-coded interface made it easy for new users to adapt and for stakeholders to understand the status of various tasks at a glance.

"Decisions made during due diligence need to be executed in PMI. Before DealRoom, these decisions could get lost in translation. Now, with DealRoom, we can track them through to the end of the deal." - Matt Melsen, Director, Corporate Development at SPS Commerce

‍Outcomes

Today, SPS Commerce runs all of its M&A deals inside DealRoom. Key benefits include:

1. Enhanced Efficiency: Managing the entire deal lifecycle from a single platform has significantly reduced the time spent on managing tasks and tracking documents across multiple tools, streamlining processes and boosting productivity.

2. Improved Decision Making: Documenting decisions during the due diligence phase has facilitated smoother transitions into post-merger integration, providing new team members with clear guidance on past decisions and their rationales, thereby enhancing the continuity and effectiveness of integration efforts.

3. Increased Collaboration: With over 125 internal users and numerous external parties, DealRoom's collaborative environment has enabled SPS Commerce to manage all its M&A activities more effectively, fostering better communication, alignment, and teamwork among stakeholders.

4. Time Savings: The streamlined processes and centralized system has helped the SPS Commerce team avoid duplicate work and simplify reporting to executives. This has freed up valuable time, allowing the team to focus on strategic growth objectives rather than administrative tasks, thereby driving greater efficiency and synergy realization.