About the Company

• National leader of CPAs and consultants in the food and agricultural industry.
• Strong regional presence in community banking, construction, education, healthcare, manufacturing, real estate, and development and technology
• 21 offices in a variety of locations from California to Washington D.C.
• Ranks in the top 70 firms in the United States
  

Anna Smith is the Director of Financial Planning and Analytics at KCoe Isom. Anna has over 20 years in finance and operations on both buy-side and sell-side M&A transactions, holding around seven years of experience in venture capital.

Lucas Phelps is a Technology Innovation Leader also at KCoe Isom. Lucas is based out of Kansas and has spent the last 16 years doing IT work. He had no finance or M&A background prior to joining the firm, but as a hobby in his spare time enjoyed real estate investments and remodeling work.

He helps with the bringing in of new systems and getting them on board with the systems currently in use.

Challenges

K Coe Isom’s Technology Innovation Leader began searching for a software solution to help enhance their M&A process.

They were struggling with a lack of clear communication between teams. Requests were disorganized and spread out among multiple spreadsheets.

Confidential information was being shared via email threads, creating a potential for security risks.

Redundancy was widespread and time was wasted on backtracking and follow-ups. 

The Technology Innovation Leader complained himself about being sent requests with short deadlines and little context.

As the IT department, they were brought into the deal towards the end with little opportunity to prepare or ask questions.

• Growing pipeline with tight deal deadlines
• Data disorganization
• Security challenges
• Siloed departments and broken communication
  

Solutions

K Coe Isom’s challenges aligned with many of the classic M&A pain points for which DealRoom was originally created.

DealRoom’s advanced data room security features mixed with its in-platform project management tools addressed their main obstacles. 

K Coe Isom’s M&A team approached DealRoom with a request for a unique security feature. They wanted to create confidential folders on a category level to keep HR and IT folders only accessible to each respective group.

DealRoom’s team was able to step up and develop this feature to further strengthen security features. 

• The pipeline management feature allows for a daily overview of deal progress
• Advanced security controls and customizable permission request settings
• Communication tools, data storage, and project management co-existing in one platform

Outcome

After using DealRoom, their deal team reports an overall increase in efficiency and speed.

Onboarding external and internal users is now a smooth process and the communication tools in the app make for direct communication. They were able to close a deal within 60 days after signing up with DealRoom, then turned around and repeated the process. 

They even noted an unexpected cultural outcome. DealRoom’s intuitive and sleek platform made for easier communication with targets.

Their now clear and efficient diligence process helped sellers build confidence in the deal and trust K Coe Isom as a buyer. 

• Reported a higher level of data security
• An overall increase in efficiency and speed of diligence due to the organization of requests
• The intuitive and clear platform maintains reputation during deals

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