Whether on the buy-side or sell-side, a typical M&A transaction rises and falls. There are periods of relative stability when a deal appears unlikely to materialize and periods of frenetic activity when players demand detailed information immediately.
Your team will be ready for both scenarios if you have a best virtual data room. It ensures smooth data sharing by giving parties in the M&A process quick access to the most up-to-date data.
Purchasing a virtual data room is a wise investment, but it’s only the first step: the virtual data room must next be arranged to maximize its efficiency.
We look at multiple approaches for setting data rooms with FirmsData data rooms, however, the majority will look somewhat like this:
How to Set Up a Data Room for a Merger and Acquisitions?
This article delves deeper into these processes, demonstrating how an organized approach is the most effective method to get the most out of your virtual data room.
1. Before you start, make a blueprint of the Virtual Data Room
As we discussed in a previous portion, planning out how you want your virtual data room to look before the M&A process starts pays off.
This allows you to work more quickly once you’ve invested in a VDR and forces you to consider which documents you’ll need and who should have access to them.
As mentioned in the last section, this is usually just a preliminary version, but having one ensures you’re not putting together your virtual data room on the go.
Begin by drawing little squares to mark the major files on a sheet of paper, and then add the files you’d like to keep underneath.
After you’ve done this, you should have a much better idea of who you want to provide access to each of the files.
2. Assign Access to the Appropriate Individuals
When granting access to the virtual data room, it’s important to find the balance: In theory (and frequently in practice), adding more individuals leads to more transparency and communication.
Having too many individuals involved, on the other hand, raises the danger of security breaches both inside and outside the company. As with everything else, there is a diminishing return with each additional person added to the group, so keep that in mind.
Here are some things to think about before granting access:
Give buyers limited access – even if they’ve signed an NDA, you don’t want to give casual buyers access to all of the information in the virtual data room.
If you have a ‘Human Resources’ folder that contains information about people’s contracts, it can’t be shared with anyone except the HR department and senior management.
These are just a few of the factors to consider when assigning access, but they, along with a few others, should be at the forefront of your mind when designing a systemized filing system (see next section).
3. Make a well-organized File System
This stage should go swiftly if you’ve drawn out decent schematics of how your virtual data room should look.
When creating different files (typically ‘finance,’ ‘legal,’ ‘buyers (or targets)’, etc.), an expert tip is to include a master file that contains the documents that will be required by nearly all buyers right away – the non-confidential teaser, the standard NDA, the pitch deck, and possibly some complementary documents, such as financials in excel format.
How do you distinguish between ‘regular’ non-confidential documents and susceptible documents when building a file system?
Creating a separate folder for highly secret papers at the start is an excellent approach to go about this. Only top management and buyers in advanced stages of due diligence (perhaps later phases of due diligence) should have access.
As a result, a typical set of due diligence files would look like this:
- Promotional materials (NDA, information memorandum, teaser, etc.)
- Accounts payable (financial statements, details of outstanding loans, etc.).
- Legal considerations (Company share certificates, resolved legal cases, contracts, IP, etc.)
- Human Resources (Employee resumes, salary and pension details, etc.)
- Confidential and private (Pending deals, pending legal cases, industrial disputes, etc.)
4. Documents that are Relevant and Up to Date Should be Included
It is critical to keep papers up to date regularly. In the M&A process, out-of-date documentation is frequently of limited use (except for some old financial statements).
Furthermore, if they’re in your virtual room, they’re not only clogging up the systematized environment you’re attempting to build, but they’re also costing your firm money by being there, so regular spring cleaning is vital.
5. Use the Virtual Data Room Regularly
The problem with data rooms is their irregular usage. Thousands of virtual data rooms that could otherwise add value are currently useless, storing outdated papers and people who have long since left the company.
Continuous engagement with the data rooms eliminates such value-depleting circumstances and allows your teams to develop a data room structure that suits their needs.
As a result of the safer atmosphere offered by most virtual data rooms, your team won’t have to scan old emails, transmit data-heavy files, or risk data breaches.
Keeping due diligence ‘under one roof’ also minimizes redundancy and provides a faster-flowing process, avoiding the old M&A cliché that “anything that drags becomes dirty.”
The value of an effective virtual data room is significantly more than the sum of its parts. However, getting the most out of this tool necessitates establishing some structure straight away.
This entails sketching out an initial design for the VDR and granting access to the appropriate individuals.
And by encouraging your employees to use the virtual data room regularly, the structure that works best for them will emerge over time.
