Advisors have been crying out for an innovative technology solution to ease the buy-side M&A process. All too often, Microsoft Office suite is used, leading to many files sent over multiple mediums; and despite time being of the essence, people are not receiving the information that they need quickly enough to ensure that those all-important decisions are made efficiently.

Step in Datasite Acquire – a centralized platform for advisors to quarterback from and run the deal. After all, M&A is a team sport; communication and dissemination of information need to be self-contained, highly visible, and easy to action. If one player struggles to play their part, the whole transaction could fall apart.

Identifying the five main challenges affecting the deal process is easy; tackling the problem is where an innovative platform solution is required.

1. Challenge: Time Management
Dealmaking is a never-ending battle against time. Not only is it a race against the clock to meet client expectations but managing time efficiency to meet demand in a cost-effective manner is becoming increasingly pressurized.

Solution: Save Three Weeks or More on Your Buy-side Deals
With Datasite Acquire, everything lives on the platform, cutting out unnecessary back-and-forth and reducing the chance of something getting lost. Less time and resources are spent on the buy-side work, which allows your team to focus on high-value rather than capital-intensive work – keeping the client happy.

And with speed comes momentum. So keeping deal momentum up increases the chances of a successful close at the end of the process.

Our market-leading data shows that you will save a median of 22 days per deal, leading to faster closings, more deals, and happier clients.

2. Challenge: Inefficient Processes
Advisors lack a single place to quarterback their side of the deal and action checklists. When attaching spreadsheets, along with relevant files to an email, the cumbersome action leads to version control issues – and reconciling these can take up precious time.

Solution: A Purpose-built Platform for Advisors
Datasite’s Acquire platform works just like the Diligence platform, but is purpose-built for the buy-side. It has the same security, same purchase process, and the same core functionality.

As a white-listed platform for your firm or organization, there are no access issues. Inside you will find embedded checklists, commenting, and findings, which can reflect any changes in real-time, helping you to quarterback buy-side deals more efficiently, easing friction points with clients, other advisors, and sellers.

The platform also allows you to streamline workflow and task management to ensure more timely responses and make better and more efficient recommendations to your client.

Finally, you can create an easily repeatable playbook in the data room. Viewed by clients and peers as a market leader on top of the latest tech and processes, Acquire will allow you to copy past project templates over to a new project in 30 seconds, speeding up efficiencies and creating your own successful playbook for deals in the future.

The platform allows you to streamline workflow and task management to ensure more timely responses and make better and more efficient recommendations to your client.

3. Challenge: Risk Identification
Identifying and prioritizing risks is a critical process in any deal and can be a very stressful one, too.  This can be exacerbated when communication lives across multiple mediums and uses different files.

Solution: Integrated Findings Tool
Datasite Acquire makes it easy to distill key findings to all members of the extended deal team using the integrated findings tool. Set findings categories as an admin, and then keep a running, consolidated list of all key issues that arise during due diligence. Plus, everything will be in the same format since everyone is using the same template.

4. Challenge: Lack of Visibility and Oversight
Having numerous workstreams makes it hard to gauge ​the health of the deal ​or to know what work is complete and which issues are still outstanding. Visibility is frustrating, especially for senior management who want ​to know how the deal is progressing at-a-glance.​

Solution: Real-time Dashboard and Robust Analytics
The dashboard is front-and-center of any Datasite Acquire deal, showing at-a-glance how trackers and findings are progressing, along with what new @mentions and documents have been uploaded. Easily sort and filter by status or priority. The analytics tab can show stats such as who has been logging in, what files are being accessed, how permissions have changed, and other much more detailed information. All of this and more keeps senior dealmakers happy by being in the loop and junior dealmakers ready to action based on the data.

5. Challenge: No Buy-side Specialist Support
It is not a matter of *if* a buyer will need support but rather *when*. These needs run the gamut from set-up to day-to-day tasks.

Solution: Datasite Experience
Always by your side, our support specialists remain by your side from set-up to close, whilst mitigating analyst and associate turnover risks as well as rookie mistakes. Rely on 24/7/365 support for all your essential questions and basic needs. And our buy-side support specialists will help you cross the finish line no matter the intricacies of your ask.