Deals in business typically involve large quantities of confidential documents that must be shared in a secure manner and reviewed. Data is often time-sensitive and teams must look over documents at the same to complete due diligence. In the past, physical sharing of these documents required several parties to travel and spend money in order to review them in a group. Virtual data rooms allow teams to access the documents remotely, without the need to travel, thus reducing costs and enabling companies to complete transactions more quickly and efficiently.
Virtual data rooms can be found from a variety providers, but they are not all made to be the same. Certain providers of virtual data rooms are better suited to certain industries and transactions, whereas others offer more advanced functionality.
The most effective online deal room solutions allow users to view documents with a fast, high-quality viewer and support a variety of file formats. They also have a range of permission options, and provide analytics on document viewing and user activity. A lot of these virtual deal rooms providers are SEC and FINRA conforming and place security as their top priority. One of them is FirmRoom, which has an initial trial for free and a flat-rate pricing model instead of a per-page model.
Investment banks require software that is easy to use in high-risk transactions and protects their sensitive data. They should speed up the M&A diligence process, make a the management presentation with potential buyers in mere minutes, and make sure that investor communications are secure with remote control of data as well as insightful insight dashboards. They must also manage and track progress on various tasks, including writing and reviewing reports, examining documents, and completing Q&A.