Digitalization of M&A processes: Advantages of an end-to-end, unified platform

An end-to-end, unified platform builds the foundation of M&A success. End-to-end means that the platform covers all phases of the M&A process from early strategizing to deal sourcing to due diligence, signing, closing and integration. All data are combined to one single source of truth, no data are lost between phases, better and well documented handovers are possible between phases.

Unified platform means no more jumping between different solutions and tools. t eases the pain of processing massive amounts of data, be it the data room or planning data for integration planning. For due diligence, this includes combining collaborative due diligence management with virtual data room capabilities.

While there are many advantages of such a platform, let´s just look at three key advantages.

Advantage 1: A unified data lake for all deals

The data lake covers all process phases and all deals allowing e.g. cross-deal analytics, large training sets for machine learning, proposals of next steps based on best practices from all deals. The data lake contains massive amounts of information, but all information used in the process, information about the process steps and decisions taken is stored in one place.

The load of information in M&A processes is already overwhelming? So how can i leverage this large amount of data? Modern information system technologies like predictive analytics, finding outliers within data, semantic analytics and forensic tool to analyse and navigate large data sets as well as providing the right information for your current work context will enable you to leverage the data collected.

Advantage 2: Better decision are being taken and documented

There are two aspects of this advantage: decision journey and augmentation. For each decision taken, you can always recall the decision journey. How was the decision prepared, who took it, what were the consequences, were the goals of the decision reached?

The second aspect is augmentation of decision tasks: if you are the decision maker, augmentation provides you with similar decision taken in other deals including their impact on results in the integration phase, so you can make the best decision. The augmentation in the deal sourcing phase e.g. includes market data, financial data about all targets and predictive analytics about the future success of the target companies.

Advantage 3: Less documentation and reporting: More productivity

Massively increased productivity and less errors due to robotic process automation. No more learning of process models, they will naturally be followed. No more thinking about what the next step is or what your project status is, all information is augmented in your usual workplace. Reporting annoys you? The platform will autmatically propose the content for the next status update, so you spend less hours on reporting, more on quality work and problem solving.

Outlook: where´s the platform?

So, now we know some of the advantages of the platform: one question remains: is the platform your work environment and do you have to learn a completely new work environment that does not naturally integrate with all the other productivity tools that you are using: email, teleconferencing etc.? The platform i envision will be invisible, you will work in your usual work environment, e.g. using a Windows tablet with Outlook and other tools you know. the platform will track your work and augment inforrmation as you work, no separate login, no missing integrations that get on your nerves.

If you liked this article, you will like my book about due diligence.

Let us cover the final frontier of digitalization: M&A processes!

While many business processes are automated, use big data analytics and digital assistants, we seem to run M&A processes like it is 1999. Imagining what is possible today, we are on the verge of disruption in M&A.

What is needed?

Here is the list of requirements to massively digitize the M&A process:

• end-to-end process support from early phases to end of the integration project,

• Digital learning for M&A knowledge,

• Semantic analysis of available data of acquirer and target and then leverage the semantic data to navigate the data via assistive technologies, like automatic analysis of legal documents,

• assistive technologies like chatbots, robotic process automation and digital assistants that help managers watch risks, ask the right questions and propose proper next steps,

• big data analytics: data rooms are a large data set, so why dig through it manually?,

• Use of forensic technologies for understanding and investigating data room content

• Automate IT due diligence by using scanners for analysis of networks, applications and interfaces,

• Automatically analyse content of existing ERP systems for due diligence, merger integration and migration of ERP systems.

What is already digital?

• Learning: see PMI2GO: digital online learning for post merger integration

• Data rooms: Trusted file stores for due diligence are digital. But is file store digitalization driven far enough? No. Not yet.

• Process digitalization: There are M&A process tools that allow partial automation of management tasks. But do we get digitalization with chatbots, assistive technology based on machine learning? No. Not yet.

The opportunities are massive but are not yet leveraged. I think the M&A community has to provide guidance to vendors to achieve a vision i call the Digital M&A Manifesto. Stay tuned for more details.

My first week with the Roomba 960 vacuum cleaner

Our home cleaning person retired. This was the final motivation to start additional robotics in our home.

The Roomba 960 was easy to install. remove two tabs, plug in the charging station. done.

The Roomba worked well on all types of floors: wooden and tiles and all of our carpets: thin, thick, wool, plastic, everywhere.

We have 100 square meters to clean and the roomba needs one charging cycle in between to finish, which is not a problem since the roomba finds its charging station and restarts automatically as soon as it has finished recharging. We set a schedule to clean every second day automatically.

 

The roomba recognized the stairs everywhere and avoided them.

Overall a very good performance

things to be aware of  are:

• cables: cables on the floor will easily be eaten. just remove them
• thin curtains that reach the floor: we have one thin curtain that reaches the floor. well, the roomba started eating the curtain. now we just pull it up when the roomba starts.
• some voices say, black carpets will be avoided by the Roomba. We don´t have any so we cannot comment on this.
• that´s it.