The Virtual Data Room (VDC) is a new milestone in the development of enterprise cloud services and one of the fastest growing business segments in the field of data storage and exchange. Solutions of this kind offer their users, as it may seem, almost the same advantages as Dropbox, OneDrive and other public cloud services. Of course, this is so only at first glance, but in fact, as you know, the devil is in the details. It is these details – the differences between VKD and their older counterparts, public cloud services – that we will pay attention to in our review. We will also touch on the topic of scenarios for using EVA, talk about the tasks they solve and answer the important question: “Who needs it and why?”.
Read this article to know how to choose a data room that will be perfect for you.
How to Choose a Virtual Data Room for M&A?
When choosing any electronic data room, you need to understand very clearly what tasks it must solve without fail, what criteria it must meet, what parameters are key for you. Let’s see what parameters are most often used to select software, and what “pitfalls” can await when choosing one or another parameter.
What problem will you solve
When choosing any software, it is very important not to choose, first of all, a beautiful or interesting program, but to look for a solution to a particular problem. This can be automation of sales management, production management, creation of a convenient system for accounting for goods, automation of bookkeeping, etc.
Therefore, the first step is to clearly formulate the problem that the software product will solve.
Define the class of the system
It is important to understand that different software products should be used to solve different types of tasks. So, if you are faced with the task of receiving up-to-date balances of goods at any time and making sales from the warehouse, you will need a warehouse and commodity accounting system. If you want to optimize customer service, you need to implement a CRM system. Accounting will need programs to automate the movement of funds and reporting. And to get up-to-date analytics for managing production processes, choose a production accounting program. It is very important here to understand what exactly you need and limit the choice to data rooms that belong to the class of systems that is suitable for your purposes.
It should be understood that there are no effective software systems that would ideally combine everything at once. Some large projects try to position themselves as universal systems, but in fact, attempts to combine too many areas reduce the quality and flexibility of work with each individual task.
Choice of software product
By this stage, to choose a perfect data room for mergers and acquisitions, you should already have a list of software products that may be suitable for solving the task. There can be a lot of criteria for selecting a particular program, we will talk about them a little below. It is best to choose business software based on the factors that matter most to your team. For example, if many of your employees already know how to work with a particular program, you should pay special attention to it, as you will save time and money on training. It is also very important that the program without modifications can solve as many tasks as possible within the framework of the problem posed to you. In addition, you should pay attention to the price, because business is, first of all, money, and no businessman will pay more if you can get the same thing for less.
System integration options
This parameter is largely related to the presence of open source, but still it is worth highlighting it separately, since integration is very important. The bottom line is that you can establish collaboration and automatic data exchange between different systems that you already use and plan to use in the company. This can be the exchange of a list of clients, as well as information about orders between the CRM system and the 1C accounting system, it can be receiving applications from the site in automatic mode, working with telephony through the CRM system, etc.
The Main Features of the Virtual Data Room
These are the most important features of your perfect software:
Reliability of the software product
It is best to choose one of the well-known software products that have their own history. The younger the program, the more likely it is to have many undetected bugs. The more people use a software product, the fewer bugs remain in it, the more bugs have already been fixed.
Security and access settings
Any data room should have a customizable access level for different employees, as well as a high degree of data storage and transmission security. Today, a significant number of users transmit information over the Internet and use “cloud” SAAS solutions to solve business problems. Therefore, security issues should be in one of the first places.
Reporting
Any management reporting is necessary for decision making. And the ability to generate all the necessary reports, as well as create new ones in a short time, which will help you look at the work of the company from a different point of view, is very important for effective work. Even the most convenient system, which does not provide for a wide range of reports, will be less colorful, but with well-developed analytics.
Quality work on mobile devices
Any modern software product should work effectively not only on stationary desktops, but also on various mobile devices. This is required by the modern rhythm of life and the style of doing business. Of course, in certain cases, this requirement is not mandatory, but it is better to have a mobile version today.
Having a product community
Quality data room software usually has a well-developed community. The presence of a community allows you to find a specialist quickly if necessary, as well as get advice and solutions to many problems.
Summary
Virtual data rooms must be profitable either by increasing sales volumes or by reducing the company’s costs. Therefore, the competent implementation of such programs always pays off and even becomes profitable. At the same time, it is very important not only to choose a good system, but also to set it up with high quality so that it really helps to automate the business processes inherent in a particular company. Many systems are not bad in themselves, but bad because they are not fully implemented. Therefore, no matter what system and contractor you choose, you must always plan all stages of implementation and bring the process to the end. Only in this case, your costs for automation of work will pay off and make a profit.
