HighQ’s CFO Amit Patel presented and participated in a panel discussion for Legadex in the seminar Transactional Excellence in Amsterdam on November 7th. The talk was attended by over 100 private equity, banking and legal professionals interested in how enterprise collaboration software can be used to improve the mergers and acquisitions process.
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The seminar was an opportunity to showcase how HighQ’s collaboration platform can be used across the transaction lifecycle in the field of mergers and acquisitions, and received positive feedback and engagement from the audience. Amit demonstrated how the platform can be used across the deal process including origination, deal execution, portfolio management, investor/regulatory reporting right through to exit. Particular emphasis was placed on the deal execution phase of transactions.
Origination
Enterprise collaboration software can be used to manage a deal from origination to exit, covering each of the stages in between. From deal origination, firms can use structured data collaboration solutions to automatically screen prospects, setting alerts when prospects that meet predefined criteria submit applications. Intelligent prospect screening solutions such as this also allow for tracking applications and scoring of prospects, packaging up this information into reports and providing smart alerts to deal originators.
Deal execution
Due diligence solutions streamline deal execution by automatically generating full due diligence reports in seconds, based on “house style” templates. This saves substantial unbillable hours lost in document creation, formatting and standardisation and minimise the resulting write-offs. The platform guarantees consistent data entry and facilitates best practice and consistency across your offices and multiple jurisdictions, avoiding costly human errors, and enables firms to monitor the progress of a transaction against budget to avoid cost over runs and expensive write-offs. These solutions can also be used by acquirers to project manage their in-house or external legal advisors.
Portfolio management
Manage complex portfolios of assets (portfolio companies, equities, real estate, bonds and more) using structured database solutions. These enable firms to offer precise investment and management information to investors anytime anywhere. Monitor acquisitions, benchmark against the portfolio and pre-empt under performance. Create online spreadsheets, databases and forms with customisable columns, fields and data types. Dynamically filter data based on configurable business logic and create conditions to drive email alerts when data changes.
Investor and regulatory reporting
Invite investors and regulators into a single collaborative portal to view the latest financial metrics and contribute to investment dialogue. Workflow tools help firms to save time on generating reports, and reduce risk by ensuring all the raw data going into the reporting process is accurate and consistent. A document assembly module instantly generates professionally branded reports from this metadata in a Word document, ready for distribution. Use the platform to automate analytics, assemble reports in real time, and create virtual data rooms for due diligence purposes.
Exit
Using a highly secure and controlled virtual data room allows confidential and regulated information to be shared outside of the organisation. Sophisticated multi-layer security ensures that sensitive data is not leaked or subject to copyright infringement. Advanced permissions let you control who can see what information, not to mention Q&A and bidder management functionality for seamless workflow between bid and sell teams. Custom notifications, audit trails and analytics are just a few of the other features included.
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Amit revealed that using enterprise collaboration software to help with deals can lead to a 50% reduction in due diligence write-offs, halving the time of diligence checklist completion, and deal abortive issues and deal progress can be monitored and dealt with in real time.
Amit rounded up by explaining that using enterprise collaboration software enables firms to optimise internal deal processes, reduce operational risks and costs, and collaborate with all parties (deal teams, investors, advisors, regulators and investees) in one platform, which can be configured to match existing deal processes.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how HighQ can help you manage your transactions, please contact us today.
