By Anthony Scudieri, Product Marketing Manager

For years, buyers have had to work with data rooms set up by sellers, who are often inexperienced. In response, many buyers began to run their buy-side processes from their own data rooms. Not exactly ideal. To solve this problem, we launched  Datasite Acquire in 2021, the world’s first dedicated buy-side M&A platform. And it’s clear that having their own platform matters to buy-side M&A dealmakers: companies of every shape, size, and sector are switching, from middle-market mining corporations to large-cap global private equity firms. Why? Read on.

1. Time saved
In M&A, time is more than money. Saving just a single day can mean seizing a new opportunity. According to an internal Datasite review of more than a hundred deals, buyers completed their review processes 22 days faster on average. Or to look at it another way, deals take a third less time, as clients reported around a 30% time savings per transaction using Datasite Acquire. The biggest efficiencies come from:

• Consolidating all checklists into the data room, so there’s one source of truth
• Expert support with setup, templates, and training 
• Real-time updates on workflow progress
• Running more than one deal on the platform

Clients also completed over a thousand projects in total using Acquire, translating to 2.5 transactions per client. In other words, it’s already the norm for buyers to run more than one deal on this platform – and some run many more. With tuck-in buys and roll-ups increasingly central to private equity and corporate toolkits, being able to replicate a successful process effortlessly is winning legions of fans. 

In 2021, over 400 corporate development teams and private equity firms signed up to Datasite Acquire and more than 18,000 dealmakers used it.

2. Trackers, not checklists
Ending spreadsheet proliferation has to be one of the biggest highlights of Datasite Acquire. Instead of having external checklists with ever-changing versions, there’s one set of checklists embedded in the data room. And with the tracker dashboard, you know exactly what’s been done and what needs doing, in real-time. 

In the past year, over 2,000 trackers were created, eliminating both problems and excuses about version control and missing emails. Trackers account for a big part of those 22 days saved. 

However, perhaps more important than time savings: clients reported that the consolidated workflow eases relationship strain during the due diligence process.

3. Embedded findings
Do your due diligence finding from your extended review team get lost in the mail or lost in translation? We fixed it, by equipping Datasite Acquire with an embedded findings template. It compels extended deal teams to provide answers in a concise, standardized form, and therefore brings issues to light before a deal progresses too far. 

This feature set has a small(er) but passionate following. For example: during a roll-up, a mid-market healthcare services client identified that an insurance carrier was incompatible. So, it dropped the deal before wasting more time and resources.

4. Many deal types, one platform
Our clients know best. We’re constantly monitoring how our platform gets used in real deals – and last year Datasite Acquire was used in more than 10 different transaction types. After buy-side M&A, the most popular uses were for IPOs and audits – and with good reason.

IPOs involve extensive checklists, for which the trackers feature is the perfect answer. Audits require streamlined communication both internally and with your auditor, so features like document commenting and direct links to underlying materials are worth their weight in gold. 

And it’s still early days. As the potential applications of Datasite Acquire continue to grow, we’ll be there to support and optimize it so buy-side teams can achieve their goals.