Our 3 Biggest VDR Tips for Life Sciences Companies

by Michael Kennedy, Regional Vice President, Northeast

Life Sciences companies face unique financial transaction management challenges on the road to drug approval. Leanly run R&D companies have little bandwidth for the administrative workload that modern-day deal-making entails. They must engage in a host of financial tactics from fundraising, to in- and out-licensing, to IPOs in parallel to conducting mission-critical clinical trials. Finally, successful deal outcomes rely on careful disclosure of Intellectual Property (IP) and compliance with sector-specific data privacy laws like HIPAA.

As a leading provider of financial transaction management technology in the Life Sciences space, we are intimately familiar with these issues. Datasite hosts more than 1,400 healthcare transactions a year, engaging 13,000+ industry dealmakers per month, globally. Based on this experience, here are three ways Datasite is uniquely positioned to help you.

1. Lean on our project management support

This one is easy. Use us. Your time is limited and setting a transaction up properly can take days. And that’s not including the expectation that you suddenly become a virtual data room organizational expert.

Our project management team is complimentary and can assist you with everything from loading and organizing documents to setting up document and user permissions. Free help is hard to find – take full advantage.

2. One data room, multiple financial transactions

Running multiple parallel track processes is common in the Life Sciences industry. You’ll often need to share documents with different parties, for a variety of purposes. For example, clients may have multiple licensing deals, and/or an IPO or sell side deal happening at the same time.

We recommend setting each transaction up as a separate file room on your main index. This enables you to manage each process from one central location with a high level of security. Because your transactions will require many of the same files and underlying documents, this also lets you easily replicate your work on one process and then simply adjust for the transaction at hand.

3. Ensure your IP is fully protected

A Life Science company’s IP is often its sole asset, so safeguarding it is essential. Datasite’s document permissions let you easily control which documents a given user can see - and what they can do with that information. For instance, you may want external parties to only be able to view a confidential document, but not print or download it. In-app watermarking provides another layer of document security.

For additional peace of mind, you can always triple-check document and user permissions on the Permissions Dashboard on our Analytics tab. In addition, we recommend closely tracking user activity on your most important documents. You can do this on the Analytics tab or ask our service team to create a custom report for you, which you can receive as often as you like.

Conclusion

Juggling multiple financial transactions on your path to drug approval is hard, necessary work. Taking these simple steps will save you critical time and help you look your best to investors, partners and buyers alike.

If you’d like to learn more about how Datasite can help you, contact us now.