“And how to automate this process management”.
“due diligence is a process of detailed investigation completed by a business before signing a contract or starting an ongoing business or employment relationship. The aim of conducting due diligence is to identify any potential problems or unexpected liabilities”.
However, due diligence requires a large number of documentation and tends to be cumbersome and lengthy.
Let’s now learn more about the types of due diligence.
Types of Due Diligence
Generally speaking, there are eight types of due diligence areas:
| Financial | Legal |
| Human Resources | Operational |
| Environmental | Business |
| Strategic Fit | Self Assessment |
In this article, we will focus on the business and operational areas. We will make emphasis on customer due diligence, vendor due diligence, and operational due diligence.
Customer due diligence is the act of assessing your customer base background.
Vendor due diligence focuses on ensuring a potential vendor is a safe fit for your organization.
Operational due diligence is a process by which a potential purchaser reviews the operational aspects of a target company previous to m&a deals.
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Automate your Due Diligence workflows!
Due diligence is usually classified in one of the areas above. But can also be divided into three main categories:
Legal
It is the process of collecting, understanding and assessing all the legal risks associated during a M&A transaction. The purpose of performing due diligence is to understand if there will be any future legal problems due to the acquired company.
Financial
Financial due diligence entails a full analysis of a business’ financial performance. It uncovers potential risks, and helps to make informed decisions on whether partnering with a new entity will be beneficial for your company or not.
Commercial
It’s instituted by a prospective buyer to uncover a target company’s commercial activity, viability and potential. Commercial due diligence services insight on market demand, commercial position, profit margins, revenue, and competitive dynamics.
Performing due diligence could prevent your company from compliance nightmares. It will help you protect your intellectual property and uncover financial information that can shape the future of your company.
These processes can be long and full of moving parts. Reason why many organizations choose to use due diligence software.
Due Diligence Software: What it can do for you
A powerful software solution is an effective way to create an accelerated due diligence workflow. It will lead to:
- increasing visibility
- managing requests in real time
- easily tracking progress
- eliminating disparate communication
By choosing a due diligence management software you’re able to better conduct due diligence work. As well as to get a 360-degree view of your data with automatic audit trails.
Some additional benefits include:
- A safe place for sharing confidential information
- Options for hosting all relevant documents in one place
- Dashboards where you can get full documentation visibility
- Alternatives for share and route documents
- The ability to develop custom rules
- Elimination of duplicate work
- Faster elaboration of due diligence reports
How to manage your Due Diligence workflows with Virtus Flow
Virtus Flow allows you to digitize and automate your processes without hassle. It helps you to connect workflows between departments to automate end to end without the need for coding.
How to automate them?
To take advantage of your automation software and simplify your work as much as possible, automate your full process cycle. This is nothing but to connect all related processes.
For example, if we are talking about Vendor Due Diligence, make sure to include all processes. From new vendor request, credentialing, due diligence, approvals, and onboarding.
New vendor requisition form
A department that has found a solution that needs, digitally requests the purchase of the new product or service.
The requests and support documentation is automatically routed to the leadership team, office, or person that has been pre-stablished.
According to the rules and conditions stablished when designing the workflow.
Managing requests and work
The staff member in charge receives the new request in his/her dashboard as well as via email. Depending on what is next, they can approve or decline with a few clicks or start a new workflow.
All steps and actions are fully customizable. After action is taken, they can invite the vendor to submit information and upload all documentation digitally with a similar form.
Once all information has been provided, the system automatically routes information to specific department or staff. It can also trigger events, tasks and workflows automatically.
For example it can send the notification to the due diligence department with the request to start a new due diligence analysis.
Document Management
We also incorporated a full document management dashboard to give users the ability to manage documents faster.
You can either access the documents you have acquired through your workflows, or add and share with internal or external users.
This section allows you to quickly filter and access documents by project, department, management team, staff member, customer, case or you can choose your desired filters.
Working with Templates
To make sure your team follows the same process every time you can create templates by type of process. Every time you need to perform due diligence, you can pull the template that matches the type of analysis needed.
You can apply rules and conditions to guide the person through each specific process. Making sure the information is automatically shared with involved parties when it’s needed.
Because due diligence requires such a vast amount of research and information, the more powerful the software solution you choose, the more long-term benefits you’ll see and the easier it will be.
Learn how to streamline your processes in minutes!
7 Tips To Enhance Your Due Diligence Workflow Management
Here are our seven tips to help you improve your process management and increase efficiency.
1- Broaden your Knowledge
The more you know about the market you’re conducting the analysis for, the less time you’ll need to make an educated decision. This could take a lot of time and resources. Therefore a due diligence software could be a great alternative to support your investigations.
2- Use accurate Data
When you’re legally obligated to conduct a M&A due diligence, the accuracy of your data will determine how successful your research is. Make sure to use reputable sources. So as to use platforms that allow you to view all documents in one place for your mergers and acquisitions.
3- Increase Transparency
When handling intellectual property data and sensitive documents like financial statements or balance sheet, make sure to have a secure place for sharing and accessing files. This will allow relevant parties to have full visibility and enjoy a streamlined process.
When shopping for due diligence software, make sure to look for a vendor that gives you safe file-sharing alternatives.
4- Introduce Automation
Due diligence automation can help you:
- build customized workflows
- determine relevant deadlines
- run background checks
- even introduce machine learning to drive informed business decisions
You can automatically trigger tasks and route work once the decision point is submitted. As well as to start the verification process simultaneously or by steps. Automatically share and store information after one department has given its feedback or completed a verification, etc.
Before choosing the right software solution, make a list of all the features you need and why. This will help you ask the right questions when shopping for due diligence software.
By expanding your company’s business plan operations, you empower your team by allowing it to focus on strategic tasks.
See how you can digitize and automate your full due diligence processes.
5- Do plenty of Research
Going the extra mile will help your company avoid liabilities and potential loss of profit and private equity. This is particularly relevant when investing venture capital or evaluating real estate. To do so, you will need to maintain excellent file organization and make sure nothing goes missing.
6- Expand your Bandwidth
As detailed and accurate as your exercised due diligence process needs to be. It’s important that you take advantage of all available resources that will save you time and money while conducting research.
When it comes to joint ventures, for instance, your job is to prepare, organize, and analyze the data in advance. So make sure to use all the tools that will help you do so in the most efficient way possible.
7- Trust your Intuition
There is no business process for trusting your intuition. However, investors often say: never invest in something you don’t believe. Being able to get a full view of your findings will make it easier to draw an accurate picture in your mind. Letting you make a better decision with as much information as possible.
Simplify your Due Diligence processes in hours!
…with digital forms, automatic audit trails, event triggering and delivery, advanced document management and more.
