Today businesses can work most productively with existing and potential clients, as well as monitor the activities of employees with the help of Data Room software.
Virtual Data Room solution for the professional services market
Currently, companies in the service market are faced with many problems: the inability to receive up-to-date information, marketing and employees’ work in real-time (or at the right time); significant time spent on analysis and decision making; manual and complex processes limiting business development; increasing the level of errors in many projects; fragmentation of data. All these factors complicate the functioning of the marketing system.
In solving the main problems facing companies in the service market, a Virtual Data Room (VDR) software helps, as it allows you to effectively manage clients and transactions, as well as manage project resources. Thanks to the Data Room, in a single centralized database, you can combine the complete history of projects for each client, including the history of negotiations, and through e-mail. This system allows you to organize teamwork on a project: plan and distribute tasks between employees, automate a significant part of the company’s document flow, calculate project profits, and therefore determine the most profitable and important customers
VDR is mostly used in the following situations:
- Mergers & Acquisitions. Conducting financial and legal due diligence in a safe and convenient format.
- Audits and preparation for IPO. Secure access to company documents for auditors, lawyers, regulators, and other interested parties.
- Working with personal information of media persons. From divorce documents to requests for specific consulting (discussion of personal investments, tax optimization, etc.)
- Protection of developments and intellectual property. For example, blueprints for a secret weapon or a script for a TV show.
Main Data Room functions
When selecting a dataroom provider for your needs, the following functions should be assessed:
- Document management
Ideally, documents should be able to be stored in the “bulk” in the data room. For example, folders with a large number of files can be conveniently made available in the VDR. The option of uploading via “drag & drop” also makes work easier.
- Access rights
With the access rights, the Data Room administrator should be able to define which user groups are allowed to read, edit, download, print, or not see documents at all.
- Document view
For fast and effective work in the Data Room, it should be possible to display common document formats directly in the web browser without downloading the documents.
- Document approval – approval process
In the preparation phase of the data room, it should optionally be possible to set a release process based on the “four-eyes principle”. This means that documents are only visible after they have been approved by another person.
- Safety
During the due diligence phase, the confidentiality and protection of the data must be reliably ensured. When choosing a virtual data room, pay particular attention to the following functions and criteria:
- 256-bit encryption
256-bit secure encryption should be used for both the transmission and storage of documents in the data room.
- 2-factor authentication
Access to the Data Room should also be protected for users with so-called 2-factor authentication. In order to log in, a user name/e-mail address and password must be entered as well as a security code that is sent to the user’s mobile phone, e.g. via SMS.
- Digital watermark
The option of adding a watermark to particularly sensitive documents protects them from unauthorized further use, both when viewed on the screen and when they are printed out.