M&As are an opportune moment to centralise all your legal information, yet most companies fail to put the data collected in the due diligence phase to good use.
How to leverage your post M&A legal data
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A’s) happen all the time and almost every in-house counsel has been involved with one at some point. The amount of M&A’s is also ever increasing in a landscape that encourages new innovation and entrepreneurship, but also consolidation of smaller businesses by larger entities.
Data-room One of the tools often used during an M&A, is the (infamous) data-room / virtual data-room, or simply VDR. Useful tools that fit their purpose of due diligence, you will find many different data-room solutions on the market (we are more than happy to help you pick one, next time you need one). However, one thing is often overlooked, and that is what to do with this data once the M&A is completed.
Opportune moment
M&As are an opportune moment to centralise all your legal information, yet most companies fail to put the collected data in the due diligence phase to good use and, more often than not, simply dispose of it when the M&A is completed. This is a big waste of value and resources as legal technology is available to help companies leverage the information available to them in the data room by providing a space – a legal management platform – where they can store, analyse, keep track of and report on this data.
The start
Take Legisway Essentials for example, the story of our legal software platform started with a GC concerned about the data that is left behind after an M&A, looking for advice on where and how to store this data in a way that it can also be used effectively in the future. Harm Bavinck, one of the co-founders of this product and an expert in legal management matters, understood GC’s struggles and realized that most legal departments have to deal with the same issue when going through an M&A. Therefore, he put forward an idea to create a legal repository where all post M&A data can be stored and used to a company’s advantage.
This is how Legisway Essentials, formerly named effacts, came to life in 2002, to help companies derive value and insights from their post M&A data. Since then, the product has evolved and exceeded its role as a repository, and it now has numerous functions that can help you organise your legal information, standardise processes and deliver results with an affordable, all-in-one solution.
So next time you are involved in an M&A, consider what to do with the data afterwards. Placing it in a repository to be used and added to over time will not only create new value, but also save time when the data is called upon for a new deal.
If you want more information on how to transform your legal department and drive operational efficiency with Legisway Essentials, you can book a demo here.