The current
situation offers an enormous number of opportunities due to the change in digitalization
in the industry. Especially for the M&A area, this means the valuation as
well as the buying and selling processes of companies will in the future happen
in a very different way. This will lead to more efficient transactions and quicker
throughput. Artificial intelligence tools for strategy development will appear,
as well as numerous new tools in digital research, crunch base or merger
market. The search process will be modified with Dealsuite or others. Tools
will be available to make the selection of companies we want to invest in
easier and more transparent. Furthermore, legal help will be possible via digital
tools and NDAs and LOIs will be handled via outsourced tools with the help of
AI.
It will turn out
useful to learn, adopt and integrate new things. This is an important process
that has already developed in the M&A market, but has not yet been
sufficiently embraced because there is too much focus on the well-tried and
tested changes in M&A. However, it is nowadays highly important to get to
grips with the latest digital trends in M&A. They are already considered a
cornerstone for many companies, brands, markets and customer benefits. To keep
up with the increasing demand for content, entrepreneurs need to become a
digital company and be able to consistently deliver innovation for their
products. Even if the speed of this process is still relatively slow and
remains unnoticed by many, you should already address this issue. If these new
tools are not implemented and this kind of change is left unobserved, it
possibly leads to the inability to compete on the market.
A significantly more
important aspect concerns digital research. There will be automated company
evaluations in advance, based on the published figures, which are being analyzed.
Furthermore, the sensitivities of the companies in these segments will be
presented very clearly before you go into direct contact or making an offer to
buy a company. Highly structured electronic tools will be available.
The same applies to
contacting. Initially, the first contact remains personal for quite a while.
However, further negotiation steps will be automated with excellent video
conferencing tools. These will be set up and operated even more professionally
than those we currently use, such as Zoom, Teams or Skype.
The company
documentation will be designed in such a way that the infomemos will be
equipped with various buttons and allow us to take a virtual tour with a
360-degree camera. In the future, one will no longer personally visit all the potential
target companies. Dashboards for workflow optimization and process control will
evolve. There will be many more interesting features coming in this segment.
In the area of due
diligence, virtual data rooms have been used for a long time already. These
highly electronic tools contain Intralinks, Brain Tools and others. New
analysis tools are constantly being added. In detail, the whole analysis in due
diligence processes will be optimized with error search, potentially with
keyword search in contracts. It will occur similarly in software analysis. The
company software will be analyzed in detail by means of black tag. Nevertheless,
also in this case, one still falls back on document-based data storage.
However, different platforms offer great possibilities with first-class
technology, highest security precautions and excellent support.
Changes in team
compositions will occur. Teams can be set up internationally, including
selected experts, as they can be added electronically in a simple and uncomplicated
way.
In the area of legal
services, increased building-block-like automated contract preparation will
evolve. This will lead to significantly lower, meaning flat-rate prices. Probably,
this will also be reflected in the law firms. However, it will create a more
pleasant environment for the user.
Furthermore, these
changes also apply to closing and signing, which will only be carried out
electronically, which leads to an end of the common "acquisition
tourism" in the near future.
Posted by: Dr. Harald Klien