Tools
iDeal: Data analytics from diligence and negotiations to post-deal
Smarter questions, smarter answers
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) decisions are driven at least in part by data. In the past you might not have known the story behind the numbers until your business was in the trenches of post-deal transition. Today, you have M&A data analytics. Within the typical tight timeframe of most deals, iDeal enables you to go deeper into the data to find the story behind the data – while there’s still time to take action.
In many respects, M&A data analytics is all about asking - and answering - smarter questions throughout the M&A lifecycle. Using iDeal, here are some of the types of questions you might be answering today:
Diligence
- What has been the source of this company’s growth? Specific customer segments? Products? Markets? Something else?
- How well does this company retain its customer base?
- Where are margin trends negatively impacted by specific products, locations, or customers?
Negotiations
- What is the expected net impact of decisions reflected in our purchase agreement?
- Which risks might we encounter in doing this deal? (Operational risks, critical employees, SKUs, product lines, geographies, etc.)
- Which employees should be covered by non-compete agreements?
Post-closing
- Which customer or supplier might we consider renegotiating to achieve cost savings or revenue improvements in the near-term?
- How are customers responding to the change in ownership? Has our risk profile changed as a result?
- What are the expected results of changes made to the business after the closing of the deal?
Visit our member firm websites for more about iDeal:
iDeal provides big-picture insights with a microscopic level of detail. We can help clients put iDeal’s capabilities to work through analyses:
- Strategy
- Implementation
- Analysis and decision support
- Integration
- Synergy capture
iDeal was designed to generate game-changing benefits for companies when time is short and critical. Here are a few of those most frequently cited benefits by clients.
Get there faster. In M&A, insights are more useful when they are generated in time to affect decision making. With intuitive interfaces and near real-time insight delivery, M&A data analytics have been found to make it easier to generate and leverage insights.
Enhance the value of data. Today, many M&A-focused analytics insights are used for highly focused moments or decisions. But the value of the data used in these scenarios, combined with data from elsewhere, can have an equally important impact in other phases of the lifecycle, such as integration and post-integration.
Go deeper. Too often, surface-level data doesn’t convey a broad or deep story. With the ability to analyze micro-level details and correlate them to macro-level decisions, M&A leaders using iDeal should be better equipped to uncover the story behind the numbers.
Accelerate the sales and purchase agreement (SPA) process. Often, the process of nailing down an SPA typically engages a wide range of time-strapped participants in a race to complete the agreement. It’s a process that can be inefficient and time-consuming—when time is in short supply. M&A analytics facilitates the analysis if more data and ability to deploy the results of those analyses it in a more efficient and effective manner. Not only is it faster, it’s smarter.
Key contact
