BNP Paribas Real Estate customer case study

BNP Paribas Real Estate in Amsterdam chose the powerful virtual data room of Virtual Vaults. Why Virtual Vaults and what does BNP Paribas Real Estate value most about our platform? We've asked this question to BNP Paribas' Head of Logistics & Industrial, Joost Merkx and to Consultant Capital Markets, Floris Keunen.

Easy to use dataroom
Merkx: “Virtual Vaults provides us with an overview of the deal and helps with transparency. Everyone can see what information is shared. Whenever new files are added to the data room, everyone wil be informed per email notification. This way, at the end of the deal, there is no doubt about which information has and hasn't been shared.”

Floris Keunen, Consultant Capital Markets, explains why BNP started to work with Virtual Vaults: “A few years ago we used different data rooms, but they weren't particularly easy to manage. When we were introduced to Virtual Vaults, we were immediately sold. Now we only use Virtual Vaults and all of our customers are happy about that. Data rooms are usually very complicated, but Virtual Vaults allows us to work in a structured way and makes things very clear for everyone.” Merkx agrees with his colleague “I make a lot of use of the Virtual Vaults data rooms. In my position, it is important that all documents in the data room are organised properly for everyone, allowing them to easily be found.”

Q&A for BNP
Merkx and Keunen particularly like how Virtual Vaults deals with the Q&A. Keunen: “When you open the data room, it is very simple to drag & drop all files in one go. After that, all questions are clearly displayed in the Q&A and we can very clearly see which file the questions relate to, because users attach the file to the question, or reference it.” Merkx: “If there are numerous questions, we can easily download and share them with the person responsible for providing the answers. We upload them and, if necessary, we also add documentation to the question. Ultimately, the Q&A are properly archived and form part of the purchase agreement.” Merkx is also enthusiastic about the pricing of Virtual Vaults: “Initially, we paid for the amount of data, but you often don't know how much data you will use. Therefore, it's always a surprise. We now pay for the number of users in the data room, therefore we know exactly where we stand.”

Support without waiting time
Both Merkx and Keunen value the support they receive from Virtual Vaults. Keunen: “I think the support from Virtual Vaults is fantastic, plus I always speak to really friendly people on the telephone.” Merkx: “They man the phone lines 24 hours a day and there is zero waiting time. And something else I really like is that we have seen Virtual Vaults improve continuously over the past five years. Improvements have been based on customer suggestions, but also because they proactively make their own improvements. We have experienced that ourselves, and by improving, things are made even easier for us.” Keunen: “It works well, it works really well.”

About BNP Paribas Real Estate
According to Joost Merkx, BNP Paribas Real Estate is unique in the Netherlands: “That is because of our relationship with CIB, the bank within the group, and because we work with a small team of people based in one office in the Netherlands, here in Amsterdam, which means that we are actually a boutique office with a personal touch and that isn't only within the workplace, but also when dealing with our clients.”