Many companies are unaware of all that today's data room has to offer. Today, setting up a data room is faster and easier than ever before, especially with the right resources. As we said, setting up a data room does not have to be difficult. On the contrary, within minutes you can upload a complete folder structure to your own online environment, where colleagues and third parties can easily use it too. You’ll find the steps on how to set up a data room below. 


What is a data room and when do I need one?

Step 1.
Select a reliable data room provider

The first step of setting up a data room, is choosing a software platform! Choose a reputable data room provider that meets your needs in terms of security, functionality, and user-friendliness. Important factors to consider include: 

  • Security Measures: Ensure that the provider offers robust security measures, such as end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and strict access control. 
  • User Experience: Test the user interface and functionalities to ensure it is intuitive and easy to use for both administrators and users. 
  • Scalability: Ensure that the data room can grow with your needs and accommodate the number of users and documents you want to manage. 
  • Customer Support: Verify that the provider offers reliable customer support to assist you with any questions or issues. 
  • Pricing: Ensure to choose a provider that offers a transparent pricing model with preferably unlimited data and an overview of the costs beforehand instead of surprises afterwards.  
  • Preparation: The phase before a Virtual Data Room is long, complex and time–consuming. This phase therefore needs a different tool to support and enhance the process. Proper and efficient preparation ensures a smoother due diligence process with a greater chance of success. 

 

Step 2.
Onboarding onto the data room platform

After your registration, you will receive a welcome email from us with an invitation to open your data room. You’ll receive an onboarding training from our Customer Success Team to get you up to speed in no time.  

 

Step 3.
Create an organisation to manage your data rooms

Within the Virtual Vaults platform, advisors get their own organisation, this means you can also invite colleagues to join the platform and open an unlimited number of projects and data rooms to prepare and execute deals in a secure and structured environment. 

Step 4.
Setting up the data room

Setting up a data room without Workspaces  

Setting up a data room does not have to be complicated at all. In fact, you can upload an entire folder structure in no time into your own online environment that colleagues and third parties can also use. In addition, you maintain full control in the data room and can see in detail what actions users perform.  

Once your data room is opened, you can set up your folder structure. Organise documents into folders and subfolders based on categories, departments, transactions, or other relevant criteria. Upload your favourite IRL to apply this structure for your questionnaire, save it as a template, or start building from scratch. Give files clear and descriptive names for easy searching and identification. Prefer to do a mass upload, mass rename or mass download? We got you covered! 

Set up your data room with Workspaces 

With Workspaces, you can easily prepare your deal. It is the tool to optimise your deal preparation: easily collect relevant data, collaborate with your deal team, speed up the editing process, stay in control, hide sensitive data and export files to the data room. 

  • Prepare your deal 

Good preparation is half the battle! In the Workspaces environment, you prepare documents and get ready for the due diligence process. You can start preparing for new projects even before you sign a contract or a client is in sight. 

  • Export to the data room  

When all documents are ready and you are ready for the due diligence process, simply export your data from Workspaces to our secure data room. Advisors are given the choice of who gets sent the invoice; the seller or the advisor.  

Step 5.
Invite potential buyers into your data room

Are all the documents ready for the due diligence process? Then the potential buyers can be invited onto the platform. Easily manage access for these guest users by creating roles, setting permissions, and thus manage access to all data at document level. This way, you keep control over who sees what and have easy insight into user statistics. Our data room also offers the options to watermark documents to ensure authenticity and prevent unauthorized distribution. You can even restrict printing, copying or downloading documents to limit unauthorized dissemination. 

Step 6.
Share documents & answer questions  

During the due diligence process, buyers have the opportunity to ask questions via the Q&A. As an admin, you have the option to designate different Q&A roles on the sell and buy side. In the Q&A dashboard, you easily assign questions to members of your team. This way, the questions get to the right person. The built-in reference model makes it easy for both buyer and seller to find out what the question or answer is about. 

Step 7.
Discover what potential buyers do in your data room

An audit trail usually contains thousands of records that can be difficult to analyse while you're at it. Our insightful dashboards tell you exactly how users are interacting with the documents in your data room and Q&A. Understand buyers' intentions better and negotiate smarter. 

Step 8.
Close your data room & archive your deal

Deal closed? Time to close your data room too! You can do this immediately or schedule a closing date. The archive is an important closure of any deal, as it is a detailed record of your due diligence. This record contains all user activity on released documents and is safely stored onto an encrypted USB or in the cloud. 

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