Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) play a key role in the growth of a business. Every organization, no matter big or small aspires to grow. Now, the growth in the business could be measured in multiple ways. It can be with an increase in the market share or adding up new products or services in the portfolio, or adding up capital in the business, or going for a forward/backward integration in the supply chain or combination of all. Here stands M&A as an important aspect promoting growth. The most common objective for any organization to initiate M&A is one or the combination of reasons mentioned above or moreover in a similar line.
Although the company’s approach towards M&A is extremely focused, still not all deals go through. In fact, till date the failed number of deals stands higher as when compared with the successful ones. Not totally because companies lacked strategies and approaches. Apart from the obvious rejection reasons (backing off, change of economic factors, resource limitation, etc.) Data stands as one of the most crucial factors for the failed deals. According to a report published by Datasite, after surveying over 2200 M&A practitioners from corporations, equity firms, bank, law, and professional service firms, across the continents, they produced the following major highlights,
31% of practitioners say incomplete or inaccurate deal documents and information is the most significant factor to slow due diligence.
65% of practitioners believe modern technology should enable greater analytical capability in the due diligence process in five years.
30% of practitioners believe technology will help improve secure end-to-end process, data management and communications the most.
50% of practitioners say a lack of insights on buyer behavior across mandates is the most challenging aspect of marketing an asset for sale.
Playing around with the data is very important and necessary to get the right sense of information, information that would create an impact. The very step in the process of M&A starts with the collection of data and eventually sharing of information. Once through that, there come multiple game-changing factors around the data for a deal to be successful. Few critical and common data challenges are,
Data integration - For a merger and acquisition, both parties need to gather tons of data, data which is collected, collated, stored, and eventually presented. You get to sign the deal, only when your numbers are right.
Data storage - All this data, which is generated from technology, from various other channels needs to be stored centrally, and is stored in a virtual data room, which is more like an archive in a digital form.
Data security – It is a challenge to secure the collected data, providing limited authorization to the person accessing the data. Only authorized people can view and alter the data using the necessary credentials.
Data analytics – It is always wise to analyze the data and make some sense of information out of it. Unless you work out some regression it would not make any sense to you or your colleagues.
Data due diligence – You need due diligence with the store information, keep the required data in, and get rid of the information which is out of scope or not relevant. Robust due diligence with detailed information will ensure success towards any deal.
We spoke about data, how important data is in the M&A industry, and how crucial it is to handle this data. However, the bigger picture over here is to know where does Einstein Analytics fits in this scene? Where does it stand in this industry? And how can companies who facilitate M&A via Virtual data room SaaS tools could benefit from it?
It won’t be fair for this article if we don’t touch these points, will it?
As most of you know, ‘Salesforce’ has evolved and matured data digitalization over decades with the help of sophisticated technologies. And it has benefited a lot of us through multiple features and applications. Though Salesforce is a CRM company, its Einstein analytics (Tableau CRM) feature is a visibility tool to monitor, view, and manage the logs & dashboard reports. It helps you measure performance, identify opportunities, and calculate the success rate with powered data insight making your platform smarter and interactive.
Working today in a competitive environment means handling numbers, deal with pressure and juggle between activities. If you work in an industry that facilitates mergers and acquisitions, you knowing your clients are premium category businesspeople, involved in high-value transactions. You must be on your toes and at the edge for effective functioning and best-in-class services.
With the help of Salesforce, your job becomes a little simple, you still have to work your way out to close the deal, but you will get all the support and back-end functioning with Salesforce & Tableau CRM. Salesforce provides multiple features which could help companies and their reps to track their customers and leads. Reps can use salesforce to register and track contacts, follow up on the leads, provide better customer service, look after their account health, automate the renewal process, create alerts and notifications and monitor the status in real-time.
Account Management - The benefits of Salesforce Einstein Analytics are tremendous to the sales department. Einstein features allow sales reps to manage pipeline and discover the pipeline trends. The pipeline has a lot to say, it will help prioritize the task and help close the leads faster. You could also compare the previous year’s data in quick visualizations. Managers can track and monitor real-time leads, set up opportunities, and help the reps change the right leads. They can have everything under one broad lens and take the right decisions for the team and the organization.
Customer Relationship Management – When you facilitate companies having an affair, you must be nice and fragile while handling them and their queries. Tableau CRM allows you to have a 360-degree view approach towards your customer. Their queries can be routed and handled through multiple platforms (chats, call social media, etc.). The cases/complaints can be logged with immediate acknowledgments and can be allocated to available agents. The cases can be distributed fairly based on the availability and skill sent of the agents. Any agent attending customers will have a complete case history of the client while attending to a query, and they will be in a better position to provide them with correct and accurate solutions.
Analytics – Advanced analytics can always turn the table around for you. Tableau CRM, formerly known as Einstein Analytics, has tremendous capabilities to run the regression and make sense from the data. Organizations will have tons of data, customer data, sales data collected and captured over years. Applying metrics to the data to prepare visual reports, handy dashboards and comparison charts from this data is a simple walk in the park for Tableau CRM. This function allows management to have broader look under one lens. Dashboards can also follow simple drag and drop concepts. Analytics can be used across various functions including sales, service & marketing cloud.
Sales Cycle – Sales reps follow a cycle of lead generation to closure and maintaining the relationship with the key accounts. Ideally, everything should be at a go and on your fingertips for better performance and high efficiency. Tableau CRM will assist sales reps with meeting and task reminders, all you have to do is add a task to or an event to the contact or an account and it will let you know what you are supposed to do at that right time. In the M&A industry, account renewal and health are important parameters to retain customers. Tableau will also help your team to monitor account health and remind them about renewals. Sales reps can prepare and get immediate quotes online at the go. They can save the time of going back to the desk and preparing the quotes manually.
Account Health – Account health is a holistic approach towards your customers. Every sales rep should be aware of the status quo of the accounts. It helps the organization understand which customer is using the product most, from which region the company is getting maximum business, identify and focus on active users, keep track of logged-in users and their activities. Identify the needs and push for upselling and cross-selling. Based on the data and analysis provided by Tableau CRM, the company can focus on regions that churn maximum revenue, and prioritize accounts on their usage and the value they provide.
Predictive Analysis - With tons of data, Salesforce AI and Machine learning empower the agents by helping them take the right actions at right time. It analyzes the data as and how you need it. Right from where you are getting them, how are getting them, and why are you getting them. All this data can be sliced and diced on the Einstein platform. With the help of Einstein (Tableau CRM) users and managers can build multiple dashboards for effective reporting and monitoring. These dashboards are,
Actionable - With drag and drop concepts you can compare, highlight and monitor the data under one single lens. Empowering you to take better actions.
Embedded Analytics – Embedded analytics platform allows you to focus on building the product, saving you time, resources, and money. It also helps quickly deploy new analytics content, and fulfill change requests in a moment.
Native Analytics - Native to your Salesforce platform, so that you can keep all the data together in one single place. Easy to access, and easy to handle.
Tableau CRM can learn from the past and predict the next best action to enhance customer interaction.
Conclusion: -
It is a consistent effort by Salesforce to make your life a little simple by continuously innovating and adding up new features. The objective is to provide an intelligent experience to the customer. Technology at a rapid space is changing things around the M&A industry and with the help of Einstein analytics (Tableau CRM) one can, not just track his performance but also make sure that deals are on the right track.
The whole idea is that SFDC helps these M&A facilitators who provide Virtual data room software with the ability to store and maintain their customer data. This data can later be displayed/analyzed in such a way that it will help the Sales and Service reps to perform their tasks easily and more efficiently. The 360-degree view approach towards the customer, in form of actionable insights, adds to the high productivity and better efficiency to the success of sales/service reps.
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