M&A transactions are intricate and involve a lot of moving parts. Deal pipeline management tools helps teams keep track of where deals are in their lifecycle, what deals are coming up, and any areas of concern.

Teams and third parties can stay organized, on schedule, and informed at all times throughout the deal lifecycle.

Even though pipeline management software is a new concept to M&A, it can provide many benefits to your team, client, and overall workflow process.

M&A pipeline management is an effective way to prioritize and evaluate past, current, and upcoming deals, and seamlessly integrate each deal stage.

We, at DealRoom, have dozens of corp devs teams utilizing our pipeline management tool so we have some real insight in this field which we want to share in this article. So let's start.

7 Reasons Why You Need M&A Pipeline Management

1. Easily Accessible Deal Overview

Whether you are part of one M&A transaction, or five, sometimes you just want a quick review of deal information. Luckily, most m&a pipelines include a detailed overview of deal activity.

From a pipeline dashboard a user can quickly see a deal’s stage, start date, location, members, number of tasks, revenue amounts, and more. 

Another benefit of having access to deal overview information, is the ability to quickly see open tasks, and their priority status.

For example, a user may see that one deal in the diligence stage has eight open tasks all flagged medium and high priority, and another deal that has three open tasks marked low priority. That user then knows which deal and tasks to work on first.

2. Customizable Metadata & Analytics

No two deals are alike. And that means that deal teams need quick access to different information, specific to each deal and stage. Many M&A pipeline software providers allow users to customize what metadata is displayed for each deal.

Based on our client's feedback, DealRoom's M&A deal pipeline management users can now enjoy building their own view filters and customizing deal dashboards based off on any metadata in their pipeline.

As experienced by Recycle Track Systems - one of our recent clients - DealRoom has replaced multiple tools with just one which led to steep improvement in accuracy, quality, visibility, and momentum going into the M&A process. Learn more about RTS' challenges here.

3. Manage Multiple Deals Simultaneously

Pipeline management allows deal teams to quickly go back and forth between deals and rooms, without having to switch between platforms, or providers. Once a pipeline is set up, each deal can be labeled under a certain stage. 

4. Customizable Stages

Teams can create deal phase stages such as discovery, qualification, under letter of intent (LOI), or integration. Then, they can select and preview all the deals in the “integration” phase in one click.

5. Quickly View Groups and Members

It can be challenging to remember what groups are part of each deal, how many members are in each group, which group has access etc.

With pipeline management software, a user can access specific group and member information. This includes member’s email, phone number, role, number of rooms, and more.

6. Informative Notes

Usually members are able to add notes to each deal from the dashboard. This helps increase communication, as well as collaboration.

Instead of sending out a group email with the hopes that everyone opens the email, and keeps the information, a user can add a note to a deal that can be accessed at any time.

7. Exportable Pipeline Room Data

You never know when you are going to be asked for deal information reporting. Pipeline management software typically is equipped with a quick and simple export option that includes an Excel sheet with all the deals and metadata from the pipeline dashboard.

M&A Pipeline Management Software Providers

Not all, but many virtual data room providers also come with pipeline management features. Here are a few well-known pipeline software platforms.

1. DealRoom - Virtual Data Room and M&A Diligence Management
2. Devensoft - M&A Software
3. Intralinks - Virtual Data Room
4. Eknow - M&A Software
5. MergerWare - M&A Software
6. Dynamo - M&A Software
   

Pipeline management features slightly vary from one m&a software provider to the next, but the goal stays the same, to keep teams organized and informed.

Another aspect to consider with pipeline management software is the ability to import pipeline templates. Pipeline templates are a useful resource for dealmakers, especially those navigating multiple deals in different stages of the M&A process.

Templates allow stakeholders and team members to begin tracking everything from prospects and background information on each prospect, to deals and their leaders in every stage of the M&A process, much quicker.

Users simply import their Excel templates in the software, and the pipeline will auto-populate with the provided information. ‍

DealRoom’s M&A Pipeline Management Software

At DealRoom, our pipeline management software aims to combat common M&A challenges such as lack of collaboration, limited visibility, and missing strategic alignment.

Having everything from due diligence, to pipeline management, all the way through integration management, on one platform, keeps teams organized for the entire deal lifecycle.

Teams can simultaneously track the status of multiple targets, all while planning for strategic growth. 

Everything about our pipeline management dashboard is customizable such as branding, stages, metadata, settings, and more.

Teams can even upload their own logos to the dashboard. Our dashboard also includes a visual activity chart, so users can get a quick look at recent deal activity.

From the pipeline view point, specific users can spin up new rooms or export rooms. Users can also create customizable deal phases and tag each deal. That way, every deal is organized by what stage it is in.

For example, all deals that are in the due diligence stage can be grouped together. Also, DealRoom’s pipeline management software is not an additional cost, and comes with all available pricing plans.

If you would like a demo or free trial of DealRoom’s software, speak with one of our product specialists today.