With so many data room vendors on the market, choosing the right solution can seem like a daunting task. Unfortunately, over the past decade, many companies had the negative consequences of choosing the wrong system. This post is intended to provide a methodology to help you make the right decision.
The relevance of virtual data room in the digital business
Nowadays, the technical prerequisites for the informatization of business processes are constantly improving computer technology, telecommunications equipment, and infrastructure, the increasing speed of the formation, processing, and movement of information flows, and the dissemination of knowledge in the process of scientific or other types of intellectual data exchange. Thus, the modern development of economic relations, their global nature, on the one hand, and the development of information and communication technologies, on the other hand, have led to the emergence of a specific form of these relations – electronic business and electronic commerce. Market entities are quickly mastering new opportunities for organizing secure business communications and are actively involved in the electronic business environment. It leads to the fact that access to information technology becomes not just a competitive advantage but a necessary condition for the functioning of market entities.
Virtual data room is an integral element of many companies involved in electronic commerce. It is a modern, convenient, and easy-to-use electronic document and business process management system.
The most important criteria for choosing a data room vendor
The main mistake many people and organizations make when choosing a data room system is that they overlook the long-term cost of a low-cost solution, underestimate the amount of work required to manage a good data management system, and forget to align their team’s needs with the capabilities of the data room. Therefore, we have prepared the basic points to consider when choosing this software solution:
- Price. What is included in the monthly tariff, and what needs to be paid separately? Don’t look at the lowest price. If you need additional services, their cost can make the contract much more expensive than the declared rate.
- Safety. How to access the service is organized, whether there was a security audit of the system, where, how, and how long documents are stored, and whether they will be available after termination of the contract.
- Convenience. Is it possible to use the service through mobile devices? Is the interface understandable? A user-friendly interface is especially important if you have a team working on the system daily. They need an easy-to-use solution that doesn’t require much technical knowledge or training that they can quickly use when they log in again.
- Automatic data exchange. Integration with the accounting system.
- Technical support. This criterion is especially important for those who work non-stop. The speed of elimination of possible failures directly affects the company’s financial results.
- Scalability. It should be an easy task. Change is inevitable for any growing business, and differences affect your data management. Make sure you choose a data room solution that can grow quickly and scale as needed.
- Pipeline processing. The system allows you to process the pipeline, which includes dividing projects into different stages. Here you can also place information about projects currently under negotiation or due diligence.
In addition, a powerful data room should make it possible to send and receive regulated and non-regulated documents, automatically create archives of the entire package of documents, including accompanying ones and cancel or revoke them.