The mergers & acquisition process involves many individuals and groups from many organizations operating in concert and typically in complete secrecy and confidentiality. The purposeful or accidental release of information before a deal is announced, negotiated or closed can spell the premature death of a deal. The size, type, time sensitivity and destinations of documents created and reviewed in an M & A process varies considerably with every deal.
M&A team includes the business teams that evaluate and negotiate the deal, the finance team on each side that evaluates the financial structure of the deal, legal representation on both sides that is often made up on in-house and outside counsel. Some members of the team are employees of the different organizations that are represented, but many are not. The systems that govern the computers of such a mixed workgroup can create havoc when an organization tries to use legacy content management systems, email or other file server of file transfer tools. Content Circles eliminates the need for all of these overlapping systems by creating a secure P2P connection between authorized team members, regardless of what network they are on or their physical location.
The Content Circles team, veterans of years of developing the most secure, bulletproof content management applications available, focused all of its attention on meeting these key challenges and needs to deliver virtually transparent ease of installation and use.
M&A team's use of formal content management solutions varies tremendously, based in part on the culture of the organization in which these functions operate, the markets and sectors in which they operate and the level of sophistication of mid-and senior-level management. Many of these systems are simply too cumbersome to meet the time requirements.
Documents are stored in an infinite number of different ways. Content Management solutions are often expensive, heavyweight, with rigid workflow requirements that are not easily adaptable to projects, teams and work groups that must form quickly around an initiative, add members to a team on the fly, rapidly exchange multiple versions of documents, track the activity on those documents and then quickly wind down as the project is concluded.
Documents in an M&A process go through many significant revisions. Throughout an organization, individuals and work groups need the ability to quickly, effectively and securely exchange files with all individuals and organizations associated with a given project. Documents must be kept secure from competitors. Traditional Document Management systems are difficult to use and impractical relative to the turnaround times that are required to keep the project on schedule.
Document Management is traditionally expensive to acquire, implement and support. These systems are typically time consuming to learn and use and time is very precious when in the middle of a deal. Management doesn't want to invest the time and effort of their staff members to become experts in document management.
Key requirements for the creation and distribution of documents include speed, confidentiality, mobility, version control and security. The Content Circles team, veterans of years of developing the most secure, bulletproof content management applications available, focused all of its attention on meeting these key needs and delivering virtually transparent ease of installation and use.
Time is extremely valuable and the frictionless, secure exchange of the most current, up to date documents is a critical component of success. Traditional means of document transfer including US mail, overnight delivery, or legacy third party upload and download tools or such as email or FTP are simply outdated and inefficient. Many of these methods are notorious insecure, slow and unreliable. A few firms are experimenting with free hosting services, but are very concerned about the security of the data and potential liability if confidential information is stolen or falls into the wrong hands.
- It is critical to ensure that all parties have quick access to the correct documents.
- If the members of a project workgroup cannot quickly move large files among creative staff, clients, production and distribution, costs are incurred and deadlines are missed.
- Who on the team is working on the most current, most accurate version of the document?
- Did we get the right version to the correct team members for review?
These questions inevitably plague every team on a project. Content Circles simplifies the organization, tracking, revision control and monitoring of who has accessed the documents, when the changes were made and in what order. There is never any question about who has he most up to date version of a document. The revision control and document tracking capabilities of Content Circles quickly and easily identify that information.
Regardless of the role of an individual, agency or company in a project, all constituents work in tight deadlines and high pressure, results-driven environments. Documents are created collaboratively and must be reviewed and approved at many levels of an organization. Multiple people at all levels of several organizations required to sign-off on the final product.
Document confidentiality is critical. Staff members must be 100% confident that no unauthorized users can gain access to these files. Third party servers and hosting providers add a layer of risk into any transaction. Content Circles eliminates that risk by passing files, through a secure link, directly between the creator of the document and its intended recipients, without an intermediary.
The mix of individuals assigned to a work group or team includes in-house staff, agency staff, management, and any authorized individual from an outside organization assigned to the team. Some members of the team are employees of the client or agency, but many are not. The systems that govern the computers of such a mixed workgroup can create havoc when an organization tries to interact with other companies that are using legacy content management systems or have document distribution policies that make the flow of information difficult.
Content Circles eliminates the need for overlapping systems by creating a secure P2P connection between authorized team members, regardless of what network they are on or their physical location.
Many M&A team members, both employees and contractors, work in highly mobile environments, away from their offices, at client sites or on the road. They need instantaneous access to the most current documents and cannot be constrained by firewalls or having to upload and download documents to and from third party service providers. They need documents now and they need to be certain of their authenticity and version.
Content Circles can function in an online or offline environment. When working offline, documents stored in Content Circles synchronize automatically and in the background the next time a connection is made to the work group. Workgroup members can be connected and synchronized together or through the Content Circles Private Team Cloud, thus ensuring real-time synchronization whenever an internet connection is established.
Content Circles builds redundancy into the core of the product and offers the capability at no extra charge. The application always backs up the documents stored in Content Circles. Whether that redundancy is delivered by other members of the workgroup (where the files are replicated automatically) or from documents stored through the easy to set-up and use Content Circles Private Team Cloud, customers never have to worry about an outside service provider outage. It is only through years of experience building highly secure and complex enterprise content management solutions, that the team has been able to build such advanced technology into a peer-to-peer application.
Professional Staff today do not have time to learn to use new products an technologies so it is incumbent on providers to build and deliver solutions that require little to no training, no IT resources, no custom network, database or server resources. The solutions should just work out of the box.
Content Circles is the perfect solution for M&A teams of all shapes and sizes. It is highly affordable, easy to install and use and a single solution provides both distributed content management, document tracking and revision control. Automated backup and restore come with the solution free of charge.
With Content Circles, the right documents are available at the right time and place, whenever they are needed. The documents are up-to-date, secure and readily accessible.
Contact Content Circles today at info@contentcircles.com, or 650.847.5739 to learn more about how Content Circles can help your organization. www.contentcircles.com