It is very important to choose the right data room vendor because the company is building a single IT ecosystem, which includes many tools, modules, application systems, and services. So, how to choose a good data room solution, and what features should be considered?
Data room implementation: how to achieve tangible results
Automation of key business processes and digitalization of workflow is already perceived today as an obvious stage in the development of any organization. However, it is impossible to expand the boundaries without well-functioning interaction, new tasks, and a sufficient number of employees. Finding the best methods, approaches, and solutions is important for a huge mechanism to work like clockwork. A secure virtual data room (VDR) is one solution designed to optimize daily business operations related to data management, online collaboration, control, and reporting.
Digital data rooms are widely used in M&A deals, due diligence procedures, investment banking, healthcare, biotech, startups, education, and other industries. Each service has its own set of tools and a different interface. Some are limited only to basic functionality, such as signing and sending a document, while others offer ample opportunities: creating a department structure, setting up a route for several recipients, defining user roles, etc.
What features should be considered when deciding on a data room?
It is better to determine fundamental features if you need to choose a data room vendor for your needs from the dozens of digital solutions in the IT market. Then, you can compare various VDR providers and choose the best one for your company. So, we have determined the obligatory data room features:
- Quick access to a specific category of documents
The first and main advantage of the data room is quick, almost instantaneous access for a certain category of employees to information subject to certain restrictive frameworks. The user can quickly and easily find only those documents to which he has personal access.
- Comprehensive document control
Any document entered into the VDR system gets its history. All operations with it and all employees working with this document are recorded in special registers and stored there arbitrarily. So now the manager effectively controls the workflow and negligent employees, sometimes depicting violent activity.
- Elimination of unintentional errors
Practical exclusion from the workflow of the so-called “human factor.” Unlike paper workflow, cases of accidental loss of documents or their placement in inappropriate places are excluded. As a result, it saves a huge amount of time across the enterprise when searching for the right document.
- Automation of reporting on the movement of documents among enterprise divisions
Automating office work and document flow is another indisputable advantage of the VDR. It allows you to automate the process of compiling reports on the enterprise’s operational, tactical, and strategic activities. The department will be able to generate a report according to objective criteria: the number of documents involved in processing, the number of documents in the queue for each employee, etc.
- Database sharing and document collaboration
Workflow automation makes it possible to organize only one database, which will contain all the documents necessary for the operation of the enterprise. In addition, this will allow several employees to work with one document simultaneously, significantly reducing the time spent on its processing.
- Search for documents in the database by specified attributes
You can search in the VDR database not only for a specific document but also for certain sequences. Search options are limited only by the imagination of the company’s employees and the competence of the electronic document management system staff.