With more and more businesses conducting international transactions, higher demands are being placed on web-based platforms to increase security and confidentiality.
Although the cloud offers a suitable amount of storage, it’s hardly protective and appropriate for the sharing of confidential information, especially when multi-million pound deals are at stake.
More commonly known as VDRs, these online data rooms are designed to facilitate a large number of dealings, including repositories, real estate deals, IPO transactions, company restructures, corporate insolvency and online due diligence cases.
If your transaction calls for the capacity of cloud storage, but with bank-level encryption, the solution you’re looking for is a virtual data room. Providers of information security management systems are required to comply with ISO/IEC 27001:2005 standards, so when you’re choosing your supplier, make sure they meet these prerequisites.
Upload from anywhere
No matter where in the world your business is operating, sellers can upload documents using their personalised VDR interface. Before the file is uploaded, the seller can also set user permissions, so that only certain people can access various files and folders. Most up-to-date providers, such as Imprima, also provides each user with their own login ID and password. Then once the file is uploaded, the buyers or interested parties will be notified and invited to view the document.
Track behaviour
Once relevant parties have accessed the document, the buyers can monitor their behaviour. How did they interact with the document? Did they download it, share it, copy it, print it, spend five minutes skim-reading it or two hours perusing every word? Analytics tools will be able to record how they interacted with each file.
User permissions are also very useful here, as sellers can add watermarks, prevent copying, prohibit printing and ban certain users from doing anything with the file apart from viewing it on the VDR platform.
No physical presence necessary
Before the virtual rooms ‘turned digital’, the buyers and sellers had to meet up and share files in person. As well as having to carry tons of paperwork around, there was the awkwardness of the seller having to practically watch over the buyer’s shoulder in case documents were unlawfully copied. This proved to be a particularly costly venture, while the added inconvenience of time zones and multinational trade meant that the process was previously quite time-consuming and stressful.
