by Alex Schnee
Online tools have made it easier than ever to sign business deals and to complete mergers and acquisitions. Having this as an option can be a great thing for your business, and you’ll want to make sure you have the right systems in place in order to have everything run as smoothly as possible. Remote mergers and acquisitions can look a little different than ones conducted in person, and you want to make sure you have everything you need in order to make it a success.
Here are some ways that a remote merger or acquisition might be different than your typical business deal.
Contracts should be available online
One thing you should think about in your contract lifecycle management is whether or not you are putting your contracts in a convenient location that can be accessed by those who need to see it. This should be a safe spot within a cloud service that is heavily password-protected, but should be simple enough to log into when changes need to be made.
It can take more time
Because you aren’t physically sitting in a room together, the entire process of a merger or acquisition can take a little longer. It can require more correspondence back and forth, and you should double check to make sure that items are received. While there are a number of benefits of conducting business remotely, it can take more time to get contracts approved and to add any additional changes you want to your contracts. You’ll want to keep this in mind when setting up the timeline for things to get signed and handed over.
Your legal teams might be more involved
Another entity you should give access to when you are conducting a merger or acquisition remotely is your legal team—and the other party involved will want to give them access too. They should be able to go into where you are storing your files and download them or make changes, and you should make sure to meet with them often in order to find out if there is anything you should be aware of moving forward with the deal.
Dealings should be private
If word gets out about your merger or acquisition before you are ready to share it, this can mean some bad news for your company. This is why limiting the amount of people involved in this deal is so important, along with making sure that you share major changes to your business with your team first. Without an extra layer of precaution, you can end up causing hard feelings or even have the deal fall through because of it.
In summary
Conducting a business deal remotely means that you need to take some additional steps in order to make it a success. However, once you have done this, it can overall be more streamlined and can help you transition to a new type of business with new management smoothly.
