Most Innovative M&A platform 2021

The cloud-based smartmerger.com M&A platform replaces the traditional virtual document room with a real data room that manages structured data rather than entire documents, reducing the manual overhead dramatically while improving transparency and implementing stringent access control. In light of the company’s M&A Awards success, we got in touch with founder and owner Michael Klawon to learn more.

smartmerger.com delivers its M&A platform to clients of any size: from small M&A boutiques to multinational enterprises. It is the only M&A platform in the market offering fully digitalised data management while interlinking all phases of an M&A process, from target screening to integration management. To make the platform user-friendly, smartmerger.com has created a dedicated suite of individual web applications focused on helping users overcome specific challenges. These apps, many of which come pre-loaded with templates and checklists, combine to form a comprehensive, ready-to-use M&A software ecosystem.

smartmerger.com was established in 2010 and has main offices in Zurich, Switzerland and Munich, Germany – countries with strict compliance standards for data protection and financial-grade security. Security is therefore part of the DNA of smartmerger.com. The company applies these standards consistently around the globe.

Until last year, smartmerger.com generally sold its platform as a white-label product, enabling clients to implement a fully digitalised M&A process under their own brand. smartmerger.com has become a trusted partner of many companies, learning from each transaction and incorporating these lessons in its apps. This year the company will reposition; it plans to step out of the shadow and launch its online service under its own brand to become more visible to the M&A community. The white-label option will continue to be available though, says smartmerger.com founder and owner Michael Klawon: “As of February, our new online store will provide immediate subscription access to preconfigured, ready-to-use online applications. But one of the greatest benefits of our solution is that smartmerger.com fully integrates with other partners or data sources. For example, we offer APIs to single-sign-on providers, file storage providers, or connectors to market data.” smartmerger.com applies the concepts of “Industry 4.0”, the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), to provide access to a data lake of all relevant M&A data in one single and trusted source.

M&A is on the edge of a paradigm shift, Michael tells us: “Today’s M&A is based on documents and data rooms, or more precisely “virtual document rooms”, so it requires a considerable amount of manual work, coordination, and project overhead – all under the traditional assumption that documents are the only way to maintain security and confidentiality. But 4IR has demonstrated how much efficiency one can gain by connecting data across all parties, from customers and production to the suppliers, without sacrificing confidentiality, security and data integrity.”