About Client

Equity Partners HG is a leading middle market investment banking firm specializing in helping lower and middle market companies navigate tough financial situations.

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As a premier middle market investment bank, Equity Partners HG (EPHG) has been involved in over 500 transactions across the U.S. During these transactions, the firm needs to share numerous documents, often containing their clients’ confidential and proprietary information, with potential investors, buyers and their associated parties

Challenge

To manage this process, EPHG had been using Box, a popular cloud-based file sharing platform. While the platform was inexpensive, it lacked critical security features and management controls. One of the challenges the firm faced was ensuring that only certain parties had access to specific files and folders. The platform wasn’t designed to restrict document access among different user groups so they had to manage this process manually, which was time consuming and difficult to maintain. Box also didn’t have reporting capabilities to track which documents had been viewed by whom and when. The firm wanted these insights to help them make more informed decisions during negotiations. They wanted a solution that was easy to upload and manage content, and also intuitive for potential investors to access the information they needed.

They needed a solution that could provide: 

• Confidentiality & Security:  Ensure their clients’ confidential information remained in their control.
• User Group Restrictions:  The ability to create security profiles that could restrict view, print, save, and modification rights for different groups of users.
• Reporting & Analytics:  Advanced reporting and instant notifications of detailed user activity

Evaluation

Industry Leader in File Sharing

The firm decided a virtual data room was going to be their best option for their content management and file sharing needs. They carefully evaluated three industry leading platforms but ultimately chose SmartRoom.

We chose SmartRoom because the platform had all the features we were looking for to help streamline and secure our file sharing process. SmartRoom makes it easy to create custom security profiles that have granular permissions for different user groups. The interface is also incredibly simple and easy to navigate from both an administrative and end-user prospective. – Debbie Beall – Director, Equity Partners HG

Setup

Dedicated Project Manager 

EPHG was introduced to their dedicated project manager who helped setup and customize the room to their specifications. The project manager worked with the firm to invite users and setup different security profiles that could restrict view, print, save, and modify rights down to the document level. He also held training sessions to ensure the team understood all the capabilities and best practices.  It was important that the firm understand all the reporting features. The Project Manger showed the team how to setup alerts so they could be notified of specific user activity immediately. He also introduced EPHG to SmartDrive, a desktop application that allowed them to work with SmartRoom content from the convenience of their desktop.

It was very helpful to have a dedicated representative help us through the entire setup process, especially someone as knowledgeable as our project manager. He was very good at boiling things down for us. He is attentive, responsive and takes the time to understand our needs. – Debbie Beall – Director, Equity Partners HG

Result

Better Efficiency

With SmartRoom, EPHG is confident their clients’ information is secured. The firm no longer has to waste valuable time manually managing users or setting up multiple rooms to restrict document access. Potential investors and buyers with limited technology knowledge can access information they need on their own. The firm can monitor and analyze user activity that gives them a better advantage in negotiations. With the time savings and enhanced workflows SmartRoom has helped achieved, EPHG can spend more time focusing on closing transactions and maximizing the results for their clients.

SmartRoom Helped EPHG:

• Keep client information secure and confidential

• Save time by eliminating administrative redundancies

• Maximize transaction value through insight on potential investor activity