With cloud-based services, you simply pay a monthly fee and the SaaS provider hosts the software for you, at no additional cost. You don’t have to worry about keeping track of and installing software updates.
One of the most common benefits touted by cloud computing proponents is the economic benefit of switching to the Cloud. With SaaS, there’s no need to purchase servers and software; no need to pay expensive annual licensing fees or software upgrade fees; no need to hire IT staff to maintain the servers and stay on top of software updates. Read more…
There are many ways attorneys can make use of a virtual data room in their practice, including efficiently managing and storing data, securely transferring large volumes of documents outside the firewall and much more.
As I’ve discussed in the past, online collaboration platforms generally allow for far more secure communication than email and offer attorneys a secure online location for collaboration.
A virtual deal room is a convenient tool to securely organize and share large volumes of documents during the Private Placement process. An online document repository, or virtual deal room, is an attractive alternative to email for collecting and sharing this information in an organized fashion while keeping the data safe.
Recently, I have been talking to professionals that specialize in issuing private placements. A private placement is a funding round of securities that are issued to a select group of targeted, private investors. In my discussions, it has become apparent that there is an opportunity for professionals in this space to leverage the capabilities of a virtual data room, particularly if they manage more than one of these transactions annually.
What I have learned is SaaS business forces you to focus on service. If a SaaS customer is not happy with your company’s support, s/he can “unsubscribe” with far less difficulty than if s/he was dealing with a locally installed system.
When I first went to trademark Firmex virtual data rooms as a software company, the trademark attorney told me that to trademark us as a product company I had to physically be able to “ship” something. “Send us a copy of your product on a disk with packaging.” My reaction was “huh?” – We have the internet – we don’t “ship” software on FEDEX trucks anymore, we let the internet take care of the distribution. According to the Trademark office, then, you’re not a software product company, you are a service company.
At Firmex we provide virtual data room solutions to lawyers who seek to enhance and streamline their document exchange processes. Saving time for our clients is essential to Firmex and as such, the iPad, with its intelligent efficiencies, is appropriately aligned with our conviction.
On March 18, Firmex participated in the ALM’s Virtual LegalTech for the first time. In honour of the inaugural venture, our team held an iPad giveaway contest.
Firmex corporate clients are using their unlimited use virtual data room to share financial information with their auditors, setting up all their folders and documents online.
If anyone has ever had the pleasure of conducting a financial audit he/she is all too aware that it’s a time consuming process. The audit process has four main stages:
Environmental health is a growing global issue and demand for renewable energy is accelerating. Solar energy has grown at 30% per annum over the past 15 years while wind power grew close to 32% in 2009. As Firmex, virtual data room technology, becomes more cost-effective and easy to use, the software is increasingly useful to the renewable energy industry.
Over the last year, Firmex has been signing a significant number of renewable energy developers - in particular solar and wind energy. As the health of the environment continues to be a growing global issue, demand for renewable energy is accelerating. Solar energy has grown at 30% per annum over the past 15 years while wind power grew close to 32% in 2009. In 2008 some $155 Billion was invested in renewable energy up fourfold from 2004. Investment fell 40% in 2009 due to the economic crisis though experts expect that to rebound.
The process to take a new drug through pre-clinical and clinical trials is extensive. Since the Intellectual Property is so valuable and confidential, Life Sciences firms will generally limit the distribution of documentation in a secure virtual data room – they can watermark, restrict printing and save documents as required.
Many Firmex clients are Life Sciences firms developing new therapeutic medicines. What amazes me about this industry is the time horizon of 15+ years to take a drug from idea to market, costing millions, even billions of dollars. There are 3000-4000 early-stage research-driven firms funded by public markets or venture-capital that take on the technology risk of trying to develop new drug pipeline.
The recent advent of the kindle, the iPad and other paper eliminating devices serves as an interesting marker of just how archaic a practice it is to produce physical books for an industry as fast paced as M&A. Using a virtual data room to manage this process can accelerate the transaction process from the beginning, help manage costs and provide security measures that often fall through the cracks
Most of Firmex’s clients are now using the internet to distribute seller’s books or confidential information memorandums when managing a sell-side M&A transaction. However, there are firms that are continuing to create physical books, which can range from 50 to 200 pages. These books are typically distributed to a large number of potential buyers, particularly if an advisory firm routinely markets transactions to a database of private equity firms.
Virtual data rooms allow lawyers to store documents online, offering lawyers and their clients convenient access to important legal files.
In my last post we discussed how digital dictation systems can offer busy lawyers much-needed flexibility in the creation of legal documents. The next step, once you’ve created documents using digital dictation, is to store your documents online using virtual document management and collaboration systems. These convenient and efficient online platforms offer lawyers a 21st Century alternative to traditional document management systems.
Firmex is in the business of providing M&A advisors, lawyers and corporate executive staff a secure online data room for sharing critical operational, legal and financial documents with 3rd parties. Recently, a group of lawyers were convicted for trading insider information which was gleaned from picking through other lawyers’ client documents and another company was saved from losing all their documents in a fire by storing everything in their Firmex virtual deal room.
Firmex is in the business of providing M&A advisors, lawyers and corporate executive staff a secure online data room for sharing critical operational, legal and financial documents with 3rd parties. Not surprisingly, as the company’s CEO, I run into resistance from senior partners and executives about putting critical and highly confidential company information on the Internet. They are worried that it’s “not safe.”
In order to reduce the possibility of a recurring financial collapse, the SEC wants to bring greater transparency to the rating of structured debt products. The Firmex deal room offers arrangers a simple solution to comply with the SEC.
A common complaint by participants in the recent credit collapse is they did not understand what they were buying, rating or selling. Part of the reason for this lack of clarity is that the structured debt products CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and related derivates products were themselves convoluted, consisting of large volumes of mortgages and other forms of debt which were aggregated and sliced into tranches with varying risk profiles.
In late 2008 we at Firmex were discussing strategy around enhancing our data room service for client satisfaction and planning for the future. We identified the need for a benchmark to measure our success in delivering our service to our clients. We also needed a better understanding of how clients feel about we deliver, and what they need in the future to enhance their experience.
In late 2008 we at Firmex were discussing strategy around enhancing our data room service for client satisfaction and planning for the future. We identified the need for a benchmark to measure our success in delivering our service to our clients. We also needed a better understanding of how clients feel about what we deliver and what they need in the future to enhance their experience.
With cloud computing, just as with any other type of storage of confidential client information, lawyers have the ethical obligation to exercise reasonable care to ensure that the cloud computing provider will preserve confidentiality and security of the data.
Lawyers have ethical duties to protect sensitive client data. When it comes to storing information in “the cloud,” just as with any other form of storage, taking steps to ensure that confidential client data is protected is imperative. Unfortunately, there are very few ethics opinions that have been issued on this topic, causing many lawyers to fear the potential ramifications of storing confidential client files via the cloud computing model.
Over the next few months, we will be making Firmex simpler for our clients to administer their virtual datarooms / workspaces and interact throughout the application
As developers we constantly focus our attention on the performance of our Firmex platform. While this concentration will always be an important aspect of what we do, it is imperative to direct our attention to exactly what we are developing and how it is being used. Since launching the new Firmex service-based architecture, our web application has experienced huge gains in speed and performance, paving the way for us to develop new ways to streamline workflow for our users.
Web-based law practice management software provides lawyers with flexibility and ease of use.
Law practice management software is crucial to managing the complexities of any modern law practice. However, traditional law office management software can be expensive, cumbersome to navigate and prone to such frequent glitches that your IT consultant becomes a permanent fixture in your law office.
An important consideration in the deployment of a Virtual Data Room is the question of who will serve as the gatekeeper to the Virtual Deal Room, determining what information is appropriate for posting and what level of security and access to assign to such information.
The use of a virtual deal room (“VDR”) has become commonplace in modern merger and acquisition practice, replacing the formerly prevalent document room. The advantages of a VDR include reduced cost; reduced security concerns; accessibility to multiple parties simultaneously and 24/7; reduction in actual deal time; and an electronic data trail establishing who saw what and when.
Virtual data rooms offer law firms an encrypted method of communication that is far more secure than the unencrypted email currently being used by many lawyers.
As discussed last week, the unencrypted email systems used by most law firms are inherently insecure and place confidential client data at risk.
Firmex’s unlimited use virtual data rooms expand the use investment banks have for their deal rooms exponentially; hasten deals to close and help avoid unnecessary risk.
In any deal, time is risk. The longer it takes to close a deal, the greater the potential for the transaction to get derailed. Being prepared ahead of time is one way to avoid time delays and risk.
A technical overview of recent data rooms and the speed enhancements for large transactions that are saving our clients considerable time and money when managing transactions with thousands of documents.
Because data room performance is important to our clients, we recently released the first wave of our new software architecture to address the growing demands of our customers.
Lawyers and law firms can avoid costly air travel delays by taking advantage of innovative alternatives to face-to-face business meetings, such as virtual data rooms or online workspace services, which offer a cost-effective way to organize and deliver content online.
Let’s face it, these days, business air travel is a costly proposition—it’s expensive and takes up valuable time. Read more…
Most virtual data room providers charge per dataroom, page, number of users. Which are the benefits of an unlimited use virtual deal room model? Why does such a model makes sense?
It has always puzzled me as to why virtual data room providers charge per data room or per page or total number of users. How can any company running a deal know exactly how many pages of documents they will have? Or how many users are going to access the deal room? Read more…
Are you wondering what a virtual data room is and what is it used for? This article should answer most of your questions. If you want to know more, just drop us a line and we will be happy to answer.
A virtual data room (“deal room” or “data room”) is a secure web-based document repository generally used for buyers or investors to perform their due diligence on M&A transactions or investment. It is however an increasing trend in top legal firms to use virtual document rooms to support business and commercial litigation processes for external collaboration and file sharing. Read more…
Firmex, the leader in branded virtual data room infrastructure, today announced significant enhancements to its technology platform to support large projects.
At Firmex we are proud to announce significant enhancements on our virtual data room technology platform. The following is an extract of the press release made public today:
Firmex has released a new architecture that exponentially increases the speed in which users can review large volumes of documents.
“Since we do not charge for data or documents stored, our clients have increasingly been using Firmex for very large transactions. These transactions can run 10,000 to 100,000 document folders, each containing sets of documents”. Read more…
Over 250 financial and legal advisory firms are using their own, privately branded Firmex data rooms. Firmex-powered deal activity was up 255% in Q1 2009 versus a 10% decline in Q4 2008. According to Firmex’s M&A advisory clients, the increase is a result of sellers bringing deals back to market. The majority of the increase occurred late in Q1 2009, and the trend is continuing into Q2 2009.
