AI for Business Brokering: Week 7 – Due Diligence
Welcome to Week 7 of Tupelo's series on how AI is transforming business brokering. This week, we’re diving into due diligence. AI and other technology tools can streamline the analysis process, helping deals close faster.
The biggest reason due diligence gets delayed? Waiting for documents.
While AI can't create the documents you're waiting for, it can keep everyone involved aligned. It can automatically assign tasks, set deadlines, and send reminders. AI can also review large volumes of documents—contracts, leases, permits—and highlight key terms, clauses, and potential red flags.
Goal: Highlight how AI can help business brokers and M&A advisors manage due diligence.
Here are nine tools to help you with due diligence:
1. Tupelo
Tupelo is an all-in-one platform built for business brokers. It handles CRM, automates NDAs, manages data rooms, and even uses AI to create CIMs. The data room feature is key—brokers can create document request lists, and Tupelo will automatically follow up to get the documents uploaded. It’s a seamless solution helping hundreds of brokers and thousands of business owners, buyers, and lenders.
Pricing:
- $100 per user/month for the first five users (minimum 2 users)
- $50 per user per month for user six and beyond
Key feature:
- Tupelo’s Data Room
Consideration:
- Only available for CRM users.
2. ChatGPT
ChatGPT can process and analyze large amounts of text quickly. Upload legal documents and prompt the AI to review them—it can flag key terms, clauses, and red flags in contracts, leases, or permits. You can also ask it to highlight irregularities, which is helpful for identifying potential negotiation points and aligning with buyers.
Pricing:
$20 per month
Key features:
- Ingest legal documents and identify key details.
- Offer quick summaries and reword complex legal terms.
Consideration:
- AI is a tool, but brokers are still responsible for final decisions.
3. Kira
Kira uses machine learning technology to quickly identify, extract, and analyze key provisions from contracts and other documents
For business brokers, this means you can rapidly review large volumes of contracts, leases, and agreements associated with a target company. The software can automatically highlight important clauses, financial terms, and potential risks, allowing brokers to focus on critical issues rather than spending hours manually reviewing documents
During due diligence, a business broker could use Kira to:
- Streamline contract review, significantly reducing the time spent on document analysis.
- Identify and extract crucial data points like financial obligations, termination clauses, or change of control provisions.
- Uncover potential risks or liabilities that might affect the valuation or terms of the deal.
- Generate comprehensive reports on contract terms and conditions for client presentations or negotiations.
By leveraging Kira's AI capabilities, business brokers can conduct more thorough due diligence in less time, potentially delivering more value that could impact the transaction's success
Pricing:
Unknown
Key features:
- Seamlessly understand legal documents and how they fit into the borader M&A picture
Considerations:
- The AI’s output should be carefully relied on as a broker is ultimately responsible
4. Lexis Nexis
LexisNexis provides legal advisors and business brokers with powerful tools for conducting due diligence and managing risk. Brokers can use Lexis+ AI to quickly analyze legal documents, contracts, and agreements, identifying key insights and potential red flags. The platform offers access to litigation history, regulatory issues, company data, and financial reports, helping brokers assess a target company’s legal risks and financial health. AI-powered contract review and compliance checks ensure that brokers can verify the company meets legal requirements and the terms of the deal are favorable. These tools help brokers make informed decisions and provide better guidance to clients.
Pricing:
Pricing likely varies based on specific needs and usage.
Key features:
- AI to review legal documents
- Extensive data base of market intelligence
- Premier software for legal professionals
Considerations:
- Expensive and made for larger legal organizations
5. iManage
iManage is a secure platform for managing documents, emails, and tasks. Its email management feature allows brokers to save, organize, and track all communications within a project, ensuring clear visibility of deal-related exchanges. The full-text search function enables users to quickly find specific content or metadata within documents and emails, aiding in faster information retrieval during due diligence. Additionally, iManage Tracker helps brokers efficiently create, assign, and manage due diligence tasks, with a drag-and-drop feature that converts emails into actionable tasks, ensuring nothing is overlooked.
Pricing:
Pricing likely varies based on specific needs and usage.
Key features:
- Meta data searching-across emails, documents, etc.
- Create, assign and track tasks to various stake holders
- Securely store documents
Considerations:
- Expensive and made for larger legal organizations
6. Lawgeex
Lawgeex’s AI reviews and redlines legal documents based on your predefined policies, learning from your specific risk tolerance and guidelines. It analyzes each contract, highlighting critical issues or deviations from your standards, helping you focus on key areas that require attention during the review process. This automated approach ensures consistency, saves time, and reduces the chances of missing important details in legal documents.
Pricing:
Pricing likely varies based on specific needs and usage.
Key features:
- Seamlessly understand legal documents and redline
- Lawgreex’s AI learns from your legal preferences and risk tolerance
Considerations:
- Expensive and made for larger legal organizations
7. eBrevia
eBrevia is an AI-powered contract analysis tool that streamlines document review across industries like law and finance. Using natural language processing and machine learning, it quickly extracts key provisions from large volumes of contracts, such as change of control or indemnification terms. Its customizable AI highlights relevant clauses for due diligence and allows for team collaboration through document sharing. This helps reduce review time, improve efficiency, and support better decision-making.
Pricing:
Pricing likely varies based on specific needs and usage.
Key features:
- AI-powered document analysis
- Rapid extraction of key provisions and data points
- Customizable extraction for specific terms
- Comparison of provision language against standards
- Export of actionable summaries
- API Integration with various document management systems
Considerations:
- Expensive and made for larger legal organizations
8. Trello
Trello is a visual project management tool that empowers teams to manage projects, workflows, and tasks efficiently. Utilizing a system of boards, lists, and cards, Trello allows users to organize tasks visually, making it easy to track progress and collaborate with team members. Users can add due dates, checklists, attachments, and comments to cards, ensuring all relevant information is easily accessible in one place. Business brokers can use Trello during due diligence by creating a dedicated board for each deal, with lists representing different stages like Financial Review or Legal Documents, and assigning tasks via cards with due dates and team members. Documents can be attached to cards, checklists can break down complex tasks, and progress can be visually tracked as cards move from "To Do" to "Completed," ensuring organized and efficient management of the process.
Pricing:
Free and scales with features
Key features:
- Kanban Boards
- Custom tasks and checklists associated with each phase
Considerations:
- Setting up your board’s flow and responsibilities is a manual process
- Training is constant as new members are added to each deal
9. Asana
Asana is a tool that helps teams manage projects and tasks. It’s designed to organize work visually, making it easy to track progress and collaborate. You can set due dates, attach documents, create checklists, and keep everything in one place. For business brokers handling due diligence, it’s ideal. You can set up projects for each deal, assign tasks, and track progress, ensuring nothing is missed.
Pricing:
Free and scales with features
Key features:
- Kanban Boards
- Custom tasks and checklists associated with each phase
Considerations:
- Setting up your board’s flow and responsibilities is a manual process
- Training is constant as new members are added to each deal