Announcing Dealsuite 2.0

At Dealsuite, every day we're hard at work to best serve M&A professionals and to help them become more successful at their job: close more and better deals. Behind the scenes, the software development team pushes weekly updates to the system. These include many "non-user-facing” changes which are crucial to the overall performance, relevance, reliability, and security of the system. Yet over the last few weeks, we've released several updates that significantly improve the ‘user experience’. Enough updates in fact to justify the first official product update, and to coin this update "Dealsuite 2.0”.

Dealsuite is not a website; it's a powerful business tool

As Dealsuite grew from being part of our user's morning coffee routine to a critical deal sourcing tool, the previous interface did not do it justice anymore. We decided to completely overhaul the design of the interface so its looks would match its mission. The new design also provides a solid visual framework on which to add upcoming features. Check out the new design for yourself.

The New Design

Mobile-first design

When we re-designed the interface we centered around the mobile user and treated mobile devices as first-class citizens. That is why all major features of the platform are designed to work beautifully on your small screens as well.

Where's the mobile app? is a question we get a lot. The answer is we don't have one and we don't plan on developing a full-fledged mobile app. This is a conscious decision. The gap between the technical state of the web (as in; everything you can do through a web browser) and that of native mobile apps is narrowing rapidly. Currently, we are confident we can deliver a good mobile user experience through the mobile web browser without compromising on core functionalities and user experience. Our abilities to do so will only increase moving forward as the state of the mobile web keeps improving, assuming we don't have to compromise on anything we don't want to.

There is also great power in keeping things simple and having one single entry point for all users, instead of two disjointed systems (web + mobile) that need to be developed, tested, and maintained in parallel. We only take on this additional work unless it's absolutely necessary. If not, then we consider it a distraction to our main goal: helping M&A professionals do an even better job by expanding and improving our current platform.

Contrary to what you might have overheard at the Friday afternoon mixer, developing well-tested, easy to use, and secure software takes a lot of time and effort. That's why you only do it when there is a clear path to value. Up to this point, we don't see that value for our users when it comes to a native mobile app for Dealsuite.

That said, should the platform move into a direction where there is a clear need for functionalities best supported by native mobile apps instead of web-based technologies, we will not hesitate to start work on a proper mobile app immediately. We have the knowledge and experience available if needed.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions about the mobile experience, let us know (see below)

More fine-grained matching means more relevant deals

Relevance in deal flow is of utmost importance. By application of M&A specific smart filters, Dealsuite cancels the ‘noise’. In this update, we added three new matching criteria to our algorithm: Growth, Profitability, and Customer Types. You can use these new criteria in your preferences to fine-tune which propositions are relevant for you, or when adding a new proposition.

Dealsuite Insights

Every user has access to a new section called Dealsuite Insights. Here we share market trends, research findings, case studies, and much more with the entire Dealsuite community. Especially be on the look-out for our Monitor updates for Germany, the UK, France, and the Netherlands.

A dedicated French deal room

As we saw the platform activity from France increase, partly as we set up a dedicated native French sales team, we implemented a dedicated French deal room for their domestic transactions. Très bien!

Shape the future of Dealsuite with us: Share your feedback

Dealsuite has the aim to make the work of M&A professionals easier, faster, and more effective. To develop new features we've been talking to a group of engaged Dealsuite users (Dealsuite Thinktank). You are invited to join us in shaping the future of the Dealsuite platform. If you just want to suggest a tiny quality-of-life improvement, or if you have a great new feature idea connect with either Floyd Plettenberg or me.

What's next?

Although we don't want to give away too much too soon, we can say that, besides the many smaller updates and tweaks, there will be a major new feature available at the end of 2020. This feature (named ‘Lighthouse’) will empower our users further, increase relevant deal flow, add proprietary deal flow, and expand the means for users to connect in earlier stages of the deal process. Stay tuned!

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