data-transactions
Deal management is the operating system of a live transaction: counterparties, permissions, documents, Q&A, workstreams, dates and decisions held in one place so the process does not live in inboxes.
Deal management sits above a VDR and beside a deal pipeline. The pipeline says where the opportunity is. The room stores files. Deal management assigns owners to financial due diligence, legal, tax, commercial; tracks Q&A; holds the issues list that will become SPA mark-ups; and drives the path to closing (consents, funds flow, bring-down).
IBA-style process letters and sell-side timetables are deal management on paper. Software can help only if the objects — companies, people, documents, issues — are structured.
Four advisors ask for the same trial balance. A consent is discovered after signing. The escrow agreement does not match the SPA. The buyer’s IC pack cites a different EBITDA than the QoE. None of those is a “VDR feature gap.” They are management gaps.
Signing in three weeks. Open items: customer waiver, W&I underwrite, debt payoff letter, works-council calendar. Deal management is the single list with owners and dates. Email is how those items go missing.
Confusing project-management theatre (Gantt charts) with an issues list tied to documents. No single responsible banker or corporate-dev lead. Letting the room, the CRM and the legal closing checklist diverge.
Deal management will not fix a bad price or a hostile regulator. It also cannot substitute for authority: someone still has to decide.
Dazur treats deal management as the last mile of the same chain as the smart data room: DATA → STRUCTURE → INTELLIGENCE → VALUATION → MATCHING → DUE DILIGENCE → DECISION. The decision is only as clean as the objects that fed it. Managing the deal is keeping those objects in one layer until the wire hits.