Merrill DataSite

What is a Merrill Datasite data room

Merrill Datasite, also known as Merrill Corporation, is the industry’s leading virtual data room for M&A,  due diligence, and other financial transactions. The provider has many years of experience since the company was founded in 1968. 

Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Merrill Datasite locates numerous branch offices worldwide, including England, Italy, France, Germany, Australia, the USA, and Brazil. 

Helping customers complete transactions worldwide, the provider has already earned the trust of such well-known companies as DSM, Rolls Royce, Iris Healthcare, KPMG, and Wall Street Prep. 

Customers mainly choose the Datasite data room for sell-side and buy-side M&A, post-merger integration, the due diligence process, restructuring, IPO, content management, deal preparation, corporate development, and other essential purposes.

Datasite virtual data room features

Datasite Merrill VDR provider offers solutions based on long experience in dealmaking. And even if it seems all the features require IT skills to be used effectively, the software is user-friendly even for beginners.

Synchronization at speed with trackers

Due diligence participants can link the tracker to the data room index to not only get a single source of truth, but also save time. Thanks to trackers, your team and client are always up to date.

Data upload

When uploading documents, the software retains its original structure. This way, users keep everything in order when they upload, move in bulk, or rename files. Also, the data room allows you to upload up to 50 GB of zip documents.

Intelligent AI editing

As the only virtual data room that allows you to combine text and image editing, Datasite greatly simplifies procedures and saves time. Thus, organizations go live with buyers faster by managing Redaction AI, which locates target redactions automatically.

Permission management

Admins manage granular user permissions in real-time, and they can also schedule them in bulk creating permission groups  at the folder, document, or project level.

Optical character recognition

Clients don’t have to go through lots of text to find the information they need since optical character recognition enables them to search in 16 languages.

Merrill data rooms ironclad security

Merrill Corporation delivers industry-leading security to companies, contributing to deal success, no matter how many users or sensitive information is on the platform.

So, the data room covers the following security features:

• Two-factor authentication
• Single sign-on
• Automatic password resets
• User activity reports
• Information rights management
• Advanced watermarking
• AES256 data encryption

Merrill Datasite compliance

It is also worth noting that Merrill Corp complies with international standards for confidential information security. Notably, Datasite has much more of them than some other providers:

• ISO 27001
• ISO 27017 and 27018
• ISO 27001 and SOC2 Type II
• SOC 2 Type II attestation annually
• GDPR

Datasite virtual data rooms for industries

Since Datasite offers data processing security, easy management of multiple files, and trustworthy sophisticated analytics, various companies can conclude more deals with less effort.

Thus, the provider offers solutions for investment banking, biotech licensing, life sciences, real estate, law firms, and financial institutions.

Merrill Datasite overview

When using the Merrill virtual data room, what immediately jumps out is that it is intended for large enterprises who are engaged in extremely complex projects or transactions. This is reflected in their pricing plans. However, if you were hoping to try out the Merrill data room before buying a plan, there is no free trial available.

Also, there is no live training available, so it is almost as if they want you to buy a super expensive product that has a lot of question marks surrounding it and without a flexible pricing plan, you could get locked into an expensive price that could really hurt the entire project. 

The Merrill virtual data room has a long history dating back to 1967 and compliments other services that Merrill provides. They do their absolute best to provide interaction and collaboration between internal and external teams — and this is really evident when having to handle complex projects that require a lot of sensitive data.

“The reports Merrill data room offers were the key feature that attracted us to this provider. They’re very detailed and informative, and the information is laid out in an appealing and understandable way. We’re often using these reports as a part of our board meetings to see what we can improve.”

However, it appears that you would be able to enjoy all of the benefits of data room software in conjunction with other software solutions from Merrill, like Bridge, Connect, and DPA. This really makes it much more expensive than other data room providers because the virtual data room is expensive all by itself, not to mention the abundance of other tools that you are forced to pay for, regardless of whether you will be needing them or not. 

Therefore, be sure to come up with a list of exactly what you will be needing besides a data room, then it would be better to shop for other virtual data rooms that will provide with the solutions that you actually need.

Also, customization is virtually nonexistent in the Merrill Datasite. There are no custom domains, agreements for accessing the data room, active directory integration or integration through APIs. If you are fine with conforming to what Merrill offers, then there will not be any problems, but if you are looking to customize the data room you will run into many problems since Datasite SaaS platform doesn’t support these additional features.