5 reasons why your competitor is already using Digital Due Diligence

Private Equity is changing. Today, large data sets are just as essential, if not more so, than small panels and expert opinion. Robust data analysis is being requested by banks and financiers in an ever more competitive environment. Large data sets can reveal objective trends and a detailed history that provides much greater reliance for modelled trajectories.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that investors are now using digital data as a proxy for wider commercial trends. Online data is robust and can be applied to both B2B and B2C situations.

1) Market Mapping for Early-Stage Commercial Work

Whether you’re sourcing investment ideas, there’s an internal IC to convince or a management team to woo, an outside-in analysis of a sector or target asset can give you a great sense of market share, market growth and market projections. This DD can add layers to early-stage work that will differentiate you from the competition: identifying demand areas by geolocation, providing audience and sentiment analysis, assessing marketing efficiencies, engagement and pricing analysis, web and mobile tech analysis.

2) Brand Equity

Deep drill-downs into reputation, audience profile and operations analysis using data available to us through social media, review sites, online surveys and open web. Much more robust and objective than focus groups, this can be analysed at territory and local levels in great detail and is particularly useful in exclusivity and portfolio work.

3) Marketing Healthcheck

Analysis of audience web movements capturing click through and engagement, customer journey, conversion, CPA, cost per lead, competitor spend, competitor performance, digital platform effectiveness, strategy and optimisation and ultimately modelled conversions. Helpful to model growth assumptions and fair share gains potential.

4) Threats of Disruptive Technologies

Market-level and brand-specific technical evaluation with assessment of near- and mid-future competitor and conceptual disruptors. Expertise in the field and connections with those in the know help to mitigate risk and scenario model for commercial threats/potential.

5) Turnaround Consulting

If a portfolio asset is struggling to hit KPIs or an investor wants to build internal capabilities for digitisation, this work helps internal teams understand the competitor landscape through digital data analysis and to devise strategic and tactical solutions that will help them achieve tangible returns on investment.

According to Oxford Economics and SAP, over 55% of companies already use data to make decisions, but 56% of investors agree that low-quality data results in lost opportunities and may be insubstantial. So, while finding relevant data is an important step in due digital diligence, ensuring the data is accurate and understanding what it means for commercial growth is vital for any business decision.

All businesses are digital businesses because audiences are digital natives.

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By Fleur Hicks

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