Donnelley Financial Solutions

RR Donnelley Data Room: Features and Solutions Observed

Donnelley Financial Solutions is a virtual data room provider that has been in the industry since 1983. Donnelly’s headquarters are located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The company has offices in 30 locations and helps companies from 12 countries manage business processes and communicate faster through a secure online environment.
Before 2016, Donnelley Financial Solutions was a part of RR Donnelley, the US printing industry’s leader. In 2016, RR Donnelley VDR became a standalone company, separated from its parent printing enterprise.

Donnelley software products

Donnelley provides several software products for M&A deals, due diligence, risk management, and strategic transactions. You can combine them in one secure platform. Here is the list of Donnelley products.

ActiveDisclosure

ActiveDisclosure allows your teams to prepare financial reports seamlessly in one environment. It has an Excel/Microsoft Office module to work with documents on the platform. It also has an intuitive task manager to keep your team updated on key reporting goals.
The tool enables auto versioning, private and public comments, and sign-off workflows to streamline financial preparations. The intelligent iXBRL tagging feature scans your document for missed tags to ensure your reports and SEC filings comply with standards.

Venue virtual data room

The Venue is Donnelley’s virtual data room that you can integrate with other solutions. It has the following features:

Document management

According to DFIN, Venue data rooms can be set up in virtually less than a minute. Users can instantly upload bulk documents and leverage other tools to effortlessly arrange the content of their data room.

Venue’s most notable document organization features are:

• Full folder arrangement view for quickly locating relevant provisions
• Automatic electronic archiving eliminating the need for printing documents
• Pre-defined workflows and financial reporting functions for due diligence

Security

Venue by DFIN employs multiple security measures to keep users’ confidential data intact. Venue users can establish several levels of data room access privileges, leverage auto redaction and encryption, and regulate how each contributor operates with data.

Inside Venue, sensitive information is shielded via features like:

• Dynamic watermarking, which imprints all access details, such as account name and time of data retrieval
• 256-bit encryption
• Multi-factor authentication

Reporting

Venue data room generates insightful analytics based on the software usage activity. This information helps virtual data room administrators accelerate deal closing by evaluating buyer behavior and making on-spot decisions.

Donnelley data room reporting tools include:

• Instant file-level analytics that represent how many users interacted with the file
• Engagement analytics
• An option to schedule audit reporting

Workflow optimization

Virtual data room software continues to evolve to minimize the manual approach to document organization and task management. Venue allows users to automate tasks and simultaneously manage multiple deals. And scheduled reports provide transparency and agility to traditionally lengthy procedures.

Donnelly Venue workflow efficiency instruments are:

• Multi-deal management tools with a big-picture view
• Automated data room activity archiving 
• Relevancy and department filters

AI contract analytics

Venue data room provides AI-powered tools that offer on-demand intelligence on several dozens of documents simultaneously. As global markets fluctuate, machine learning provides the necessary stability by analyzing buyer behavior, retrieving required information, and allowing to handle a deal process securely.

Venue’s contract analytics tools enable users to:

• Process over 50 files in less than a minute
• Locate the relevant provisions faster
• Extract over 115 specified data points

Customer support

Venue by DFIN addresses users’ questions and concerns via an extensive knowledge hub and region-based customer support offices. The support agents resolve technical data room issues and provide information about pricing, other DFIN products, and direct media inquiries.

DFIN Venue’s customer support advantages feature:

• 24/7/365 available representatives in 18 office locations
• A dedicated project manager to direct customers throughout the entire deal process
• Data rooms setup and organization advisory

Data protection solutions

Data Protection Solutions is privacy software that protects confidential information and reduces the data leak risk.
It scans your catalogs and files for personally identifiable information, recognizing email addresses, phone numbers, and over 40 billion name combinations.
Once you locate sensitive instances, you can redact them in real-time. Also, you can group PII, generate data reports and heat maps, and set customizable data access permissions.
This tool is compatible with the Venue virtual data room and other Donnelley products.

EDGAR Online

Donnelley EDGAR Online is a filing analysis tool that saves dozens of hours gathering companies’ information for your initial public offering.
Donnelley’s EDGAR database has access to 15,000 US companies’ catalogs with XBRL-tagged summaries, financial info, ownership details, etc.
You can export data sets to your FTP client, API, Level II SEC feed, etc. You can also export information in CSV format.

eBrevia

eBrevia is a contract review application that extracts provisions from documents using AI and machine learning algorithms.
It scans texts and identifies language patterns, pulling out necessary data and making the deal process much faster. You can link it to your data room and let it work with the documents.
The software can scan over 50 documents in less than a minute. Besides, you can train it and tailor its algorithms to your business goals without superior technical skills.

Arc Suite 

Arc Suite is a set of tools that helps you raise capital, complete strategic transactions, conduct due diligence, and follow compliance.

ArcDigiltal

ArcDigital is a compliance management platform with the following functionalities:

• A centralized document repository. You can export data sets to ArcDigital from the Venue data room or different storage.
• Business compliance tracking. The system tracks all incoming electronic and physical regulatory documents and generates detailed statistics.
• Customization. Decide on document delivery and messaging options.
• Dedicated support. Donnelley engineers will help you migrate your assets to ArcDigital.

ArcFiling

The ArcFiling cloud solution allows you to prepare regulatory documents for public records. You can create Form N-PORT, Form N-CEN, Form N-MFP, and other filings.
An intuitive ArcFiling dashboard will help you keep track of your portfolios and filings and share them across your teams in one secure place.

ArcPro

ArcPro is Donnelley Financial Solutions cloud content management platform that streamlines prospectus preparations. It allows you to:

• Create, edit, and update regulatory documents with contributors in real-time
• Translate documents in 31 languages
• Apply iXBRL tags automatically
• Edit summary prospectuses and statutory prospectuses
• Cross-reference documents
• Publish summaries in bulk
• Generate accurate reports on workflows
• Certify documents
• Export documents to the data room
• And more

ArcRegulatory

ArcRegulatory software produces compliance reports and updates you on global regulations and related news.
It helps you conduct regulatory activities on a single site without shuffling data across different applications. This tool allows you to:

• Analyze data quicker due to the calculation engine
• Send many documents to regulators and automate distribution workflows
• Apply over 1,500 rules to business data to keep strategic transactions compliant
• Use many regulatory directives, like ESG, KIIDs, UCITS, PRIIPs KIDs, etc.

Also, you can connect this tool to the Venue data room and Arc Suite products

ArcReporting

ArcReporting software allows you to create financial reports that comply with global regulations. This solution enables straight-through processing and automated PDF shareholder reports to save your time on business processes and increase productivity across your employees.
You can review a report in a single-page dashboard and integrate the tool with Venue virtual data room and Arc Suite.

Donnelley security compliance and security measures

Donnelley Financial Solutions complies with ISO/IEC 27001:2013, HIPAA, and SOC 2 security standards. Donnelley clients have complete peace of mind over their business processes due to the following security measures the company applies:

• Regular malware and vulnerability scans
• Two-factor authentication
• AES 256-bit encryption across all tools
•  Regular SOC2 Type II privacy software audits and reports

What is Donnelley Financial Solutions best for?

Donnelley Financial Solutions fulfills the following use cases:

Initial public offering

The first step towards becoming a joint-stock company is finding investment banks. The experience of joint-stock companies shows that success depends on preparation. 
DFIN gives customers everything necessary for this operation. The DFIN engineers have foreseen all stages of the strategic transactions and implemented tools to ease IPO preparation. Thus, ActiveDisclosure allows colleagues to collaborate regardless of their location.
The Venue virtual data room helps your teams work with documents on one site, while EDGAR Online allows you to gather crucial data during IPO preparation. DFIN helped companies fill over 700 IPOs over the last six years.

Mergers and acquisitions

DFIN’s artificial intelligence and machine learning engines cut deal preparation time, while the VDR enables file exchange in a protected space. Both buy-side and sell-side parties can rest assured that the deal will be carried out at a high level. 
DFIN customers combine the Venue virtual data room and eBrevia to handle deals faster, while the 24/7 support will assist the parties at any stage.

Proxy strategy

Preparing a proxy statement can become a pain in the neck if shareholders work in many applications.
Venue, eBrevia, EDGAR Online, and other DFIN tools help investors arrange meetings, prepare filings and reports, and manage deals in a seamless environment.

DFIN Venue data centers

Security regulations evolve constantly, prompting virtual data room providers to improve their data handling mechanisms and facilities. Donnelley Financial Solutions do not disclose the locations of its server centers. However, it is safe to believe that their data protection protocols are continually optimized based on customer loyalty.

DFIN regulatory compliance certificates

The virtual data room by DFIN is certified according to the following standards:

• ISO/IEC 27001
• SOC2 Type II

DFIN virtual data rooms pricing

Donnelley Financial Solutions DFIN does not publicly disclose its pricing approach details. On the provider’s website, it is mentioned that they advocate for transparent billing with the costs based on the number of files uploaded into the data rooms.

It is worth noting that such a solution is not the most cost-effective model for document-heavy transactions such as due diligence or for handling multiple deals like investment banks do, for example.

Users need to contact customer support or their regionally assigned project manager to receive up-to-date billing information.