Service · Web development

Custom due diligence platform development.

Custom virtual data room development for M&A deals, fundraising, property transactions and banking compliance reviews. Deep audit trail, per-user watermarking, Q&A workflow and EU hosting, without the SaaS look of standard providers.

Audit trail per documentWatermarkingQ&A workflowEU data residency

Why custom development in a market full of standard data rooms.

Intralinks (SS&C), Datasite, Ansarada, Drooms, Firmex, Dropbox Capital, iDeals, SecureDocs and OneHub together serve the vast majority of global M&A deals. For a one-off acquisition or fundraising round, we will usually simply advise you to use one of those standard data room providers. We do not replace a working SaaS product with unnecessary custom development. You rent a data room for a single deal; you build a platform to run your business on.

A custom due diligence platform only becomes worthwhile when you do deals repeatedly, when your advisory firm handles two to five engagements in parallel every month, when you want a white-label environment under your own brand rather than your supplier's logo, or when your sector imposes specific compliance requirements on the audit trail that off-the-shelf packages cannot meet. For these situations, we build platforms that work within your deal process rather than around it.

Our clients are typically corporate finance firms, M&A advisers, private equity firms, property investors, notary offices and banking departments that regularly facilitate due diligence. They have outgrown ad hoc data rooms and want a platform where their deal team, their clients and counterparties collaborate securely, under their own brand and with audit capabilities that are stricter than the standard logging functionality of most SaaS providers.

Three types of due diligence platform.

The right choice depends on what the platform needs to do and how deeply it must integrate with your working process. In an initial conversation, we will advise which option suits your deal volume and compliance profile.

Compact project · fixed sprint budget

Branded virtual data room

A secure document vault in which you open files for a single deal or a handful of parallel deals. Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, per-user watermarking, view-only mode and an audit log as standard. In your own house style and on your own URL, rather than under the logo of a SaaS provider.

Document vaultWatermarkingView-onlyAudit log
Mid-sized project · fixed sprint budget

Multi-deal platform for advisory firms

For corporate finance, M&A firms and private equity businesses managing several engagements in parallel. One platform stack, with a dedicated workspace per deal, its own access controls, its own Q&A workflow and its own audit log. A central dashboard for your deal team, with separate environments for sellers and bidders.

Multi-tenantQ&A workflowBidder managementDeal dashboard
Larger project · fixed sprint budget

Sector-specific platform with AI-augmented review

A mission-critical due diligence platform with deep integrations, AI-augmented document classification, automatic redaction of personal data, white-label delivery per client and sector-specific workflows for medical, defence or financial sectors. Suitable for banking departments, notarial networks and international advisory groups serving multiple languages and jurisdictions.

Alongside research during a transaction, there is an ongoing obligation: screening of relationships against sanctions lists. See Sanctions compliance software.

Sanctions screening often runs through this process, and it has a set moment of its own: just before the transfer, when you can still stop. See the app for transaction sanctions checks.

AI classificationAuto-redactionWhite-labelMulti-language

The modules we build.

Every due diligence platform is a combination of standard building blocks that we configure specifically for your deal process. You choose which modules are in scope. Most projects start with the vault and permissions, then expand sprint by sprint to Q&A, redaction and AI features.

Vault

Document vault with version control

All deal documents in one place, with version history, automatic metadata extraction and retention periods per file. Counterparties always see the latest version, while your deal team can go back to any earlier version and every change.

Permissions

Granular access by user and folder

Access by user, by group, by folder and by document. A buyer sees the financial folders, legal counsel sees the contracts, a tax adviser sees the tax documents, and none of them see each other's material. Temporary access with an automatic expiry date is standard.

Watermarking

Dynamic watermarks per user

Every document that is opened automatically receives a watermark with the viewer's name, email address and time of access. This makes it possible to trace afterwards who leaked a document. View-only mode prevents downloading altogether.

Audit

Immutable audit trail for every action

Who opened which document and when, how long they viewed it, which page they stopped on, and what they downloaded, shared or printed. The audit trail is recorded immutably and can be exported as compliance evidence for regulators, auditors and legal counterparties.

Q&A

Q&A flow between bidders and seller

Bidders ask questions at document or dataroom level, your deal team triages internally to the right expert, answers on behalf of the seller, and publishes the answer to one bidder or to all bidders equally. Audit trail of who asked what and when.

Redaction

Selective redaction of sensitive information

Personal data, customer names, salaries or strategic figures are blacked out, manually or automatically, before the document becomes visible to the counterparty. The original version remains available to your deal team; the filtered version is shown to bidders.

AI

AI summaries and classification

For large datasets, the platform automatically generates summaries of contracts, classifies documents by type (lease agreement, NDA, IP assignment, employment contract) and flags missing documents. For reviewers it complements manual work rather than replacing it.

Export

Data pack and PDF export

At the end of the deal you export the complete dataroom as a signed data pack: all documents plus the full audit trail in one PDF set. For the sale archive, for the notarial deed, for the bank guarantee.

Applications we build platforms for.

A due diligence platform is not one-size-fits-all. The deal process of a corporate finance adviser differs fundamentally from that of a property investor or a bank department. We know the patterns per sector and build the platform around them.

Mergers & acquisitions

Buyer and seller due diligence in acquisitions

The classic M&A flow: a seller opens a data room, several bidders receive phased access, and the deal team of a corporate finance firm guides the process. We build platforms for M&A advisers who run multiple transactions as a matter of course, not for one-off sales where you would be better off renting iDeals for a week. Custom development pays off once you want to define your own brand and workflow.

Bidder managementPhased accessClosing checklistNotary integration
Property and portfolios

Portfolio due diligence in property transactions

For property investors and large portfolio transactions, we build platforms where each property gets its own sub-file containing land registry documents, lease agreements, environmental reports, valuations and maintenance history. Bidders review at property level and can filter by rental yield, location or year of construction, which suits large-scale property reviews where hundreds of assets are examined in parallel.

Property filesLand Registry integrationValuation importBulk filtering
Banking and compliance

Audit trail for banking due diligence

For banking teams that routinely support due diligence in lending, syndicated loans or regulatory investigations, the audit trail is the core functionality, not the document vault itself. We build platforms where every action is logged immutably and the log is readily available for later review by the DNB or your external auditor. Can be combined with KYC and AML compliance software if you already use it.

Immutable logRegulator exportWwft workflowSyndicate access

What you receive at the end of the project.

A production-ready due diligence platform, plus everything needed to run it yourself or have us run it for you. No black box, and no dependence on a single supplier.

  • The platform itselfProduction and staging environments, hosted in your cloud (GCP, AWS or Azure) or with us. EU or Dutch data residency as standard. Includes monitoring, backups and encryption at rest.
  • Audit trail infrastructureAn immutable logging layer on write-once storage, so the audit log cannot be tampered with after the fact. Export function for regulators, external auditors and compliance reviewers.
  • Codebase and documentationFull source code, build instructions, architecture overview and API documentation. You own it: no lock-in to a proprietary SaaS vendor and no hidden source code.
  • Admin guideWritten for your deal team lead: how to open a new deal, how to invite bidders, how to configure permissions per group, and how to export the audit log at the end of the process.
  • Training for key usersTwo sessions for your deal managers, plus a short video tutorial for external users (bidders, solicitors, accountants). An onboarding template for new deals so you can get started quickly yourselves.
  • Managed service contract (optional)Monitoring, security patches, penetration tests with major releases, further development and compliance updates when GDPR or eIDAS requirements change. Fixed monthly fee with clear response times.
Not yet sure about a large project?

Test your idea first: a working prototype in 1 day

With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.

Explore OneDayBuild →

When bespoke development is the right choice.

Six situations in which a custom due diligence platform pays for itself compared with a standard SaaS data room. If one of these sounds familiar, we would be happy to talk further.

Volume

You run several deals a year

A corporate finance firm, M&A adviser or private equity house that manages two to five transactions in parallel each month. Setting up a SaaS data room from scratch each time takes time, and your deal team ends up spread across different interfaces.

Audit trail

You need detailed audit trails for compliance

Which platform offers audit trails deep enough for your compliance officer or regulator? We build immutable logging at page level, including view duration and print actions, going further than most standard packages, which stop at document level.

Branding

You want your own brand experience

Your bidders and clients experience the platform as yours, not as Intralinks or Datasite with your logo added. Your own domain, your own colours and your own tone of voice in the interface, with no white-label branding that dilutes your brand.

Sector

Sector-specific workflows

For medical acquisitions (NEN 7510 horizon), defence-related transactions (ITAR classification) or financial institutions (DNB supervision), standard data rooms are too generic. We build flows that encode your sector-specific rules into the software.

White-label

You are an advisory firm

You deliver the data room as part of your service: your client sees the portal under their own brand, while you run a single platform stack behind the scenes. For accountancy and law firms offering deal support alongside their core services.

AI

You want AI-augmented review

Automatic classification of thousands of documents across a large portfolio, AI summaries per contract, automatic redaction of personal data: capabilities most SaaS providers do not yet offer, or offer only in a limited way. We build these as a separate layer on top of your existing document vault.

How a due diligence platform project works.

1

Introduction

A conversation in which we understand which deal types you support (M&A, property, fundraising, banking), what volumes you handle, which compliance requirements apply and which standard package you use now, or why you no longer find it sufficient.

2

Scoping and deal-flow research

A workshop with your partners and deal team lead, plus interviews with some recent bidders and clients. At the end: a concrete scope, timeline, initial screen flow, list of integrations and a conceptual audit trail structure.

3

Building in sprints

A working build every two weeks that you and your deal team can test. We usually start with the document vault, permissions and audit log for one deal type. Q&A, watermarking, redaction and AI features are then added sprint by sprint.

4

Pilot on one live deal

Before the wider rollout, we put the platform live for one real deal that you are already advising on. We gather feedback from your deal team and the counterparties, remove friction, and only then move all new projects onto it.

5

Rollout and management

Phased rollout of new deals on the platform, decommissioning of the old SaaS environment, and an onboarding template for your deal managers. Ongoing management of security, integration maintenance and compliance updates whenever regulatory requirements change.

Frequently asked questions about due diligence platforms.

The questions that partners and deal team leads usually ask us before a project begins.

Which platform provides detailed audit trails for compliance?
For most standard deals, Intralinks, Datasite, Ansarada and iDeals are sufficient: they log who opened or downloaded which document. For heavier compliance requirements (banking supervision, DNB reporting, syndicated loans, regulator investigations), those logs are often too coarse. They stop at document level and do not include an immutable signature. We build audit trails that log at page level, view duration and print action, stored on write-once storage so that after-the-fact manipulation is impossible. The log can be exported directly as compliance evidence for your supervisor or external accountant. Whether you need a custom solution depends on what your compliance officer or supervisor specifically requires. In a first conversation we outline which level of audit suits your situation.
Do you replace Intralinks, Datasite or iDeals for a one-off deal?
No. For a single one-off acquisition or fundraising round, we usually advise you simply to rent a standard data room provider for a few weeks. Those platforms are set up for exactly that use, and every M&A firm knows how they work. A custom build only becomes worthwhile when you do deals repeatedly, when you want to put your own brand on it, when you need sector-specific flows, or when your audit-trail requirements go beyond what standard packages offer. We are honest about that distinction in the first conversation.
What determines the cost of a custom data room?
Three factors: scope, integrations and depth of compliance. A branded vault for a single deal type is a different project from a multi-tenant platform with AI classification, automatic redaction and sector-specific flows across several disciplines. Integrations with your CRM, land registry services, KYC providers or payment systems also count. The depth of the audit trail (document-level, page-level, or immutable storage with supervisory export) is a third factor. We work with fixed sprint budgets rather than open-ended hourly rates, so you know upfront what you get and what it costs. In an introductory call we outline a realistic range after a few exploratory questions; exact figures follow only after a scoping workshop.
How do we manage document control during due diligence?
Document management is more than storage. It is about version control, permissions per user and folder, watermarking, view-only mode and the audit trail around them. We build a document vault in which every document has its own history (who uploaded it, who changed it, which version each bidder sees), with permissions that can be set granularly at user, group, folder and document level. For broader document management projects beyond a specific deal context, we also build standalone document management systems that can later integrate with the data room platform.
Does the platform comply with GDPR and eIDAS?
Privacy by design from the first sprint. Encryption of data in transit and at rest, EU or Dutch data residency as standard, role-based access down to individual document level, and a data processing agreement that fits your situation. For digital signatures we integrate with eIDAS-compliant providers (qualified electronic signatures where required). For due diligence with financial institutions we also build in Wwft flows (UBO verification, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening). On larger projects, an external penetration test in the final sprint is standard.
Can the platform integrate with our KYC or CRM systems?
Yes. We integrate with the common CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics) so that a new deal automatically creates a workspace and carries across the bidder list. For KYC providers we integrate with iDIN, Onfido, Sumsub or a provider your bank uses, so bidder verification takes place within the platform itself. For your office system or audit software we build custom integrations where they speed up the workflow. For sector-specific integrations, such as land registry APIs in real estate or tax advisory data in M&A, we build the connector in a separate sprint.
Can we offer the platform white-label to our clients?
Yes. For advisory firms, accountancy and law firms offering transaction support alongside their standard services, this is usually a main reason to choose a custom build. For each client we configure their own subdomain, their own house style, their own logo and, if needed, their own tone of voice in the interface text. Under the bonnet it is one platform stack that you manage; for your client it feels like their own data room. For networks of firms or franchises, white-labelling per office is possible.
Do you work with our IT department and compliance officer?
Almost always. We carry out knowledge transfer in the final sprint, deliver a runbook for incidents, agree clear responsibilities for management, and consult early with your compliance officer on what the audit trail must record and in what format supervisory export should take place. For mission-critical platforms at enterprise organisations, we run security reviews alongside your own team rather than around it.

Talk to us about your due diligence platform.

A free, half-hour introductory call. We listen to your deal flow, probe your compliance requirements, and give direction on whether a custom build makes sense in your situation, or whether a standard package will still suffice for now.

Edit content