人工智能将如何改变并购和并购劳动力市场？

随着人工智能（AI）技术的不断涌现和进步，企业和私募股权交易者渴望了解该技术将如何变革并购交易。

许多人认识到人工智能的潜力，并希望了解如何在他们的流程和日常工作中用好它。其他人则好奇AI可能如何重塑并购行业的工作环境。

SS&C Intralinks的首席产品经理Ronjohn Dadd最近在 DealMAX 2024（中端市场首屈一指的并购交易会议）上与GrowthTV（与顶级中间市场专业人士进行深入对话的媒体）的Carolyn Vallejo讨论了人工智能将如何改变并购及其劳动力市场，以及如何使用正确的工具帮助实现领跑竞争对手。

在讨论中，Dadd表示：“在并购交易执行过程中有无数问题需要解决，而很多现有技术已经在解决这些问题。”

此外，在对话中Ronjohn还分享了许多从客户那里收集的宝贵见解，包括：

• AI如何在尽职调查期间提高效率并帮助团队节省时间；
• 我我们从并购社群中的早期AI使用者那里学到了什么；
• 公司如何确定适合其需求的并购AI工具；
• 我们预计AI将如何影响并购劳动力市场的工作。

了解更多关于人工智能如何革新并购交易的信息，请点击这里。.

Transcript 

00:02 

Welcome back to Growth TV. I'm Carolyn Vallejo. Joining me here is Ronjohn Dadd, principal product manager at SS&CC Intralinks, to explore how AI is changing the dealmaking space, including job roles within M&A. Ronjohn, welcome to Growth TV.  

Thanks for having me.  

So first, I want to talk about some of the challenges in the dealmaking process that firms are hoping AI can really help solve.  

Yeah, I mean, they are endless. 

00:30 

Problems that happen in an M&A deal execution process that you could look to solve and a lot of technologies out there are solving today. You know, our organization, we are positioned to talk to a lot of clients that are in, you know, focus on the diligence part of dealmaking. And the diligence part of dealmaking is what ends up taking a lot of the time throughout these processes that take years, months, however long.  

01:00 

Over the past, you know, few years I've seen with COVID and a number of other just market issues going on, that deals are taking longer, they stall, and time kills all deals. So a lot of the M&A professionals that we've been talking to have really been focused on just driving efficiency in the core due diligence tasks and jobs that their bankers or their teams are working on on a regular basis. So simple things of spending less time. 

01:30 

Making changes to documents, preparing them to be viewed by potential buyers, and more time spent actually with our clients understanding them, and then moving forward in the deal process. I think their main focus is there's a lot that can be done with AI. I always say you can probably think of and do anything with AI, but right now it's like, how do I just get my job done faster with less resources? 

01:59 

Right, that makes sense. And as you just emphasized, there is so much potential in AI, but actually putting it into practice is kind of a different matter. Can you get me up to speed on what some of the early adopters of AI in the dealmaking community have done in terms of really using the technology to its full advantage right now?  

Yeah, I think everyone you talk to, they, pretty much everyone, they've put together an AI committee or something to start looking into it.  

02:26 

And where I've seen people be early adopters and start to make a difference early on is not just putting together these committees, go look at a bunch of different products, what else is out there, how are other people utilizing it, but actually doing an internal reflection of their own organizations and saying, all right, based on what we do, whatever our niche is, what we're providing to our clients, where are the different jobs and tasks that our teams are doing. 

02:55 

And even if they're easy ones that don't need fixing, getting all those onto paper and then identifying, okay, not only where there's a lot of time lost, but how frequently are those tasks that are losing time happening? Then not only how many times that it's happening, but how painful it is, how costly it is if a mistake is made.  

03:23 

And then I think the final point, which I think is really important for people to look at is if I were to fix this, how much of a competitive differentiation does that give my organization and firm? Because even if you do fix it and it helps cut down on time or processes, if it's not helping deliver to your ROI, get more customers, make customers happier or position my team as a knowledge expert.  

03:53 

You know, you're just solving some of the bare minimum pieces. So it's actually not like the people that go out and can find every single AI tool out there and figure out all the things that they can do. But more so let's internally reflect where the biggest areas that are going to produce the most return if we fix them. And then you can go and start that process outside looking at what else is out there.  

04:20 

So internal reflection, I think, is one of the most important pieces so that when you do have conversations and when I have conversations people they fully know, hey, this is the problem we're trying to solve, this is what we're looking to get out of it. And then you have a much more pointed focus as to the solutions and areas that you go look at. Okay, so deal makers want to solve problems, they want to make their jobs more efficient, but of course one of the biggest fears that we're hearing kind of in every industry is that AI is going to come after their job? 

04:47 

When it comes to dealmakers, what can we expect AI to have an impact on in terms of the labor market?  

Yeah, I think I'm a little bit more optimistic in this sense. Yes, I even said it before that you want to do more with less resources that doesn't always mean people though. And, you know, a lot of the things that people are looking to solve are not necessarily you know the individuals are constantly spending time on minuscule manual tasks, and we would rather not have people do that. But it's more so that typically in this industry, the people that you hire are very smart individuals. They went to great schools, are highly intelligent, and their skills and benefits are used or more useful in the more high-intelligent, high-profile tasks that have to be done. 

05:43 

Creating financial models, the actual analysis of companies, helping understand strategy, set direction for the companies that they're working with. So, in my view, maybe we will have to have less people working on a single pitch deck to remove comments all night. But that gives them the ability to really jumpstart their career earlier on, focus on high-value task, high-profile tasks, and become better advisors, better vendors, better lawyers earlier on with their clients, because they're spending more time with them rather than just sitting by themselves in a cube knocking things out of a spreadsheet and more time really doing what they've been hired for in their intellect, their strategy, their decision making. So, I think we'll see it change absolutely where the jobs that people come into are less process and grunt work that takes all night, but allows them to be much more focused on how they can help their clients and be strategic earlier on, not just waiting until you get to that senior partner or manager level. Right. So you're calling some fears here, which is great to hear.  

Thank you so much for joining Growth TV. AI is such a timely topic right now in the dealmaking community, so we really appreciate it.

Absolutely.