eXpresso Enables Corporate Marriage To Proceed Without A Hitch

Good communication is essential to any budding relationship. So when Cincinnati, Ohio-based Cohesia Corporation, a provider of Web-based supply chain management solutions for the aerospace industry, began discussions to be acquired by product development process software maker Powerway, Inc., one of its key considerations was how to work collaboratively with Powerway on the many financial and management documents involved in the due diligence portion of the merger.

Powerway's goal in acquiring Cohesia was to gain a much larger footprint in the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) space. This would allow Powerway, whose expertise lay in the automotive manufacturing segment, to not only expand its range of business services, but also extend beyond the automotive sector into new arenas such as aerospace/defense, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, electronics and other complex manufacturing fields.

However, as with many corporate acquisitions, both companies knew efficient information sharing was going to be an important factor in establishing a good fit. Typically, mergers are supposed to create new, stronger organizations—but history shows that such combinations often fall short of expectations. The sheer size and volume of financial data exchanged in such a lengthy and technical due diligence process can create tremendous challenges for any organization.
To help ensure that the detail work of the due diligence and acquisition was smooth, quick and equitable, Cohesia enlisted the help of eXpresso™.

Online Solution

eXpresso is a pioneering Microsoft Excel® online community provider that allows subscribers to securely upload, store, organize, and share Excel spreadsheets. With eXpresso, individuals, workgroups, and companies can quickly, efficiently and confidentially collaborate on critical business information—even holding virtual meetings online where invitees can simultaneously work on spreadsheets together.

Cohesia thoroughly researched the various technology options that would help them streamline their acquisition process. It became evident that eXpresso was best equipped to assist with the many real-time collaboration chores that needed doing.
"We felt we would be mitigating risks by using eXpresso," said Jim Kanir, president and CEO of Cohesia. "When you're in the time-sensitive, distributed, and often stressful environment that a corporate acquisition entails, sending the wrong version of a forecast, budget or revenue model can be a total deal-killer."

Built on an enterprise-class collaboration platform, eXpresso leverages leading relational database technology to allow authorized users to share Excel documents without having to deal with internal IT constraints. The technology, which has six patents pending, requires only an Internet Explorer Web browser (other browser interfaces are under development) and a copy of Microsoft Excel.

According to Kanir, the most compelling criteria for choosing eXpresso were efficiency, ease-of-use and performance. "Cohesia is a nimble and distributed organization. You're looking a company that had key executives on the acquisition team located around the country—plus the acquiring organization was located in another state. We simply could not attempt to go through this critical information transfer without a collaborative environment like eXpresso."

World-Class Protection

Another vital and obvious factor was security. Thanks to eXpresso's state-of-the-art Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption, which protects all subscriber data from outside penetration, the two companies could operate with complete assurance of data confidentiality. What's more, eXpresso hosts its site in a secure server environment that uses a firewall and other advanced technology to prevent interference or access from outside intruders.

Finally, eXpresso provides unique user names and passwords that must be entered each time a customer logs on. These safeguards help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the appropriate use of data. "We were working with highly sensitive and confidential financial documents that were the heart of our company, so security was essential. We felt eXpresso had it covered in regard to security and peace-of-mind," Kanir stated.

While spreadsheets are one of the most popular tools today for managing business, they can also pose a threat because changes to data are not audited. eXpresso overcomes this problem by documenting the history of every spreadsheet, allowing owners and compliance personnel to track and analyze changes. The technology even provides a way for owners to be notified by email when a spreadsheet is accepted, edited, downloaded or deleted by a member of the community.

eXpresso's convenience features, such as its virtual meeting platform, ability to compare two or more spreadsheets for cell or formula changes, and it conversion tool for transforming data from one format to another without cutting and pasting, made it ideal for the intense work needed between Cincinnati-based Cohesia and Indianapolis-based Powerway. "Nothing fell through the cracks—the right people, often in different locations, always had the right documents with the right version on their desktops at the right time," said Kanir.

Fast Completion

Using eXpresso as their collaborative environment, Cohesia was able to expedite the entire acquisition process in just three months. "The function that allowed for simultaneous editing by multiple users in different locations helped us move forward quickly," noted Kanir, adding that the version control aspect also helped everyone remain focused and "on the same page."
Based on the success of the acquisition, Kanir has encouraged Powerway and Cohesia to continue using eXpresso's spreadsheet community in the future. "Not only did we utilize this amazing Web-hosted technology to accomplish what we set out to do in the shortest amount of time, but we are now examining using eXpresso for our future development projects as we bring two technologies and five million lines of code together," he said. "eXpresso is powerfully amazing."