How Ideals gives Ginkgho Funerals a simple, secure platform for rapid growth through M&A

Overview

Founded in 2019, Ginkgho Funerals is a thriving consortium of Belgian funeral homes offering high-quality funeral management services.

In 2022, CEO and co-founder Frédéric Cambie appointed Anja Geuns to Acquisition and Business Development to manage the company’s next phase of growth. They agreed that the company needed a more efficient way of managing multiple M&A projects.

After comparing several virtual data room (VDR) providers, they chose Ideals because it delivered simplicity and robust security. 

As a result, the team has reduced the time spent on M&A project management by around one day per month and sped up post-deal integration by 4-6 weeks.

The context

Starting as a single funeral services provider in 2014, the company immediately began growing through acquisitions. This gained momentum four years later when Frédéric was introduced to Belgian investment fund E-Capital, supported by Tandem Capital Advisors. As part of its growth strategy, Ginkgho Funerals was launched in 2019, and the search was on for like-minded funeral directors to join the group.

Having successfully created the business model, in 2023 the company decided to embark on a more ambitious expansion program. Frédéric and Anja agreed they would need a secure and easy-to-use tool to manage the due diligence phase of their M&A projects.

Key challenges

The team at Ginkgho Funerals had previously used several different file-sharing tools, but it was a struggle to keep track of how information was being shared and accessed by the M&A teams on both the buy and sell sides of the deal.

Also, sharing and organizing data as part of the integration process remained an important challenge. After several attempts to standardize the processes internally, Anja decided to look for a VDR provider. 

She needed a tool that would enable the group to:

• Structure all information securely in one central repository
• Share information easily with the company’s auditors
• Share data in three languages (French, Dutch and English)
• Control access by allocating different permission levels to different user groups 
• Maintain data security by controlling what was uploaded to each VDR

Anja summarized their needs as a storage system that would be easy to access, simple to use, and highly secure.

Solutions

Ideals VDR has enabled Anja and the team to increase productivity and reduce the time spent on M&A project management tasks by 30 minutes each day.

Post-deal integration has also become much faster, with the team saving 4-6 weeks on each deal.

“It’s had a real impact,” says Anja. “VDRs allow us to track the information we receive more easily, without error or confusion. There is no longer a need to spend time organizing and tracking information.” 

“We also no longer have to worry about information disappearing, or whether somebody has accidentally added a document they shouldn’t have.” 

Using Ideals, the team is able to:

• Create multiple data rooms to handle different M&A projects
• Maintain full control over all of the information being shared in each room
• Manage user access and permission levels
• Personalize the look and feel of each data room
• Archive the data they need to keep once a transaction is complete

The future

Ginkgho Funerals has just signed another 12-month contract with Ideals, and Anja expects they will open at least five new data rooms this year. She plans to explore more features on the platform as they become available.

Frédéric and Anja are both very happy with the partnership and the excellent customer support. Frédéric also believes that being able to offer use of a data room is a great selling point when they approach new partners.

“It’s a professional-looking solution that’s simple to use and not expensive!” explains Frédéric.