Customer success story
Due diligence shortened from 4 hours to 40 minutes for more focus on strategy
“Now that we have Xapien, our due diligence process is much more efficient. We use Xapien to navigate the messiness of the internet. When we’re looking at individuals, there's a lot of irrelevant information attached to their name, especially if they have a common name."
Wil James, Partner
Background
Hopehead is a risk consultancy that conducts qualitative research for clients looking to make complex investment, litigation or board appointment decisions. Their research incorporates extensive open source data reviews across commercial databases and the open web to ensure their clients are protected and making informed decisions.
The challenge
Hopehead were using a variety of databases and tools for their due diligence process, but their team had to manually search the open web to piece together a picture of an individual or organisation. It was a time-consuming and challenging process, and there was always the risk they might miss something. It was hard to scope just how big a project would be, and how long it'd take to search and evaluate results, since online footprints vary in size.
Where Xapien steps in
With Xapien's on-demand research tool, Hopehead are confident they've thoroughly searched through every relevant piece of information on the open web. What used to take up to 4 hours now takes around 30 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes to review and extract relevant information for the final report.
Bonus: Xapien adds an extra level of assurance to Hopehead’s scoping process, enabling them to send out client proposals quickly and efficiently.
“Xapien cuts through the clutter to get the information we need quickly."
Wil James, Partner
Due diligence before Xapien
Due diligence can take anywhere from a few days to several hours, depending on the individual or organisation being analysed. But time isn’t the only challenge - the process is costly, too.
For Hopehead, their due diligence process involves researching the reputation of individuals in the context of transactions or appointments. Driven by compliance requirements, their role is to ensure that their clients avoid any involvement with individuals who have reputational issues. There's just one challenge: manually searching the open web to piece together a picture of individuals.
Performing this due diligence involves exploring a wide range of sources for open-source research. This includes assessing their corporate footprint, media presence, and sometimes even verifying the claimed industry involvement of less prominent individuals.
But it’s a challenging task, made even more difficult by the limitations of the databases and search tools which only provide a “yes” or “no” without offering any context or nuance.
Due diligence after Xapien
That’s where Xapien proved valuable for the team.
Xapien collects all the available data, organises it, and presents a fully-sourced report in a digestible format. The Hopehead team can then analyse the information more efficiently to identify what can be safely ignored and what should be the focus.
Before the team had Xapien, it could take up to 2-4 hours to review the information of someone with a moderate-size profile... and that’s without putting it into a report. Now the process takes around 30 minutes, with an additional 10-15 minutes to review and extract the most relevant information. In short, Xapien saves about three-quarters of the time that it would have taken.
But Xapien doesn’t entirely replace the human touch. The Hopehead team still plays a crucial role in providing strategic recommendations based on the information it has analysed.
Instead, Xapien takes away all the tedious and time-consuming grunt work that comes with manually searching for information. And that means the team no longer worry about missing something due to limitations in their search.
Key benefits
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The team no longer worry about missing something due to limitations in their search.
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Takes around 30 minutes, with an additional 10-15 minutes to review and extract the most relevant information
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Adds an extra level of assurance to the scoping process
Book a demo now to see how Xapien can provide you with the assurance you need in your research.
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