Based on the assessment we received from your team, the primary operational constraint is clear: 40 hours per week spent tracking IRL responses across active M&A deal tracks. For a corporate development function executing at this pace — 18 acquisitions to date, 7 in the last 18 months across two entities simultaneously — that overhead compounds with every new deal. This proposal focuses specifically on eliminating that constraint. The platform architecture supports significantly more, but Phase 1 is scoped to the problem you identified.
Your assessment identified the constraint: running corporate development across two entities at 2-3 acquisitions per year means running multiple IRL workstreams simultaneously. Every deal has 100-300+ line items to track, multiple seller contacts to follow up with, and leadership expecting real-time status. The opportunity is to automate the tracking layer so the Director of Corporate Development can redirect that time toward deal strategy, valuation, and integration planning.
What the assessment told us: The corporate development function at IFS has executed flawlessly — Copperleaf, TheLoops, 7bridges, Softeon, Ultimo's own acquisitions of Mainsaver and FSI Software. Each deal closed successfully. The constraint you identified isn't deal judgment or execution quality — it's the operational overhead of manually tracking IRL responses across concurrent deals. When the Director of Corporate Development is spending 40 hours per week on IRL status tracking, follow-up, and document validation, that's 40 hours not spent on deal sourcing, valuation analysis, integration planning, and board-level strategy. Agents handle the tracking layer. The deal team keeps doing what produced 18 successful acquisitions.
Two phases. Phase 1 deploys the core deal intelligence engine — IRL tracking, document validation, and deal visibility. Phase 2 extends into deal intelligence and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Every agent is purpose-built for corporate development workflows at acquisition pace.
Common patterns in corporate development at this acquisition velocity — and how intelligent agents address each one. Based on M&A operational benchmarks for serial acquirers executing 2-3+ deals per year.
IRL status typically maintained through manual updates — however the tracking is structured, each document arrival requires a human to log it
Follow-up with seller contacts runs on manual cadence — knowing which items are overdue and who to chase requires active checking
Incoming documents reviewed individually to confirm they match the IRL request — validation happens at human speed, not on upload
Multi-deal status for leadership assembled at a point in time — the report reflects the moment it was built, not the current state
Concurrent deal tracks across entities require consolidation effort — seeing everything in one view takes manual work
Document metadata — dates, amounts, entity names — identified through individual file review rather than automated extraction
Each new acquisition typically builds its own IRL structure — categorization and templates don't automatically carry forward between deals
IRL status updates automatically as documents arrive — every line item tracked, categorized, and timestamped
Automated follow-up notifications sent to seller contacts on overdue items — cadence-based, escalating priority
Every document validated against the IRL request on upload — mismatches, missing pages, and wrong versions flagged immediately
Real-time deal dashboard with completion percentages, bottleneck identification, and export-ready leadership reports
Concurrent deal tracks across entities visible in one unified command view — single pane regardless of which entity owns the deal
Metadata extracted automatically from every document — dates, amounts, entity names, counterparties indexed on ingestion
Standardized IRL templates by deal type and industry — every new deal starts from a proven checklist
Real-time visibility across every active deal — every IRL line item, every document, every bottleneck, every seller contact — from one command center built for serial acquirers managing concurrent workstreams.
Phase 1 deploys the core deal intelligence engine in 2 weeks. Phase 2 extends into deal intelligence and team collaboration using the architecture already built. You own the code. No vendor lock-in. No subscription. Ghost Architecture — the system runs under IFS Corporate Development, not a third-party brand.
What agents handle, what that work currently costs at IFS's deal velocity, and what the delta looks like against a $25,000 Phase 1 investment.
Phase 2 becomes straightforward. Once Phase 1 agents are running across active deal tracks, the data tells the story. The Director of Corporate Development can see exactly how much tracking time, follow-up effort, and document validation the agents absorbed — measured against the deals that haven't used the system yet. Phase 2 scope is informed by Phase 1 results. And because the architecture already exists from Phase 1, Phase 2 is configuration — not engineering. Faster, more targeted, and built on proven results.
Phase 1 deploys in 2 weeks from kickoff. Designed to integrate with the existing deal workflow without disrupting active deal tracks. Phase 2 timeline is scoped after Phase 1 results are validated.
One 90-minute session with Shawdon to map the current IRL tracking workflow end-to-end — how IRLs are structured, how seller responses arrive, what the VDR setup looks like, how status is reported to leadership, and which specific workflows the agents will automate. We map every step before writing code.
TFSF engineers design all 3 Phase 1 agents, define data flows from the IRL source documents and VDR, configure IRL categorization logic by due diligence workstream, and build the document matching and validation rulesets. Shawdon reviews and approves the architecture before build begins.
All 3 agents built using IFS's actual IRL templates, document categories, seller contact structures, and reporting formats. Full testing against representative deal data — IRL ingestion, document matching, mismatch flagging, follow-up notification sequences, and dashboard generation — before connecting to live deal tracks.
Deploy across active deal tracks. Validate every agent output against Shawdon's quality standards. Full training session on the Deal Dashboard command center and reporting configuration. Architecture documentation and codebase handoff — IFS owns everything. No vendor dependency. No ongoing subscription. Ghost Architecture: it runs as IFS Corporate Development tooling, not a third-party platform.
The deployment blueprint above is built from your assessment submission and publicly available context about the corporate development function's acquisition pace.
The kickoff call builds these numbers on your actuals — your IRL structure, your VDR setup, your deal cadence.
A 30-minute call with our CEO will finalize three things: your current IRL structure and VDR platform, your active and upcoming deal pipeline, and integration requirements with your existing workflow. That gives us everything we need to lock Phase 1 scope and timeline.
Pick a time below and we'll handle the rest.