Start with a defined question.
Set the background, review criteria, relevant people and sources. Keep a versioned synopsis as the working brief develops.
Simply Discover / Private equity
Private
equity.
Ask the next question.
Keep the evidence close.
Look beyond the summary. Connect authorised communications and documents, test the developing picture and give your team the evidence behind the assessment.
Follow a diligence questionA diligence questionAuthorised evidence
Customer relationshipWhat could affect this renewal?
01 / DocumentContract termsRenewal conditions
02 / EmailClient exchangeSupport commitments
Connected issueHuman assessment
Terms to clarifyCompare the agreement with the exchange.
Record what needs follow-up.
Source references. Review history.
Illustrative records, not an investment conclusion.
- 01Scope the available evidence
Agreed access, sources and questions.
- 02Examine the context
People, passages and chronology.
- 03Explain the assessment
Findings with a record behind them.
01 / Look beyond the summary
The investment case
raises questions.
The records add context.
A renewal assumption. An unresolved service issue. A contract term that needs a closer look.
Simply Discover supports private equity teams and their advisers with customer-hosted evidence discovery. Review the communications and documents made available for a matter, then connect relevant passages to the people, events and questions behind them.
The aim is a better-supported assessment: what the records show, what they do not establish and where the team needs to follow up.
Check the supporting detail.
Review classifications, rationale and highlighted passages against the underlying records. A surfaced concern is a starting point for assessment.
Keep the team’s account.
Record notes, decisions and source references so colleagues and advisers can understand the work behind the findings.
02 / A question worth following
The contract says one thing.
The conversation adds detail.
A deal team is reviewing a customer relationship. The agreement describes renewal terms; the correspondence raises a question about service commitments. Both deserve to be read together.
Customer renewal reviewFictional example
A passage to examine
“Before we renew, can you confirm the revised support commitments and how the outstanding issues will be addressed?”
This is a question about an unresolved position. It does not, by itself, establish that the customer will leave or that the agreement has changed.
Follow-up for the team
- 01Compare the request with the agreement and any amendments.
- 02Trace earlier concerns and subsequent replies.
- 03Record the evidence, the assessment and what remains unanswered.
- Collect
Bring the material into scope.
Select the authorised sources or supported evidence imports. Record the collection boundary and source status.
- Investigate
Connect the relevant records.
Use the matter’s context, labels, entity relationships and chronology to explore the question across communications and documents.
- Review
Make the assessment explicit.
Inspect the evidence, correct labels and add review notes. Refine the question when the material points to a more focused follow-up.
03 / Across the ownership cycle
Diligence. Ownership. Exit.
The questions keep evolving.
Keep evidence review useful at each stage, with the access, scope and assessment appropriate to the company and the matter.
Before the transaction
Test the questions
behind the deal.
Review authorised agreements, communications and supporting documents. Focus the investigation on the issues your team and advisers need to assess.
- Examine customer renewals, disputes and delivery concerns.
- Review unusual terms and relevant contract passages.
- Follow litigation, regulatory, technology and IP topics in context.
- Keep supporting records and unanswered questions available for the team.
During ownership
Understand the friction.
Inform the follow-up.
Examine the communications around an operational question. Give operating partners and company teams a source-backed view of the issues to discuss.
- Trace recurring service concerns and internal escalations.
- Review supplier commitments and the correspondence around them.
- Explore customer feedback, handover issues and technology questions.
- Document observations and review decisions without treating them as predicted returns.
Company-by-company oversight
Maintain visibility.
Respect the boundaries.
Where authorised and configured, use Spot for policy-driven communications supervision and eDiscovery for a scoped investigation. Agree access and review scope with the relevant organisation.
- Apply communications policies to configured sources.
- Inspect potential concerns with supporting evidence and rationale.
- Keep supervisory outcomes and investigation records available for reporting.
- Define company and matter permissions; do not assume portfolio-wide access.
Preparing for the next owner
Revisit the history.
Prepare the evidence.
Trace how an issue developed and what the available records show. Review the material before assembling supported outputs for authorised recipients.
- Locate relevant agreements, correspondence and historical decisions.
- Check earlier concerns and the evidence of follow-up.
- Review sensitive information, privilege and redactions with advisers.
- Prepare reviewed material and source references to support the handover.
04 / Set the review up properly
Start with the material
you can actually review.
An evidence review is only as broad as the authorised records available to it. Make that boundary clear from the outset.
Agree access and scope.
Identify what the target or portfolio company can provide, the relevant people and dates, and who may inspect the material. A document in a data room is not permission to access the source system.
Define the review criteria.
Turn commercial and operational questions into a working brief and configured labels. Use manual review or AI-assisted classification, with the supporting evidence available for assessment.
Keep professional judgement in place.
The platform supports evidence review. It does not replace financial, commercial, legal or technical diligence, calculate a valuation or make the investment decision.
A useful fit
Teams with defined questions, meaningful access to supporting records and a need for controlled, source-linked review.
A boundary to recognise
A small sample cannot establish the full picture. Missing records and untested assumptions should remain visible in the team’s assessment.
05 / Give the next discussion a basis
A finding should come
with something to examine.
Support internal review, adviser discussions and handover with the material and recorded decisions behind the account.
Explain the developing picture.
Investigation reports can bring completed analysis, notable communications and supporting references together. Treat them as an account to review, with sources to check.
Assemble what is appropriate.
Build a reviewed-items pack from current review and disclosure decisions. Select the output workflow for the purpose; formal Bates production is a separate process.
Retain the record of the work.
Collection snapshots, reviewer decisions and production records help explain the scope and assessment. Review confidentiality and redactions before sharing.
More context for the conversation.
A clearer basis for the assessment.
06 / Customer control
Confidential work.
Your environment.
Bring the software to the environment your organisation controls.
Simply Discover supports customer-hosted deployment in Microsoft Azure, AWS or on premises. Agree hosting, residency, source connections and operational requirements with your IT team.
Feature, role and case permissions govern access to sensitive work. Enable the workflows and sources needed for the matter, with a defined boundary around the material being reviewed.
- Microsoft Azure
- AWS
- On premises
Platform sources include
- Microsoft 365
- Gmail & Mimecast
- Teams & Slack
- SharePoint & OneDrive
- Supported file & evidence imports
Source coverage depends on the workflow, connector or import configuration, permissions and material made available.
07 / Before you begin
Questions from
private equity teams.
How does Simply Discover support private equity due diligence?
Simply Discover helps teams examine authorised communications and documents around a defined diligence question. Scope the available material, review source-linked classifications and passages, explore people and chronology, and retain a record of the assessment.
Which data can we review?
Subject to access and configuration, platform sources include Microsoft 365, Gmail, Mimecast, Teams, Slack, SharePoint, OneDrive, supported email files and external evidence packages. In a transaction, the material available for review depends on what the target is authorised and willing to provide. A data-room document is not automatically access to the target's underlying systems.
Does AI make the investment decision?
No. AI-assisted classifications can provide summaries, rationale and supporting passages for human assessment. Manual review is also supported. The platform does not replace financial, commercial, legal or technical diligence, or make an investment recommendation.
Can we see the evidence behind a finding?
Reviewers can inspect supporting passages, source items and case context, correct labels and record decisions. Collection, review and production records support a documented explanation of the work. A surfaced concern still needs assessment.
Can the platform support portfolio monitoring?
Where authorised and configured, Spot supports policy-driven communications supervision. eDiscovery supports scoped investigations into a portfolio-company question. Permissions, sources and review scope must be agreed for each deployment and matter; portfolio ownership does not automatically provide access to every company's data.
Can it help with exit preparation?
Teams can locate and review relevant historical material, trace a question back through correspondence and prepare supported outputs for authorised recipients. Investigation reports, reviewed-items packs and formal Bates productions are distinct workflows. This is not an automatic replacement for a transaction data room.
Where does Simply Discover run?
Simply Discover supports customer-hosted deployment in Microsoft Azure, AWS or on premises. Plan access, residency, source connections and the enabled workflows for the environment your organisation controls.
What should we agree before starting?
Define the diligence questions, the material available, who may access it, the review criteria and the intended outputs. Agree the scope with the relevant company and advisers. Limited source material limits what the team can establish; the software cannot reveal records that were not made available.
Simply Discover / Private equity
Bring a question.
Build a better-supported picture.
Start with the matter your team is assessing, the records available and the questions that need a closer look.