During our recent webinar on Digitizing Your M&A Deal Pipeline, we asked attendees to share their perspectives on the challenges they face in deal origination and screening — and the tools they see as most valuable for overcoming them. The responses tell a clear story about where today’s dealmakers are struggling and where they’re placing their bets on technology.
What dealmakers struggle with most
When asked about the greatest challenges in deal origination and screening, one issue stood out:
- Tracking and consistency of process was flagged by 80% of respondents, making it by far the most pressing concern.
Other commonly cited challenges included:
- Quality of deals to improve performance (40%)
- Maintaining and collaborating on relationships (40%)
- Prioritization with accuracy (40%)
By contrast, areas like “shortage of intelligence gathering” barely registered, suggesting that it’s not the absence of data that slows deals — it’s the ability to manage and analyze it systematically.
The tools teams value most
We also asked which technologies and tools could make the biggest difference in origination and screening. The top responses clustered around AI and automation:
- AI to automate analysis and prioritization (60%)
- Control, visibility, and reporting of pipeline activities (60%)
- AI and tools to guide best-practice M&A workflows (60%)
- Workflow automation (50%)
- AI to identify targets (50%)
Notably, the most popular answers went once again beyond simple data access. Deal teams are looking for technology that guides decision-making and creates repeatability — a strong reminder that digital enablement has become core to M&A strategy.
From recap to reality: why it matters
The poll results reinforce what we see every day working with dealmakers: the challenge isn’t gathering information, but bringing order, consistency, and intelligence to the pipeline.
M&A teams know that spreadsheets and disconnected systems can’t deliver:
- Repeatability — Without structured workflows, every deal risks becoming a one-off exercise.
- Accountability — Visibility into who owns what and where deals stand is too often missing.
- Scalability — As firms grow, the pipeline complexity outpaces manual tracking.
Digitizing the M&A process addresses all three. By embedding best-practice playbooks, AI-driven insights, and real-time reporting into a single system, firms move from reactive deal management to proactive execution. The result: better decisions, faster cycle times, and more value created across the portfolio.
The bottom line
The responses from our webinar audience highlight a turning point. As the M&A landscape grows more complex, firms that digitize their pipelines today will be the ones positioned to seize tomorrow’s opportunities with confidence.
Next up: Optimizing Due Diligence
If pipeline challenges are top of mind, the next step is ensuring diligence runs just as smoothly. Join us for our upcoming webinar, Optimizing Diligence with Digital Tools and AI, where we’ll share how leading teams are streamlining diligence with structured processes and automation. Register today!
