Optimising M&A target selection across key geographies

Royal HaskoningDHV is an independent consultancy which integrates 140 years of engineering expertise with digital technologies and software solutions. They pursue an active M&A and partnership agenda, which focuses on combining their domain expertise with digital expertise. The digital strategy, including high profile acquisitions resulted in the launch of Royal HaskoningDHV Digital to deliver digital consultancy and software solutions. Venture IQ has been helping Royal HaskoningDHV with data-driven target selection searches for 4 years now. The relationship has resulted in a series of successful acquisitions across different parts of the business, among which predictive simulation company Lanner, flood and climate risk software company Ambiental, digital transformation consultant Novius and various others.

‍High-tech iterative searching

Each search kicks off with a number of example companies, a set of hygiene criteria that companies need to comply with, as well as desired specific capabilities that companies should own. With this information, Venture IQ can quickly cast a wide net using proprietary deal-scouting search algorithms. For instance, Catalist can perform a “reverse search”, using the example companies as input. The results are websites and online documents, where the identified companies appear in, but likely competitors are also listed. The services team at Venture IQ uses these results to run an iterative process in finding additional sources, where similar companies may appear to quickly identify all companies in a certain space. By collaborating on Catalist, teams on both sides stay up-to-date and are able to efficiently share knowledge on recent developments. 

Value of a human eye in company analysis

Royal HaskoningDHV is uniquely able to outline the dream candidate and detail the desired capabilities they would like to own. Often, these desired capabilities are not standard company data and require desk research and interpretation. In search projects, Venture IQ can translate the desired capabilities from Royal HaskoningDHV into criteria to structure and rank companies. Only on companies that fulfil the hygiene criteria, the team of Analysts gather custom data points to create an as complete picture and data-driven ranking of all identified companies against Royal HaskoningDHV’s criteria.