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Buyer's Guide:
Axial Networks, GF Data Resources, Rkon Technologies, Sutton Place Strategies and Walker Information provide useful new services to dealmakers, from social networking tools to customer Satisfaction surveyrs By Danielle Fugazy
The dealmaking ecosystem is teeming with excellent established service providers in traditional areas, such as accounting. But there are also lesser-known companies providing specialized services worth considering. Here are five companies that stand out for their ability to offer useful and innovative services, such as helping to value a deal or eval- uate a potential targets relationship with its customers.
1. Axial Networks
Just as Linkedln and Facebook have changed how colleagues, friends and family members connect, social networks are transforming traditional deal networking. Founded in 2010, Axial Networks Inc. pro- vides an online system to help dealmakers establish and nurture deals.
"It's really a business development tool to help lenders, investors, advisers and CEOs find opportunities. It's how deals can get started," says Axial chief executive Peter Lehrman.
"Axial is gaining traction, because the old way of connecting makes it hard for the right people to consistently find the right opportunities at the right point in time in a hyper-fragmented marketplace. We provide a way for everyone to connect effectively and figure out whether or not to pursue a deal together relatively quickly," Lehrman adds.
Axial boasts 20,000 members, including investment bankers, private equity investors, lenders, and CEOs. About 500 professionals join the network monthly, and there are roughly 200 new sellers going to market each week.
"We view ourselves as a platform to connect people around actionable opportunities. Once people are connected, there's a whole host of things that have to happen," says Lehrman, which is why Axial entered into a partnership with Merrill Datasite, which enables transaction professionals to open up a data room, once a process gets more serious.
"There's a huge amount of due diligence that occurs between identifying an opportunity and consummating a transaction," he says. "Merrill helps customers store all the data that prospective buyers need to see. If sellers decide to share preliminary information, they can easily allow potential buyers to look at their data site with a simple a click of the button from our site."
2. GF Data Resources
In 2006,...