Clayton Welsh leads on the due diligence process within the Research and Enterprise Office at the University of Essex. Part of his role has been to implement a screening tool to help with due diligence at the university.
Providing assurance at a glance
Nexis Diligence from LexisNexis was selected as the optimal tool to assist with the due diligence work. During the demos with the Nexis team, Clayton was particularly impressed by the interface which provides an initial overview with options of navigating to view more detailed information.
“When we had a demo of Nexis Diligence, one thing which struck me as impressive, was the immediate dashboard view which provides a good first look and enables you to drill down to more in depth information.”
Powerful reporting capabilities at your fingertips
The ability to quickly generate due diligence reports has proved particularly valuable for Clayton.
“One aspect of my role here is to alert the senior management to anything that could be cause for concern. Nexis Diligence is particularly helpful in this regard, as it allows me to download a report to attach to an email to support my assessment.”
“It’s more than paid for itself”
Clayton emphasises the importance to universities of avoiding any reputational damage, and how a screening tool can provide assurance.
“Maintaining a good reputation is crucial in the higher education sector. A university certainly wouldn't want to partner with any organisation which has current or historic concerns regarding corruption, bribery, or is likely to collapse into insolvency.”
“A screening tool such as Nexis Diligence is a vital tool for reputation management. Over the course of our first year using Nexis Diligence, we have seen the benefits the tool can bring us.”
More efficient due diligence
Clayton has found that access to Nexis Diligence generally speeds up the process of performing checks on overseas partner organisations. This is crucial when university departments are partnering with their international peers on various research projects.
“If you perform a full due diligence check on new potential overseas partner organisations, it can take quite some time - so one of the things I like about Nexis Diligence is the fact that it speeds up this process without compromising the need to check information thoroughly. Academics or researchers don't want too much delay if they're ready to start a project. A good screening tool prevents unnecessary holdups and makes due diligence more of a slick process without cutting any corners.”
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