Virtual data rooms are not restricted to one specific industry. Virtual data rooms are used whenever a business needs to communicate confidential documents to outside parties. This could include the merger, acquisition, IPO, or any other business transaction that requires the exchange of sensitive information. In certain instances the documents are required for regulatory reasons, such as when a company needs to give access to auditors or regulators who need to review its documents.

Many companies turn to a virtual data room to speed up the due diligence process for M&A deals. Due diligence involves the creation of a lot of documents which must be reviewed by a wide range of parties. Being able to easily browse and download the documents in a VDR allows the process to be completed faster and more cost efficiently.

Other companies also use VDRs to facilitate sharing of documents for purposes of regulatory or litigation with legal teams, clients, and third party. For instance the law firm might require access to the records of a client and must do so in a secure location to not violate privacy laws.

A VDR lets businesses automatize processes, workflows, and approvals. This can cut down on the amount of time and effort required to perform tasks manually, such as signing a NDA or managing invoice leadership pricing strategies in digital storage approvals, or uploading files to a dataroom. A VDR equipped with advanced document processing capabilities will be able search the text of the majority of types of files, such as PDFs and Excel files.