Alcoa, the leading global provider of aluminum products – including world-famous Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil -- needed a fast, secure way to perform due diligence tasks during the sale of some of its non-core assets.

The company had decided back in January to sell of some of its diverse business units in an effort to contain costs and focus better on what it does best – make and sell aluminum products. Business units earmarked for sale included specialty chemicals, specialty packaging equipment, architectural products in North America and commodity automotive fasteners, among others. Overall, the units account for more than $1 billion in total revenues.

The problem was that the organizations interested in purchasing Alcoa’s assets were located all over the world.

“To manage physical data rooms in multiple countries would incur prohibitive costs, both in time and money,” said Barbara Jeremiah, executive vice president for corporate development at Alcoa. “We know there are many companies – both U.S. as well as international – who may be interested in buying these assets but are reluctant to fly halfway around the world, sometimes more than once, to examine the documents. Taking the process online with Intralinks solves many logistics problems.”

Plus, the old method of providing physical rooms where potential buyers could peruse confidential due diligence documents about the transactions limited the number of buyers that could be served at one time. For example, while one organization used the room, sometimes for two or three days, other interested parties needed to wait their turn.

Alcoa decided the time was ripe to move the whole process online. It contracted with Intralinks to develop a secure, virtual data room. Through Intralink’s partnership with document imaging company, IKON, Alcoa is able to image the necessary documentation and upload it to the Intralinks server in just a few days. Once there, Alcoa makes the decisions on who gets access to the documents, and then provides the approved users with a secure password that allows them to access the virtual room via their Internet browser.

The system solves all the problems at once. Not only do interested parties never have to leave their home base, since the virtual rooms are accessed via a browser, but many organizations can view the due diligence documents at one time, significantly speeding up the entire process. In fact, Intralinks estimates that its virtual room setup shaves up to 30 days off the typical due diligence process.