In a tax due diligence process, two factors come together that are difficult to reconcile: intense time pressure and large volumes of complex information. Tax advisors need to review documents from a target company, identify tax-relevant matters, assess risks, and turn their findings into a reliable report for an M&A transaction.
This requires expertise and experience above all. At the same time, the process consists of many individual steps that can be standardized, structured, and partially automated.
This is exactly where RÖDL's M&A Factory comes in. The custom application was developed jointly with Softwarehelden and is based on their Cluu digitalization platform. RÖDL contributed the tax expertise, assessment logic, and process requirements. Softwarehelden turned these requirements into a digital application. Cluu provides the technical foundation.
The use case therefore demonstrates more than the digitalization of a single advisory process. It shows how specialized expertise can be translated into software without having to build an entire technical platform from scratch for every new use case.
The challenge is not a lack of expertise
The objective of tax due diligence is clear: a company’s tax risks must be identified, assessed, and documented in a way that enables the decision-makers involved in a transaction to understand them. What makes the task complex are the conditions under which it takes place. M&A processes are often subject to considerable time pressure. At the same time, large and highly diverse sets of data and documents need to be analyzed. Manual processes therefore require significant time and can also result in findings being prepared and presented inconsistently.
RÖDL therefore identifies standardization, automation, and traceability as key objectives of the M&A Factory. The challenge, however, was not simply to transfer an existing process into a digital form. Instead, the knowledge of the tax experts had to be structured in such a way that software could work with it.
Which information is relevant? How should it be categorized? Which assessment criteria and logic apply? How should findings be documented? And at which points is the review and decision of a tax advisor essential? Only once questions like these have been answered can a professional process be transformed into a functioning digital application.
The software provides structure – professional responsibility remains with the experts
The M&A Factory supports tax due diligence through a defined process. Tax-relevant information is automatically identified, structured, and classified according to predefined assessment logic. Identified risks can then be incorporated into the tax due diligence report.
According to RÖDL, artificial intelligence is also used in the process, including for data extraction, structuring, and assessment. The key, however, lies in the division of responsibilities. The software prepares information, structures workflows, and helps ensure a consistent process. The professional assessment remains with the tax advisors. They review the results and retain responsibility for the tax evaluation. Expert knowledge is therefore not replaced by software. Instead, it is translated into a digital process and made systematically available within that process.
This principle is particularly relevant for knowledge-intensive areas of a business. The real difficulty of many digitalization projects does not lie in the technology itself. It lies in translating often implicit expert knowledge into rules, data structures, and workflows without restricting the professional judgment that remains essential.
RÖDL defines the process, Softwarehelden makes it digital
The roles in developing the M&A Factory were clearly defined. RÖDL specified the professional requirements, process steps, and assessment logic for tax due diligence. Softwarehelden translated these requirements into digital workflows and developed the application on the basis of Cluu.
Professional ownership therefore remained where the expertise resides: with RÖDL’s tax experts. Softwarehelden’s technical role was to translate this knowledge into a functioning application.
Cluu provides the shared platform for this purpose. Cluu provides the shared platform for this purpose. Data, process logic, user interfaces, and existing systems can be connected within a common architecture. Custom applications can then be built on this foundation and further developed as new requirements emerge.
For RÖDL, this meant that the M&A Factory did not have to start from scratch from a technical perspective. Instead of first developing an entire underlying architecture, the development team was able to focus much more closely on the actual business process.
Why the platform approach matters for companies
This distinction becomes particularly relevant when a company wants to digitalize more than just a single process. Business departments often have numerous specialized workflows for which standard software is either too rigid or unnecessarily complex. Custom software can close this gap. However, if every application is developed entirely independently, a new challenge quickly arises: separate data models, authorization concepts, interfaces, user interfaces, and operating environments. Digitalizing one process can therefore create new IT complexity.
A platform approach is designed to prevent exactly this. Recurring technical capabilities do not need to be developed again for every application. Instead, different business applications can be built on a shared technical foundation. This shifts development effort away from repeatedly building basic technical functionality and toward the actual business process. The M&A Factory is a good example of this approach. The application itself is highly specific to tax transaction advisory. The platform underneath it is not.
Cluu was originally developed for complex processes in automotive engineering and vehicle testing and is now used as a digitalization platform for a wide range of business processes. For CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and business leaders, this separation is particularly relevant: the business process can remain highly customized without requiring the technical foundation to be rebuilt from scratch every time.
Digitalization starts with the expertise of the business department
The RÖDL case also demonstrates another important point: successful process digitalization is rarely an IT project alone. Technology can structure data, execute workflows, and apply rules. But it does not inherently know why an experienced tax advisor considers a particular issue relevant, which information is required for an assessment, or how a tax risk should be classified from a professional perspective.
That knowledge comes from the business experts. The role of technology is to turn this knowledge into a reliable digital process. The M&A Factory therefore brings together two areas of expertise: RÖDL’s tax transaction expertise and Softwarehelden’s platform and software development capabilities. Together, they created an application that provides structured support for a complex, knowledge-intensive process while ensuring that professional review remains in the hands of the experts.
This also offers a broader lesson for other companies.
The first question at the beginning of a digitalization project does not necessarily have to be: What software is already available on the market for this?
Another question may be more valuable: What valuable expertise currently exists within our departments, in the minds of our employees, in Excel files, or in manual processes – and how can we structure it in such a way that it becomes a digital process?
Cluu does not provide the finished business process. The platform provides the technical foundation on which companies can transform their own expertise into custom applications.
