Deal-execution glossary
Plain definitions for the terms behind Arvya and the deal-execution category.
What is a Deal Brain?
A Deal Brain is a single sourced record of everything happening on a deal. It pulls from email, calls, meetings, trackers, CRM, documents, and data rooms, keeps every fact tied to the source it came from, and stays current as the deal moves. It is the memory a deal team can ask questions of and act on.
What is AI deal execution?
AI deal execution is using AI to do the operational work around a live deal: updating the CRM and trackers, drafting follow-ups, scheduling, preparing weekly updates, and answering deal questions with sources. A human approves each action. It is execution, not advice. The AI prepares the work and the team decides.
What is a closed-loop deal process?
A closed-loop deal process is one where deal activity, the record of it, and the next action stay connected. Work happening on the deal updates the record, the record drives the next step, and a human approves before anything goes out. Nothing falls through the cracks between systems.
What is deal management software?
Deal management software helps deal teams track pipeline, relationships, and process across a transaction. Traditional tools are CRMs the team types into, like DealCloud, Salesforce, or Affinity. Newer approaches build a sourced deal record automatically and prepare the next action for approval, so the record stays current without manual entry.
What is CRM hygiene?
CRM hygiene is how complete, accurate, and current the records in a CRM are. Good hygiene means contacts, statuses, criteria, and activity reflect reality. Poor hygiene means blank fields, duplicates, stale facts, and records nobody trusts. At deal firms, hygiene fails structurally: updating the CRM is extra work with no immediate payoff, so it loses to live deal work every time.
What is CRM drift?
CRM drift is the gap that opens between a CRM and reality as the outside world changes. People change firms, funds close, investment criteria shift, portfolios turn over, and none of it types itself into the record. Drift happens even at firms with perfect logging discipline, because the facts decay on their own schedule.
What is institutional memory at a deal firm?
Institutional memory is what a firm collectively knows about its relationships and deals: who was shown what, why a buyer passed, what a sponsor promised, which processes went well and why. At most firms it lives in individual inboxes, notes, and heads, so it walks out the door with every departure and rotation.
What is a pre-call brief?
A pre-call brief is the preparation document a banker reads before a meeting: who the attendees are, the firm's strategy and holdings, every prior interaction, deals previously shown and their outcomes, open commitments, and what has changed since the last conversation. A good brief is sourced, every fact carries where it came from and how recent it is.
What is read-after-write verification for CRM updates?
Read-after-write verification means that after an approved update is written to a CRM, the system reads the destination record back and confirms the change actually landed, then links the exact record as a receipt. Failures surface explicitly instead of disappearing. It turns 'the update was sent' into 'the update is provably in the record.'
What is a buyer tracker in M&A?
A buyer tracker is the working document a sell-side team uses to run a process: every potential buyer, their status (contacted, NDA, CIM sent, IOI, passed), key dates, and next steps. It is usually an Excel or SharePoint sheet updated by hand from emails, calls, and meetings, which is why it is chronically a week behind the process it describes.