I’ve been running a boutique m&a shop for three years and data prep was killing my margins. Every deal meant hours of reformatting client financials, standardizing industry comps, cleaning up transaction data before I could even start the real analysis work. Tried hiring offshore help but the quality control issues made it worse. considered bringing on a full-time analyst but couldn't justify the overhead for our deal volume. The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to solve everything manually and started systematically automating the repetitive parts: client quickbooks exports: standardized chart of accounts mapping industry data: consistent formatting templates comparable transactions: automated screening and sorting I still need manual review but the grunt work is handled automatically now. went from 8-10 hours of prep per deal to maybe 2 hours. margins improved and i can actually focus on advisory work instead of data janitor duties. game changer for small firms that can't afford dedicated support staff.