DEV Community

Cover image for Data for Due Diligence: Leveraging File Management APIs for Enhanced Research
Christian Farinella for Onboarding Buddy

Posted on • Originally published at onboardingbuddy.co

Data for Due Diligence: Leveraging File Management APIs for Enhanced Research

Unlocking Deeper Insights with Advanced File Management APIs

In today's complex business landscape, comprehensive due diligence is non-negotiable. Whether it's for mergers and acquisitions (M&A), regulatory compliance, or investment analysis, the ability to thoroughly vet information is paramount. However, a significant challenge lies in the sheer volume and unstructured nature of data. Traditional methods of sifting through countless documents—contracts, emails, reports, news articles—are time-consuming, prone to human error, and often miss critical hidden insights.

This is where Onboarding Buddy's File Management APIs come into play. Moving beyond mere file storage, these APIs transform vast seas of unstructured data into intelligent, searchable, and queryable assets, empowering researchers and analysts to conduct far more effective due diligence.

The Challenge of Unstructured Data in Due Diligence

Consider an M&A scenario. A company is evaluating a target acquisition. They receive terabytes of data: legal documents, internal memos, financial reports, communication logs, and even publicly available news archives. A significant portion of this is unstructured text. Finding potential liabilities, assessing market risks, or identifying key intellectual property buried within this data requires immense effort. Without advanced tools, critical information can easily be overlooked, leading to unforeseen risks or missed opportunities. Researchers often struggle with:

  • Volume: Too much data to manually review.
  • Variety: Diverse formats (PDFs, Word docs, emails, images).
  • Velocity: New data constantly being generated.
  • Value Extraction: Difficulty in finding specific information or patterns within unstructured text.

Onboarding Buddy addresses these challenges by making unstructured data intelligent through powerful API capabilities.

How Onboarding Buddy's File Management APIs Enhance Due Diligence

Onboarding Buddy offers a suite of APIs designed to turn your document repository into a dynamic research tool:

1. File Upload (/file-service/upload)

The first step is to get your unstructured documents into a system that can process them. Onboarding Buddy's upload API allows you to securely ingest documents, preparing them for advanced analysis.

import requests

headers = {
    "ob-app-key": "<your-app-key>",
    "ob-api-key": "<your-api-key>",
    "ob-api-secret": "<your-api-secret>"
}

file_path = "path/to/company_annual_report.pdf" # Example: Uploading an annual report
with open(file_path, "rb") as file:
    files = {"file": (file_path, file)}
    response = requests.post(
        "https://api.onboardingbuddy.co/file-service/upload",
        headers=headers,
        files=files
    )
response.raise_for_status()
print(response.json())
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

2. Semantic Search (/file-service/search)

Unlike keyword-based search, semantic search understands the context and meaning behind your queries. This means you can find relevant documents even if they don't contain the exact words you're searching for. For due diligence, this is invaluable for identifying subtle connections or indirect references.

import requests
import uuid

headers = {
    "ob-app-key": "<your-app-key>",
    "ob-api-key": "<your-api-key>",
    "ob-api-secret": "<your-api-secret>",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

payload = {
    "correlationId": str(uuid.uuid4()),
    "searchString": "potential environmental liabilities in recent acquisitions"
}

response = requests.post(
    "https://onboardingbuddy.co/file-service/search",
    headers=headers,
    json=payload
)
response.raise_for_status()
print(response.json())
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

3. Document RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) (/file-service/query/rag)

RAG allows you to ask natural language questions about your documents and receive concise, generated answers grounded in the content of your files. Imagine asking, "Summarize all instances of regulatory non-compliance mentioned in the past five years' audit reports" and getting a direct, synthesized response.

import requests
import uuid

headers = {
    "ob-app-key": "<your-app-key>",
    "ob-api-key": "<your-api-key>",
    "ob-api-secret": "<your-api-secret>",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

file_global_id = "<file-global-id-of-audit-report>" # Replace with actual file ID
payload = {
    "correlationId": str(uuid.uuid4()),
    "fileGlobalId": file_global_id,
    "query": "What were the key financial risks identified in the Q3 report?"
}

response = requests.post(
    "https://onboardingbuddy.co/file-service/query/rag",
    headers=headers,
    json=payload
)
response.raise_for_status()
print(response.json())
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Future Trends in Data-Driven Due Diligence

The role of APIs in due diligence is set to expand dramatically. We anticipate:

  • Hyper-Personalized Insights: AI models will become even more adept at understanding specific business contexts, delivering highly tailored insights for niche due diligence requirements.
  • Real-time Due Diligence: Continuous monitoring and real-time alerts on new data points that could impact a deal or compliance status.
  • Automated Risk Scoring: Integration of API-driven insights directly into automated risk assessment frameworks, providing quantitative risk scores for various aspects of a target entity.
  • Cross-Industry Compliance Integration: Seamless integration with global regulatory databases, enabling proactive compliance checks across multiple jurisdictions and industry standards.
  • Explainable AI (XAI): Increased demand for models that can not only provide answers but also explain how they arrived at those answers, crucial for audit trails and legal defensibility in due diligence.

By leveraging these advanced File Management APIs, organizations can move from reactive, manual data processing to proactive, intelligent insights, fundamentally transforming their approach to due diligence and strategic decision-making.

Deepen your research. Explore the analytical power of our File Management APIs.

Visit www.onboardingbuddy.co to learn more.

Top comments (0)