Author: Josh

Altvia Wins Buy-Side Technology Award for Best CRM Platform

Posted on November 6, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Altvia is awarded Best CRM platform in the Buy-Side Technology Awards hosted by WatersTechnology. The purpose of the Buy-Side Technology awards is to recognize the leading technologies and third-party providers.

Judges keep in mind three factors when evaluating nominations for best CRM platform: specificity, innovation, and collaboration. The market-leading technologies developed specifically for use by buy-side firms, designed to allow them to operate more efficiently, transparently, and more judiciously. Innovation to address the most pressing business, regulatory, operational and technology needs. Collaboration, regulatory compliance, and managing the various risks/challenges buy-side firms face daily while also allowing them to maximize their operational efficiency.

This marks a second win this year as Altvia has also won a Silver Stevie® Award in the FinTech category at the 17th Annual International Business Awards®.

Read the full press release here.

How to Prep For Your Virtual Annual Meeting

Posted on October 28, 2020 by - Investor Relations & LP Experience

The Benefits of Software for Fund Managers and Investors During a Virtual Annual Meeting

Restrictions on indoor meetings of large groups of people, travel restrictions, and concerns from members about attending large-group meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic may mean that holding a traditional, physical annual general meeting (AGM) is impossible. These limitations have forced many firms to start planning a virtual annual meeting.

As a fund manager, you need an AGM to communicate with investors and reflect on a year’s worth of work (and investment). This requires a format that enables you to celebrate portfolio companies victories, learn from defeats, and present your firm’s strategy moving forward.

Annual meeting preparation is already stressful considering the months of hard work dedicated to planning the event. Now throw in the uncertainty of a pandemic.

This is where it gets good. Fund managers that use fund management software are at an extreme advantage for presenting and promoting a fully virtual event.

Fund managers that use fund management software are at an extreme advantage for presenting and promoting a fully virtual annual meeting.

Prepping for a Virtual Annual Meeting

It’s your first virtual annual meeting. Typically you are planning an event to gather all of your investors together to feed them full of information (and food and booze). To most, it’s a necessary evil that requires months of preparation and some serious time away from your core business activities.

This year you are busy selecting a virtual platform that can support your AGM and stay compliant. Focus on the event and let your fund software handle the data details.

Using only spreadsheets of data and calendars to track your activities, your analysts are going to have to comb through a year’s worth of Excel rows and shared calendars (read 10 Reasons Why Excel for Fund Management Doesn’t Work), essentially to count up how many meetings you’ve had, how many calls you’ve had and with whom, and the number of companies you’ve invested in and their revenues or changes in revenues.

This is a tedious process. But it’s also likely to be highly inaccurate due to human error.

For fund managers with a fund management software system, the process is easy and more efficient with a quick look at an interactive dashboard. Quickly see how many interactions you’ve had with each investor and real-time visual representations of portfolio companies’ performance.

For fund managers that enlist a capable fund management software system, the data compilation process for an annual meeting is made easier and more efficient.

Good private equity fund management software is designed to, among other things, track and report on exactly the data that analysts are spending weeks or months gathering: what have you been up to in the past year? If you have the right system, getting this information for your annual meeting can be as easy as the click of a button.

We have several clients doing this reporting already. Click here to read our client case studies.

Improve Annual Meetings for Investors

As a Limited Partner, the most obvious benefit to using fund management software is the potential to significantly reduce the amount of prep work required to understand fund performance.

Every diligent LP plans to arrive at the meeting, knowing what the manager’s portfolio looks like. However, without a regimented approach and effort, this plan usually results in a chaotic scramble that produces a half-baked summary. While this summary will remind you of the more notable recent events or pieces of information, it will never tell you what hundreds of pages of quarterly reports have explicitly (and not-so-explicitly) conveyed over the course of the year.

On the other hand, when you have a GP that shares detailed performance information in a fund or data management portal, tracking each portfolio company becomes easier. In mere moments, you can see operational metrics and broader portfolio analytics. You already know what the manager has to share at the virtual AGM. You are one step ahead, ready to ask about the value drivers or the portfolio companies that have grown revenue or EBITDA most over the last year.

Using private equity fund management software, you can capture that data and are better equipped to analyze and understand it. Not only do you save yourself time, but you also have an advantage because you’re already making sense of the data they’re reporting on. Demonstrating to a GP that you are an active and interested investor can earn your priority.

A final justification for a digital fund management software for investors during the annual meeting season is simply to make it easy to catch up on the prior year’s activities, including meetings you were a part of, but meetings and conversations that you weren’t. We all want to avoid getting caught off guard, and while technology can help prevent that, it can also enable more meaningful conversations with managers that make you stand out and open up the highest potential for value creation. Whether being proactive in offering to co-invest in a value driver you’re already aware of, or simply coming off as on top of your relationship with the manager, avoid being caught off guard and falling behind by using technology as a strength.

Annual meetings are a gathering of who’s who in the alternative investment community.

Annual meetings are a gathering of who’s who in the alternative investment community. For investor relations teams, they can be a great hunting ground. So, understanding who is going to be at the meeting and knowing who in your network can provide an introduction is a very valuable tool. All of these things are easily captured in data but easily forgotten in our heads. That is where a CRM system built for private equity comes in and helps you act on network connections.

Every fund manager or investment firm needs fund management software. For those that are actively raising capital, chasing new deals, managing a portfolio, and communicating with investors, it’s absolutely a strategic advantage. Of course, the software needs to be used all year long, but it becomes evident just how beneficial it is during your firm’s annual meeting and in the firm’s road to digital transformation.

Deal Sourcing Platforms: 4 Best Practices for Private Equity Firms

Posted on October 5, 2020 by - Deal & Pipeline Management

Best practices for your private equity deal sourcing strategy.

Deal sourcing is the lifeblood of your private equity firm. And yet, research has shown that nearly 70% of PE firms in the United States close 3 deals or less in a year.

Deal sourcing activities must be the focus of your firm’s growth strategy.

Here are 4 best practices proven to improve private equity deal sourcing.

  1. Hire Business Development Professionals
  2. Leverage Data Analytics Technology
  3. Stay Top of Mind
  4. Segment Deals By Tiers

#1: Hire Business Development Professionals

Professional business development representatives are proven to improve the number of deals sourced for firms.

If you’re a smaller firm and don’t currently have a business development team, it’s best to hire your first one to three with experience and proven results. These people can help create business development processes, KPIs, and initial ROI. They will then be invaluable resources when your firm is ready to build a bigger deal team.

Business development professionals help streamline the deal sourcing process and put consistency into deal sourcing numbers.

They use a mixture of research, email, and even calls to build lists and contact new potential deals.

It’s best to have a Private Equity CRM in place for business development reps, so they have a place to keep track of deal flow management.

#2: Leverage Private Equity Data Analytics

Your firm must embrace technology for private equity firms’ to properly use the data that is being collected and created throughout the deal sourcing and closing process. There are four main benefits to using data management technology for deal sourcing:

1. Integration of disparate data: Many PE firms are still using relatively archaic tools to retain data—mainly spreadsheets, calendars, and emails. This makes it extremely difficult to answer critical questions about the efficacy of data sourcing, pipeline velocity, and closing processes.

2. Automating processes:  Follow-up emails, tasks, and reminders are just a few processes that can be automated. Leveraging automation helps ensure that your deal team leaves no stone unturned when it comes to deal sourcing activities.

3. Tracking every deal: Using CRM technology to track deals from the first touchpoint to win/loss provides your team with invaluable deal sourcing information for the future, like who’s our top-performing deal source by returns to the fund? What is our conversion rate at each stage of the deal pipeline and where do deals stall? It also helps the firm determine the ROI for business development investments to improve processes.

4. Turns data into information: Using technology means your firm can determine information such as what good vs. poor quality deals look like, what KPIs should be tracked (and how business developers are measuring up to them), etc.

#3: Stay Top of Mind 

Not all deals sourced are going to be ready to close in the next 30 – 90 days… in fact, most won’t. But an experienced business development rep knows that doesn’t mean the deal is dead.

That’s why keeping top of mind with contacts associated with deals is critical. Once an organization is ready to come back to the table to talk about a deal, they’ll remember who you are, what you’re about, and (hopefully) have a good impression of your firm.

Running investor relation campaigns to stay top of mind can be as easy as setting up a weekly and/or monthly newsletter, calling to “touch base” on an extended schedule, doing site visits, and meeting up at tradeshows or other events.

This is another area that using a CRM solution built for the needs of PE firms can be very helpful to make sure that high-value contacts are still hearing from your firm, even if they aren’t quite ready to make a move—yet.

#4: Segment Deals By Tiers

Once your deal team has a good idea of deal quality characteristics, pipeline velocity, etc. you should begin to segment deal sourcing activities into tiers from most valuable to least. For most firms, 2 to 3 tiers are more than enough.

Segmenting deals in this way helps business development reps focus their time on the most valuable deal opportunities while backfilling their time with other opportunities. It’s a more effective and efficient way to allocate time and resources.

There is a lot of churn in the private equity industry. If your firm intends to survive and thrive, deal sourcing must be the primary focus of your organization. Using these four simple best practices, your firm can improve the number and quality of new deals sourced for both near and long-term growth.

Is your deal team prepared to increase their goals? Read our Winning Deals in a Hyper-Competitive Market to learn how firms win more deals.

How Firms Can Promote Fundraising Activities Virtually

Posted on October 5, 2020 by - Fundraising Strategy

The Right Technology for Your Fundraising Activities

In order to be successful in raising a new fund, GPs must be able to engage their existing investors but also forge relationships with new investors for whom the fund would be a good fit. Historically, much of the work with fundraising activities have been done in person, since personal connections and trust are fundamental to success in the private capital markets. In fact, not surprisingly, two-thirds of investors say they would prefer to work with a manager with whom they already have a relationship.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic—with its lockdowns, travel restrictions, and health concerns—has dramatically altered the private capital landscape and stakeholders’ ability to meet in person. And, even as life starts returning to something closer to “normal,” it’s obvious that there will be lasting effects from the crisis.

Survey Shows Few Fund Managers Have the Technology They Need

Were firms prepared for this type of event, with private equity technology that would allow them to keep working effectively even when working remotely? Generally speaking, most were not.

In a survey of 120 fund managers in March 2020, PEI learned that of those who were planning to launch a new fund, just 17% expected no delay in doing so. This is a clear indication that at the time of the survey, managers did not have the technology to support remote working and their private capital market workflows.

Essential Technology for Fundraising Activities

As fund managers who were caught flat-footed by the pandemic scramble to adapt, they have become very aware of the tools they need to succeed amid the uncertainty of a global crisis. This includes:

  • A centralized, easily accessible contact information database

Firms that had been using spreadsheets and group emails to keep track of investor information have learned that that approach is especially ineffective when you have a dispersed workforce and you can’t just walk down the hall to talk with a colleague about a particular investor or fundraise.

As a fund manager, you need a CRM that’s designed specifically for use in this business. Altvia’s CRM solution, stores information on current and prospective investors and the campaigns that have targeted them in a way that makes data highly secure yet easy for authorized users to find and access. That data can then be used to answer questions like, “What are our highest-converting fundraising campaigns?” and “What are the characteristics of our most committed LPs?”

What are our highest-converting fundraising campaigns?

What are the characteristics of our most committed LPs?

What’s more, the system tracks the stages that fundraises progress through. This visibility makes it easier for teams to work together toward a common goal.

  • An advanced communication tool 

When a fundraise becomes a virtual process, you need more than a simple mass email tool. Your digital communications are replacing in-person interactions, so they have to be personalized, informative, engaging, and well-timed. Correspond Market Edition enables you to craft and send impactful emails quickly and efficiently to a segmented list of investors, in part thanks to tight integration with your AIM database.

The system also provides accurate, up-to-date information about your outreach efforts. Who has received your email? Who has opened it? How many people clicked on a link in the email? The answers to these questions guide you as you fine-tune your communications to maximize their effectiveness. Plus, Correspond has unsubscribe functionality that helps ensure compliance with the rules and regulations around emailing and spam.

  • A virtual data room/LP portal

In difficult times, being able to provide fast access to important files is more important than ever. A virtual data room and portal specially designed for this market, like ShareSecure, not only enables you to provide investors and potential investors with key documents, you can also use the platform to do things like posting promotional videos of your firm sharing the news about a new fund launching.

In addition, you can embed a dashboard that displays your firm’s track record so that current and prospective investors can obtain information about you in self-serve fashion whenever they have a need for it.

Implement Advanced Systems to Improve Fundraising Results

Equip your team with technology to better engage current and prospective investors. Download our free guide, Creating an Excellent Investor Experience below. This guide covers how the market-leading private equity firms are differentiating themselves with technology to attract top investors.

Altvia Receives Silver Stevie® International Business Awards®

Posted on September 15, 2020 by - Uncategorized

Altvia was named winner of a Silver Stevie® Award in the FinTech category in The 17th Annual International Business Awards®

The International Business Awards are the world’s premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small – are eligible to submit nominations. The 2020 IBAs received entries from organizations in 63 nations and territories. More than 3,800 nominations from organizations of all sizes were reviewed.

Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from July through early September.

One judge who reviewed Altvia commented, “Altvia has combined innovative, future-focused technology with proven processes to fundamentally improve the communication and relationship between General Partners, Limited Partners, and Portfolio Companies.”

Read the full press release here.

Debunking The Top Private Equity Software Myths

Posted on September 9, 2020 by - Private Equity Technology

With Proper Configuration and Training, Salesforce Absolutely Does Work for Private Equity

Salesforce was recently named the #1 CRM for the sixth year in a row. This distinction is high praise for the company that absolutely dominates the market. But reasonably, it remains questionable regarding the challenges using Salesforce for you private equity software.

It’s true there are significant pain points for private equity firms that are trying to work within the Salesforce “mold”. But these “pains” can be overcome by partnering with a team with the technology to make this best-in-class CRM work for private equity firms.

Common Misconceptions About Salesforce for Private Equity Software

The first misconception about Salesforce is that it’s too unwieldy and complicated to be effective. This is a misconception that spans all industries, and private equity is no exception.

The issue that most firms run into with Salesforce is improper implementation and training. Any new tool you implement in your organization needs to be managed properly. Taking the time to sit down with key stakeholders to assess needs and map out key goals, milestones, and project owners will significantly increase the success of the new technology. It is also a good idea to hire an employee or an outside consultant with expertise in that technology to help with the implementation and customization.

While it may seem like Salesforce competitors make technology implementation easier—or even “turn-key”—the reality is that they all need implementation support. We’ve all heard the saying, and this is no different, you get what you pay for. More often than not, a company will start with a more “simple” solution, then quickly realize that it does not work once the firm grows, which they then have to go back to the drawing board for a new solution.

Salesforce is perceived as being over-complicated because it is highly customizable and scalable for any organization, no matter the size or industry. But most of the time it doesn’t fit perfectly “out of the box”.

This is where the second common misperception comes in. Many organizations purchase Salesforce and expect it to be implemented “automagically”. This simply is not the case. In our experience, people purchase Salesforce because it was recommended to them by a friend or colleague. But the decision-maker usually isn’t going to be the person or part of the team of people implementing it. So, they tend to have an overly simplistic view of what it is going to take to make the tool work for their organization. This dynamic is acute in the private equity industry, where CRM and reporting needs are very unique compared to other organizations.

Challenges of Using Salesforce

It’s true that Salesforce simply was not built specifically for private equity software, and many private equity firms have come to believe that this makes it a poor tool for their needs.

Simple examples of this are the Account/Company and Contact record types that are core to the sales and reporting process in Salesforce. For years, private equity firms have struggled to fit their fundraising and investor relations processes into this mold. The result has been frustration, inefficiency, and wasted budget. Private equity managers need a solution that is tailored to their unique processes of fundraising, capital management, due diligence, and more. Salesforce out of the box simply does not provide this structure, leading to deepening frustration from their PE customers.

Additionally, the support team at Salesforce does not understand the private equity industry. So, when someone needs help building a report and pulling data, the support team is ill-equipped to help them. Initial and ongoing training from Salesforce are not clearly beneficial to admins working for private equity firms either, because they are tailored toward more “traditional” company sales and customer success processes.

Bridging Salesforce with Altvia

Kevin Kelly, the Founder and CEO of Altvia, experienced all of these misconceptions and challenges himself. And the team at Altvia witnesses them every day in the conversations we have with prospects and clients. We built our product using Salesforce as the foundation of our CRM for PE product because it is the best CRM available on the market. But, we knew it could be better for our private equity brethren.

Altvia’s CRM, doesn’t force you to try to fit into the Salesforce mold. We’ve developed proprietary record types, reports, dashboards, and more that makes Salesforce work for you. AIM provides 360-visibility by connecting accounts and contacts to deals, funds, and investor records. It manages the capital-raising process from start to finish, providing 100% clarity on the prospects you’re working with and those you’ve received commitments from. Using AIM, you can follow real-time fundraising progress, and automatically generate, distribute and track PPMs.

But Altvia doesn’t just sell you a product and move on to the next sale. Our implementation and support team is second to none. Our support team exists to help our clients properly implement and customize AIM, and build dashboards and reports that are crucial to their own business processes. The team knows our products, Salesforce, and the private equity industry inside and out. We speak your language. So, when you call us saying you need to print your PPMs we know exactly what you’re looking to accomplish!

Find out how Altvia’s CRM can help your firm grow by scheduling a demo today.

How Deal Teams Embrace Private Equity Technology to Stay Competitive

Posted on September 4, 2020 by - Deal & Pipeline Management

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that many companies will continue to work remotely indefinitely, if not permanently. This poses a new challenge for capital market deal teams as they attempt to perform due diligence on companies they can’t visit. A process that used to involve multiple in-person meetings will now have few or none.

How will firms adapt to this change? It’s clear that they’ll have to rely more heavily on private equity technology. However, before implementing new tools or expanding your use of existing ones, it’s important that you prepare your firm for this new approach. In particular, it’s critical that you have a carefully crafted due diligence process that your deal team knows well and is comfortable with. The last thing you want to do is wrestle with making a somewhat arbitrary physical process work in a new, more virtual format.

Key Virtual Due Diligence Tools and Processes

As you look to “go virtual” with your due diligence processes, the first tool to acquire and master is a reliable video conferencing system. And it’s important not just to identify and implement it, but also to take some time to learn how to use it effectively. Online interactions can be somewhat awkward to begin with. You don’t want to compound the problem by being unfamiliar with how to share your screen, give another participant the ability to share theirs, etc.

It’s also vital that you have a fast and effective way to track interactions that you are having with the prospective operating company. This is especially important today since deal team members working remotely won’t have the luxury of sitting down with you in person to talk about your notes. When tracking interactions, it’s vital to link or “relate” records—contacts, deals, fundraises, etc.— to one another to create helpful context for other users at the firm.

Third-party apps are also likely to become a more important component of your “technology stack” as you move to virtual due diligence. Tools like SourceScrub, SalesLoft, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and DataFox track and send operating companies and investor updates directly to your CRM, saving you time and help ensure accuracy. That is, of course, if your CRM has integration capabilities.

And finally, having a secure virtual data room and engagement platform like ShareSecure is absolutely essential in the due diligence “new normal.” Using an approach like simply sharing Google docs may be efficient for another industry, but due to lack of security for capital markets, is discouraged. Instead, deal teams should use an industry-specific tool that enables the safe sharing of a wide variety of file types. A purpose-built private equity platform provides many added benefits, like empowering team members to see who has viewed each document made available through the system and allowing remote document signing.

Screenshot of Altvia's LP Portal and Data Room, ShareSecure

Take Decisive Action to Enable Effective Virtual Due Diligence

Firms and deal teams that try to “duct tape” their existing due diligence processes and make them work until the business world “gets back to normal” will be in trouble if it never does. On the other hand, private equity firms that embrace virtual due diligence and equip themselves to conduct it effectively will have a distinct competitive advantage.

Some degree of in-person—if socially distanced— due diligence interaction is likely to return at some point. But it’s better to assume that physical meetings will be few and far between, and prepare your firm to move forward accordingly.

If your capital markets deal team is looking for a way to better manage processes, download our free guide below Winning Deals in a Hyper-Competitive Market.

How Private Equity Real Estate Teams Can Leverage a CRM

Posted on August 24, 2020 by - Investor Relations & LP Experience

Private equity real estate fund managers tend to be juggling many tasks at any given moment. Building and maintaining strong relationships is critical, of course. Then there are the properties to keep track of. And the result of these activities is a large amount of data being received, sent, and generated continuously.

Handling those touchpoints carefully yet efficiently is essential. Lose one critical piece of information at the wrong time, and it can be anything from mildly embarrassing to an absolute deal-breaker. Plus, with investment structures getting increasingly complex and regulatory bodies requiring more detailed reporting, fund managers have even more pressure to ensure that their data is always current, complete, and organized. And they also need a solution that streamlines workflows and simplifies team collaboration.

In short, what’s required is what we refer to at Altvia as a “single source of truth.” And notice we use “truth” rather than “data” or “information,” because at the end of the day, that’s what discerning investors expect—a clear picture of the reality of an investment.

Conduct Rapid Due Diligence With a Real Estate CRM

Key to any due diligence process is the ability to monitor information sources, collect vital data, and use it effectively to perform a thorough analysis. In private equity real estate, a CRM like AIM provides fund managers with that capability through features that:

  • Empower teams to create associations between and among contacts, property types, brokers, and more in individual assets or portfolio vehicles
  • Help organizations track and report on key performance metrics using visual dashboards accessible to both internal and external stakeholders
  • Ensure that team members always have clarity on next steps and assigned action items through task tracking and checklists

Enable Transparency and Promote Trust

Investors today have access to more information on investment opportunities than ever before. Consequently, you have to be able to earn their trust or risk losing them to a different fund where they have a higher comfort level.

Part of achieving that goal is having excellent “people skills,” which you surely do, or you wouldn’t be a fund manager. Just as importantly, your organization has to have the right technology stack. Trusting relationships are built around the effective and open exchange of information and ideas. The tools you use can either extend or limit your organization’s transparency and, as a result, demonstrate or call into question your trustworthiness.

Timely, valuable, and consistent communications are an essential part of being seen as transparent. The right private equity real estate CRM can help you maintain accuracy and compliance. You connect with potential investors using features like user-level permissions and document watermarking in a secure data room. It can also make it simple to gather investor contact information, record and manage communication preferences, and ensure that your data is always “clean” and up-to-date.

The availability of a leading-edge, branded investor portal like ShareSecure is essential as well. This type of advanced engagement platform serves as a secure, easily accessible hub where investors “feel at home.” Fund managers can provide investors with resources like documents (from drafts to approved versions), photos, recorded webinars, and audio and video recordings that they need to make decisions.

Ultimately, a CRM solution and the systems with which it’s integrated allow a potential investor to “take their blinders off” and get an unobstructed view and in-depth awareness of your firm’s track record. This type of visibility will have investors much more likely to enter into a relationship with you.

See a Private Equity Real Estate CRM in Action

Marketing materials and blog posts are helpful background information. The best way to truly understand how a purpose-built private equity real estate CRM could be a game-changer in your firm is to see it in action and ask specific questions about your processes, needs and goals.

Through a customized demo, you’ll be able to experience how a CRM solution that leverages the Salesforce platform can improve your processes and provide you and your investors with a single source of truth. Contact us to schedule a session today or see how private equity real estate firms use Altvia.

Create an Excellent Investor Experience to Differentiate in Private Equity

Posted on August 18, 2020 by - Investor Relations & LP Experience

This investor experience guide will go over…

  • Technology designed to support the Private Capital Markets workflow
  • The areas to consider during the fundraising stage
  • How to close a fund quickly by reducing friction
  • How to keep your investors coming back for more
  • The service secrets that lead to repeat investments

As we discussed in a recent webinar with PE Hub, GPs are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate themselves. Fund managers are vying for the same LP dollars and LPs are demanding a better experience—supported by increased transparency and real-time data.

The key to differentiation is to create a stronger relationship, by providing a better investor experience. But how can firms, fund managers, and IR teams create an excellent LP experience to attract the top investors and opportunities?

First, let’s talk about the LP experience. In software, there’s a concept of “user experience”. This concept is at the core of software development and focuses on the overall experience that a product creates for a user, especially in terms of how easy it is to use, how much trust it builds with customers, and how pleasing it is to use. In the software industry, the user experience is paramount to customer satisfaction.

We believe this is a concept that translates to the LP relationship. For firms to differentiate, they must create an outstanding experience for their investors in order to attract investment.

What is an outstanding investor experience?

To start, it’s not about the what, but the how. The point isn’t what you’re sharing with your investors, but how you’re sharing it. How do your investors receive your information? Is the experience easy? Are you proactively addressing their questions?

Best-in-class GPs are working hard to define an LP journey and experience that drives elevated engagement with their LPs. This involves close consideration of how:

  • Investors receive documents and agreements
  • Firms manage communications around their annual meetings
  • Accessible performance data is for investors.

Infrastructure to support the investor experience

The foundation of the investor experience is technology. Software systems and data allow your firm to scale and grow while giving your people more time to proactively manage investor relationships.

Once the technology foundation is laid, the top firms are leveraging data—both proprietary and 3rd-party data.

In the past, fund managers might use a single solution to manage data. As the industry has evolved, firms are using a suite of best-in-class systems and connecting those systems to power their relationship management and scale their firms.

We’ve broken this evolution down into a maturity cycle.

The relationship management maturity phases

  • Reactive: In this first phase of the cycle, investor data is managed in spreadsheets or perhaps the back office team members are handling the management of the investor related data. It’s a rudimentary data system that isn’t centralized and likely has security issues.
  • Informed: The firms who are in this phase, truly start to consolidate all of the investor data into a central system and, as a result, have visibility into who their investors are, what their investments are across the multiple funds, and what communications have occurred with the LPs. These firms understand the full breadth of their LP relationship.
  • Proactive: A firm that is proactive is continuing to amass more information on their LPs and expanding the insights they have. We see some of our fund manager clients start to track things like co-invest interest for their LPs, what kinds of co-invests those LPs are interested in, what your firm has already presented, and where they’ve express interest or turn down opportunities. Essentially, firms who are proactive are tracking the historical exchanges with their LPs, so when new opportunities arise, they can be more targeted in which investors they offer those opportunities.
  • Predictive: Our best clients are leveraging tools and sharing information with their LPs with the ability to track what the LPs are doing with that information. Firms that are operating, using a predictive approach are using tools to share reports and fund information and then tracking what the investors are doing with that information. This allows them to track behavior and monitor their investor interest so that they can improve the targeting and personalization of their communications.

The firms that are operating in the proactive and predictive phases are the most successful in attracting and building relationships with investors. They leverage technology and data through each stage of the investor experience.

This brings us to our guide—Creating an Excellent Investor Experience. In our guide, we cover how the top-tier firms are differentiating themselves to attract top investors by leveraging technology and data. This guide shares thoughts, ideas, and discusses:

  • Technology designed to support the Private Capital Markets workflow
  • The areas to consider during the fundraising stage
  • How to close a fund quickly by reducing friction
  • How to keep your investors coming back for more
  • The service secrets that lead to repeat investments

Interactions: How Successful Private Equity Teams Organize Notes

Posted on August 17, 2020 by - Deal & Pipeline Management

In Private Equity, the quality of your interactions, or meeting notes with investors, is one of the most critical factors in whether they choose to invest. And because multiple individuals and teams throughout your organization will likely play a role in securing the investment, everyone must be able to quickly retrieve and review the content of any interaction or note at any time from a single source of truth.

This means that your customer relationship management (CRM) system must-have functionality for recording and managing interactions effectively. Specifically, the system should enable you to:

  • Track communications efficiently. What was communicated? From and to whom? When, why, and in what medium (email, phone call, in-person meeting, etc.)?
  • Relate or link interactions to multiple records. One interaction may be associated with or influence several contracts, deals, co-invests, fundraises, or investor records for potential limited partners. And if the investor you’re currently communicating with is linked to multiple funds or portfolio companies, you want to know.
  • Provide transparency. Often, heads of Investor Relations or Deal Teams will ask about deal sourcing or outbound call activity, even coverage across intermediaries or LPs, and interactions help you answer those questions. They are also an essential source of information in the area of compliance.
  • Manage relationships effectively. Interactions help you improve the way you nurture relationships, and ultimately raise and deploy more capital.

Without purpose-built private equity technology that includes these capabilities, you risk losing potential investors to firms that do a better job of developing a strong connection with them.

Screenshot of how Altvia streamlines operational efficiency and automation in its AIM CRM.

One Measure of the Importance of Interactions: 5.3 Million Entries and Climbing

At Altvia, we are, as you would expect, a data-centric company, and we track data trends very closely. One measure of the importance of interactions is that across all of the clients that use our private equity CRM, the number of interactions entered is over 5.3 million and climbing rapidly. In fact, the system’s interaction tracking capability is one of its most highly leveraged features.

6 Best Practices for Managing Interactions

When using an interactions feature, there are six best practices that we’ve identified that allow users to maximize the benefit of that functionality. They are:

1. Have all users make entries in the system. Clients will sometimes ask us if it’s better to have one administrative person or a few people tasked with recording interactions based on information provided by other users. We’ve found that that approach can create a logjam that prevents entries from being added promptly. Plus, having each user make their own entries encourages them to check out and leverage the information that’s already in the system.

2. Use descriptive subjects. It’s easy to give an interaction a one-word subject like “Meeting” or “Call.” However, it’s not particularly helpful to someone who is browsing through subject lines to have dozens or hundreds of meetings logged. Users get much more out of the system when the subjects are detailed.

3. Enter detailed notes. As with subjects, the more detailed the notes for an interaction are, the more benefit other users get from the entry. It’s a good idea to reread an entry you’ve just written as if you are someone with no knowledge of the interaction to see if you can make sense of it. Detailed notes are also important for transparency around what has taken place.

4. Develop a standard process. What types of information should be entered as interactions and at what point? For example, should every email be logged, or is it better to wait until an email conversation has run its course and log the entire thread? Reaching a consensus among stakeholders at your firm and then educating all users on the process you come up with is very helpful. See our image below for an example how your firm can create an interactions process.

5. Use the cascade feature. An interactions feature should have automation that simplifies the process of making entries. You should leverage that automation whenever you can.

6. Ensure that you are entering meaningful interactions. While you want to capture important information, recording absolutely every time you connect with an investor or other stakeholder can create unwanted “noise” in your system. Every interaction may be a candidate for entry, but then you need to focus on recording only information that will help with decision making and next steps.

Experience Interaction Management for Yourself

The best way to understand the value of the interactions feature in Altvia is to see it in action. Learn why top tier firms turn to Altvia for their private equity technology and improve the efficiency of your processes with an industry-specific platform. Request a demo today or see how firms like yours partner with Altvia.