Category: Investor Relations & LP Experience

Salesforce is the world’s cRM powerhouse- here’s why that’s a good thing for private equity

There are common misconceptions about using Salesforce for your investor software. Firms find the platform intimidating to work with because of the robust features it offers out-of-the-box. However, that flexibility and level of optionality are reasons why Salesforce is the world’s #1 CRM according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) for the seventh consecutive year.

There are some common misconceptions about using Salesforce for your investor software. Teams have found the platform to be complicated to implement and configure. Some have even decided they needed to build their own investor software CRM from the ground up specifically for the PE market.

Instead of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” many PE firms are discovering that there are many benefits to running their business on Salesforce, with some customizations for their unique needs. While a lot of people like to hate on it, there are significant benefits to implementing a CRM system that is the industry standard.

1. Best-in-class Investor Software security

The funny thing about the software world we work in today is that we rarely think about technology reliability and infrastructure security. We log in and expect programs to work instantly. But the reality is that a lot of sophisticated engineering goes into building applications that keep your proprietary information secure from external threats.

As the market leader, Salesforce employs the world’s top product engineers and information security experts to build and maintain the product we take for granted on the front-end. The fact that you have access to your data anytime, from anywhere, and has a proven 99.9+ percent uptime record for years is an astonishing feat.

The application security built into the product is rarely considered but is perhaps the most critical differentiator for private equity firms today. Think about the consequences of the possibility that a hacker might be able to gain access to your organization’s proprietary information. Information such as customer and prospect data and intellectual property can all mean a significant loss of competitive advantage and revenue for any firm.

2. Frequent Investor Software releases

Three times a year, Salesforce releases a new edition of its software and in between these major releases, is constantly updating code with features and functionality that matter most to its users.

For Altvia’s clients, this means that we’re continually applying these new and improved tools to the specific and unique needs of both Private Equity and Venture Capital. After each major release we also pull together the key insights to offer training and walkthroughs to our clients about how these new features make the Altvia product even easier to use.

3. Intelligence through integrations

Salesforce is built to combine the data that you need to differentiate your decision-making through add-ons and integrations with a wide variety of sources. Salesforce is the quintessential single source of truth or central data hub. Clients get robust reporting and dashboard features in Salesforce that allows them to pull data and trends simply and consistently. Integrations allow for deep insights to make sound, data-based decisions while limiting manual entry and speeding up time-to-insight.

Additionally, many products integrate seamlessly with Salesforce because of the power of the user base — over a million — on the platform. Meanwhile, other private equity CRMs must convince those companies to partner with them. The result is far less choice and functionality for their clients.

4. Easy-to-use and frequently standard

Because Salesforce has been powering organizations for many years, it’s hard to run into someone who hasn’t used Salesforce in some capacity before. There are more Salesforce power-users than any other CRM available on the market. As firms hire system administrators, it is much easier to find someone who knows how to use Salesforce over any other CRM.

Also, people are typically more willing to work with Salesforce than other CRM platforms. They know that Salesforce experience is a marketable skill for their ongoing professional development. They also know that there are far more resources available to them to learn how to use Salesforce. There are millions of articles, guides, videos, etc. documenting how to do just about anything in Salesforce.

Salesforce: limitless growth

Salesforce hosts live and virtual meetings and conferences on an ongoing basis. Users and vendors can learn about the newest features and functions and how to best leverage them in their organizations. The resources available for other CRM systems pale in comparison to what is available for Salesforce.

Don’t get caught up in overlooking the incredible benefits of ‘Salesforce because it seems a bit intimidating for capital markets–That’s why Altvia exists. We take the strong foundational platform of Salesforce and combine it with our decades of experience to provide the right mixture of bespoke and out-of-the-box. Learn more about the Salesforce power behind Altvia’s AIM CRM built for private equity.

Altvia is built for Private Capital. One of the many features that make it great for fund managers is the ability to send PPMs. This solves a real problem: the platform maintains a copy of your PPM template and dynamically stamps each PPM you send with the name of who you send it to, as well as the number. This helps you manage the distribution, numbering process, and store an exact copy of every PPM you send.

We’ve launched some exciting changes to the PPM feature, the majority of which are the result of feedback you’ve given us. If you already use the PPM feature, there are a couple of changes to be aware of; if you don’t use the PPM feature, now is the time to give it a try!

Here’s a quick overview of the changes you’ll see next time you send PPMs through AIM:

• The PPM wizard had been condensed and simplified. It’s now even faster to get through, and much more intuitive.
• Seamlessly deliver PPMs to ShareSecure. Distributing PPMs to prospects via your LP portal is a great way to remind them to look at how well your funds are performing.
• Use reports and filters to select the right audience for each send, add all Accounts with an active Fundraising opportunity associated, or on an ad hoc basis.
• When you associate a PPM to an account or to a fundraising record, we’ll now show you a list of contacts we think you may want to send the PPM to. 
• The new delivery report allows you to track PPM delivery. 

If you currently use AIM’s PPM feature, you know that it saves you time and helps ensure your PPMs are accurate and well managed. If you don’t currently use the PPM feature and you’re interested in learning more, click here to review the user guide.

Here at Altvia, we have developed an efficient, simplified experience for our alternative investment software users. We take your feedback seriously, resulting in a continually evolving and feature-rich set of products that are flexible enough to handle a wide variety of investing scenarios.

Please contact us for a free demo on our Private Equity Platform and see firsthand how our product can work for you.

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.

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.

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

Of all the elements that make up investor relations, the most important is trust. In the digital age, we don’t see investment as one organization handing another a briefcase full of neatly stacked banded bills, but that is essentially what this transaction is. Bring that visual to mind and it becomes even more clear why trust is so important.

What investors need to be confident you are taking the right actions as the steward of their capital is transparency.

One of the definitions of transparency in the Cambridge Dictionary captures this idea perfectly:

a situation in which business and financial activities are done in an open way without secrets so that people can trust that they are fair and honest

However, by some estimates, just 7% of LPs rate GPs’ transparency as “Excellent.” How can your firm provide transparency, instill trust, and also reduce risk and exposure by keeping investors informed about developments at the companies that make up their portfolio? You achieve all those objectives by using a purpose-built private equity communications platform.

The Right Tools for Creating Investor Relations Transparency

Effective investor relations is not, of course, about the frequency of communications or the quantity of information in a particular message. It is, as Diligent Insights points out, about providing investors with the right information at the right time. Delivering on that expectation requires a specialized toolset.

For example, deal announcements and other important information should be sent out in a timely manner and in a way that maximizes the efficiency of busy team members. A solution like Altvia Correspond Market Edition provides the ability to queue up and send out emails through a highly intuitive interface. It does this, in part, through tight CRM integration. The system helps your team add contacts, keep mailing lists accurate, and generate emails to send to up to 50,000 recipients. That includes automatic de-duplication, advanced scheduling, and data privacy and compliance features so you can prepare a blast and move on to other tasks.

To generate email content that is interesting and informative, you need a powerful business intelligence solution to explain fund performance. The data analytics system must be able to pull information from multiple sources, normalize it, and present it clearly and concisely. In addition to providing material for email blasts, the solution should enable you to perform complex analyses at a moment’s notice, like Altvia Answers does, so your team can react to investor inquiries quickly and reassure them with a rapid response.

In order to support productive interactions with investors, firms also should have access to an easy-to-use and secure virtual data room and GP-LP engagement platform. With a system like ShareSecure, you can provide investors with the documents, multimedia presentations, and other files they need to accurately assess fund performance. For example, some GPs create videos on their portfolio companies and share them with investors as a way to show them where and how their money is working.

Transparency as a Competitive Differentiator

While increased transparency is a top priority for investors—not to mention a focus area for regulators—it is a concept that many firms have yet to adopt. Enabling a high degree of transparency using the right technology can set your firm apart, and that differentiation can produce many benefits.

First, transparency about your firm and your track record can help you close more deals, with your trustworthiness being a major factor. A commitment to openness can also help you retain investors who are constantly bombarded with enticements from other firms. And finally, transparency can enable your firm to raise more funds.

Best-in-class firms do more than simply maintain open lines of communication, they go above and beyond to ensure their operations are transparent to investors and other stakeholders.

Download the guide below.

What do investors want from your firm? The answer to that question has two parts. First, they want detailed information on your track record. Without it, they can’t make an informed assessment of your firm or an informed decision about whether to invest.

However, they want more than just data—they want fast, easy, and secure access to current information.

A spreadsheet contains data. Unfortunately, the time it takes for a busy investor to locate the specific details they’re after in a large spreadsheet may be more than they’re willing to commit, and that’s a risk you don’t want to take. Needless to say, the last thing you want to do is frustrate and irritate the very people you’re looking to engage with.

The solution? Give investors access to an intuitive track record dashboard. A secure, easily accessible interface makes their research fast and efficient.

Collect and store accurate data

In order to provide investors with helpful data, you must first collect and store accurate and current information. Technology like AIM, Altvia’s CRM solution, provides the power and flexibility you need to manage all the data investors require for decision making. The ease with which you can add data to, or extract data from, AIM makes it the perfect information source for critical firm analytics.

Give investors the answers they need

With AIM streamlining and simplifying your data management processes, the next step is to empower investors to get the insights they’re looking for. Altvia Answers does exactly that. A purpose-built private equity business intelligence solution, Answers empowers investors to look at your track record and data analytics in whatever way makes sense to them.

By transforming, normalizing, and displaying all of your data across systems, Answers makes it easy to perform complex analyses whenever and wherever an investor wants to. And because some of the best questions come to mind after a meeting or call has ended, the system’s anytime, anywhere accessibility helps ensure that investors are never left wondering about an aspect of your track record that they forgot to discuss with you.

Plus, Answers leverages real-time data integrations that can pull from virtually any data source including everything from simple flat files to large databases, and the system’s cloud-based architecture means it runs efficiently and doesn’t keep investors waiting for results.

There’s also a productivity benefit to your firm when you give investors a self-service data dashboard. Your team will still have to answer questions, but the number of queries is greatly reduced, allowing them to focus on other tasks.

Set your firm apart with analytics

Providing a better experience for LPs when it comes to reviewing your track record does two things.

First, it gives investors confidence that they are getting a full and clear picture of your firm’s performance. That trust can go a long way in cementing a mutually beneficial relationship.

Second, and just as importantly, giving investors access to an advanced data dashboard makes a strong statement about your firm. It says that you value their time and want to make it easy for them to get the information they need.

It also shows that you are strategic about how you manage your business. You could communicate your track record using a set of spreadsheets, charts, and graphs like most firms do, but you’re more forward-thinking in your approach to data management and sharing. You understand that the volume of information available to GPs and their investors is only going to increase over time, and you want to ensure that you have the technology in place to turn raw data into structured and actionable business intelligence that supports better decision making.

Not every firm is so proactive and transparent in their data management and reporting practices. The fact that your firm is at the forefront in those areas places you in a select group. And as competition for investment dollars continues to intensify, that’s right where you want to be.

Download our free guide below.

Capital markets tend to be in a continual state of evolution. With new regulations, unsettled international economies, shifts in investor goals, and new approaches to decision making, 2019 is likely to be another year of significant change. As a result, firms will find that the work their investor relations teams does in fostering direct engagement is more important than ever.

The team’s ability to connect effectively with investors, analysts, advisers, and wealth managers is critical and can give an organization an edge in the fierce competition for funding. Not only does regular contact from the IR team in the form of market presentations, earning announcements, financial statements, and quarterly reports give decision-makers the quantitative and qualitative data they need to develop their investment strategy, it provides a sense of confidence that they are well informed in times of rapid market evolution.

Investor Relations Communication is Key

While any communication from your IR team has value, outreach that is customized to the recipient’s needs is much more effective for two reasons. First, by giving the investor the type and amount of information they are looking for at the right cadence you make it easier for them to reach the conclusion that your organization has the characteristics that interest them. Second, the personal touch helps your IR team and your firm stand out in a field crowded with organizations seeking funding by showing that you understand the recipient’s information needs and are going the extra mile to meet them.

However, there is a reason companies send mass emails: it’s more efficient. An IR team must invest time and effort to personalize communications. This is especially if you are customizing your communications manually. Fortunately, there is technology that provides the best of both worlds: easy dissemination of information at scale with messaging tailored to each recipient’s needs. This higher level of customer service can differentiate your organization.

The right communication tool can provide an IR team with functionality that elevates its practices. This includes features for:

• Managing data and contact lists
• Crafting and sending engaging messaging with customizable templates
• Integrating with other platforms like Salesforce
• Developing dynamic “smart lists”
• Reporting
• Analyzing data to improve deal sourcing and fundraising

Capitalizing on your expertise

The knowledge and experience of your IR team is, of course, crucial to your success. No amount of technology will compensate for a lack of expertise. But, you’ve got to share your insights effectively if you want to maximize the value of your expertise.

Leveraging advanced technology allows you to get the right information to the right stakeholders at the right time and with a personal approach that increases the likelihood they will notice it. By customizing your communications and encouraging a two-way exchange, you deepen your relationship with the recipient. What’s more, by providing information that is timely and relevant, you earn their trust in your IR team and your organization as they move down the path toward greater engagement.