Category: Private Equity Technology

There are two facts that define today’s alternative investment industry. One, the data contained in documents is its lifeblood, and being able to access those documents whenever and from wherever you need to is critical in an increasingly competitive business. Two, firms that keep these facts in mind and take steps to address them by implementing the right fund management software give themselves a distinct advantage. Those that don’t inevitably fall behind.

Better Accessibility and Organization With Advanced Fund Management Software

If you work in alternative investments, you know that firms today generate and receive huge numbers of documents as part of their fundraising and due diligence processes. This massive “library” is essential to decision-making and a key to your success.

But simply having these documents isn’t enough. In order for them to be valuable, they have to be easily accessed and organized in a logical manner. Take too much time to locate important documents and you risk losing a deal. 

The days of storing documents on a local shared network drive are long gone. Or at least they should be. Issues ranging from confusing naming conventions to lack of remote access have historically led to terrible inefficiencies. 

Cloud storage gives you access to documents anytime, anywhere — a true game-changer.

Leading-Edge: Efficiency as a Foundation for Success

There are a number of factors that contribute to success in the financial industry. Experience and insight, for example, are crucial. But an often-overlooked attribute of successful firms is technology efficiency. 

Firms that improve the efficiency of their tech stack and processes tend to see a corresponding improvement in the bottom line. The two naturally go hand-in-hand.

Consequently, implementing leading-edge, cloud-based fund management software and the enhanced document management capabilities it offers is one of the best moves your firm can make.  

The linking of documents and other files to contact records, along with powerful search capability, makes it simple to find the information you need and get it to interested parties quickly. 

And, of course, there is no set “business hours” today. So, being able to find and share documents whenever stakeholders request them, and from anywhere, is vital.

Learn more about our full suite of solutions for alternative investment firms.

How can firms benefit from accessibility, interactivity, and visualization of their private equity data?

To explore current trends around data and information solutions in the private equity marketplace, we interviewed Altvia SVP, Industry Solutions & Strategy, Jeff Williams. The discussion will be presented in a series of blog posts in order to provide a comprehensive perspective on this trending subject.

Thanks, Jeff, for joining us to discuss what private equity firms need to know about data. Let’s start with a quick introduction: Please tell us a little about what you do at Altvia.

I lead the team at Altvia that is focused on finding and assessing private equity firm challenges that we believe can be—and really, have to be—solved using technology. Specifically, we’re interested in identifying problems or issues that, when addressed properly, help private equity firms differentiate themselves and become more operationally efficient.

The private equity data solutions we develop enable firms to collaborate and communicate more effectively—both internally and with investors. Our systems are true game-changers in the private equity ecosystem.

What is currently trending around technology in the private equity marketplace? What are people talking about, and which solutions do they need?

When it comes to the problems people are having with technology or problems that technology can help to solve, the big trends center around data. At a strategic level, how to store, accumulate, and analyze data is an important topic right now. And there’s a bigger conversation about relationships with limited partners regarding the ability to service them effectively and be good partners. Often these discussions focus on transparency. But at a relationship level, it’s really more about how these partners interact with each other.

So, the ability of firms to improve their service interactions with stakeholders is top of mind?

Yes. At the end of the day, private equity is a market that provides financial services. A lot of conversations lately are about the service itself and, more specifically, what service is actually being provided. When you look at service industries, they are traditionally driven by incremental steps of differentiation: How can they provide something even slightly better or different from their competitors?

Altvia offers a leading-edge private equity data solution: Altvia Answers. From the perspective of a firm, what exactly does Altvia Answers do?

Altvia Answers is very much a solution built to solve the private equity data problems we’re hearing about. For the better part of the past few decades, this industry has been active in using technology to generate data, and more recently, to consume additional sources of data. We’re at a point where older firms have accumulated data much less methodically than firms that are starting out today, and this reveals several important considerations:

• Firms that have been in business longer have ended up with multiple systems along the way, and there are often no integration points between those systems.
• Often, the systems on their own are not capable of doing much with the data they contain, nor are they capable of performing the complex analyses that firms need today.
• The capabilities of modern technology within the realm of private equity data (complex queries, management of large volumes of information, and making sense of all your data) are not functions that exist in the legacy systems that many firms are using.

In a nutshell, people have systems that don’t interact, even though they’re relevant to each other. Firms would like to look at the data within them together, but there are tremendous inefficiencies with trying to bring those systems together, showing a lack of capabilities of these tools on their own.

Altvia Answers is a solution that addresses the entire chain of these issues by bringing data from disparate sources together in one place, then doing modeling using all of that information to establish a single source of truth for all of your data across all of your systems. Even better, Altvia Answers connects to the data systems a firm already has in place, with no need to export or upload information. This greatly simplifies the process.

It also facilitates very powerful and advanced private equity data capabilities in terms of analysis on a large scale, and it does that in the cloud in an automated fashion so there is no need to embark on time-consuming and error-prone manual processes.

And, most importantly, Altvia Answers enables business users to interact with their data across systems in very intuitive ways, and on any device, eliminating the need for highly skilled, IT-centric resources that would historically have spent weeks at a time developing an analysis. Altvia Answers is right at the fingertips of business users and executives at any point, ready for them to ask their own questions and get their own answers in an engaging and intuitive way.

As you were instrumental in developing and launching Altvia Answers, we’re guessing you have some great stories about how the solution works, specifically to help private equity firms. Could you share some examples?

One particular organization had spent nearly two years assessing vendors in an attempt to find a solution that could deliver on the vision they had. They felt it was not only compelling, but also very different from their competitors. They were looking for a system that would allow them to really provide a service that was highly differentiated, unique, and superior to their competition.

After talking with dozens of vendors, they found a few that came very close to their criteria, but there was always something missing from the bigger picture. As we talked with them and began to understand their vision, what we were able to do with Altvia Answers was allow them to identify the best-of-breed solutions across the entire chain of systems involved in executing their vision. This allowed them to use the best CRM solution, then put Altvia Answers on top to connect their entire system.

Now entirely integrated, this system provides the firm with a single place for business users to go in order to find, analyze, and understand data across their organization. Altvia Answers proved to be the key to a complete solution to their business challenges.

Altvia Answers helps firms position themselves as industry leaders?

Correct, and a big part of it is not only the ability to consume data across systems internally, but also to allow their clients to access important, real-time data that is relevant to them. For data-hungry clients, the scenario went from “We’ll send you a statement in the mail every so often,” to “You don’t even need to pick up the phone to ask us for information. You can access the data that’s relevant to you in real time, at any time.” And they can do so in a way that’s intuitive, efficient, interactive, and engaging.

It’s having a snowball effect on their whole business structure?

Yes, Altvia Answers, and the way it maximizes the value of private equity data, is serving as the cornerstone for more efficient internal operations and processes that are more organized and more systematic. This snowballs all the way through to providing new capabilities to their investors, which in turn strengthens their relationships and positions them as industry leaders.

One of the most daunting parts of a software implementation is the first few months that you’re using it. At this point, there’s no guarantee of success even if you’ve done everything right up to this point. To make sure your investment pays off and not be burdened with trying to fix what might turn out to be irreparable problems in the future, take these steps during your initial use period:

Keep your software implementation simple and complete

First, make sure that the fields you decide to track and the data within those fields are simple and complete. Sometimes people try to overdo it and add way too many fields–perhaps even data that they haven’t tracked in the past but that they want to track in the future. This might be a natural reaction to having a shiny new database toy, but it’s unlikely that these 50 new fields are the core fields that you really need to track, nor are they usually the data you’ve been tracking to make yourself successful up to this point.

The result of over-adding fields, then, is twofold. First, pages with too many fields end up looking blank so users get frustrated working in a database that feels incomplete. Second, many of the reports and analytics that you might be able to run based on comprehensive data are not available so when users go running those reports the reports are essentially meaningless. Also very frustrating.

So the key is to keep the initial configuration simple, focus on the core fields and the core data points you want to track, and make sure that all of those fields are populated. Then when users log in for the first few times, the data is strong and it instills confidence in all of your users.

Tips to keep it simple and complete:

1. Start with simple data tracking
2. Keep configuration simple
3. Ensure all fields are populated
4. Stick to the core data points and fields
5. Always make sure there is confidence in your system

Provide the “why”

So often, users end up getting just the technical how-to training but are never told why this is important or how it will make the firm more efficient. So it’s really important both during training and software implementation to talk to users about why changes are being made and what value the company is hoping to get from the system.

Unfortunately, the seemingly menial task of entering good data happens first and often over time. It’s only after that data is in the system that you get the gratification of finally running that one perfect report that tells you everything you never knew.

If users are shown the value of running a report like that and the value of inputting that data upfront, they’re more likely to see the benefits and more likely to be dedicated users.

During the training, it is important to follow these 3 steps:

1. Communicate with Users: Take the time to communicate the value of what you’re implementing and ask for feedback before, during, and after. Let users know why changes are being made and make sure they understand how they can provide input or help out. By letting your staff in on these details, they’ll feel more involved in a system that is designed for them – which will translate into better compliance with new procedures and information entered into the system.

2. Culture Change: Take the time to inform your employees on how their work will change and make sure they understand the benefits of these changes. Make it clear that compliance with new procedures is not just for their benefit but also for the companies as a whole.

3. Manage Expectations: Allow yourself some flexibility in implementing a new system so that you can incorporate feedback from your users and allow them time to adjust to their new environment without expecting too much at once.

The central tenets of good customer support are for the people providing it to be skilled, helpful, and available. With Altvia, you get exactly that: comprehensive support for our suite of Private Equity products and access to a team that rivals the best technology consulting firms.

At Altvia, we assist you throughout your technology journey—from your initial inquiry about solutions for data management to a GP-LP engagement platform all the way through your implementation and beyond. 

We understand that even with the most intuitive of systems, attentive customer service from team members who thoroughly understand the product and are committed to seeing an issue quickly and fully resolved is essential to success.

“Our market is so relationship driven—we really get to know our business partners and understand their needs. With Altvia, it’s clear that they value having a relationship that comes along with the software.” Michael Painter, Managing Partner, Co-founder, Plexus Capital. 

The First Elements of Customer Support: Onboarding & Training

Altvia customer support takes you through the sales process into onboarding and then to the ongoing technical assistance your firm needs to succeed. 

As an Altvia customer, you receive comprehensive care for all your products, including implementation insights, training, solution adoption services, growth evaluations, ongoing technical support, and 24/7 access to our knowledge base.

As a result, you get up to speed rapidly and start seeing process and productivity improvements almost immediately. 

Ongoing Customer Support

Our team members solve problems, but that’s just the beginning. They also empathize with our customers, learn from them, and advocate for them. 

We approach every interaction as an opportunity for our team to engage with yours to enhance your experience and maximize the value of our solutions. 

We strive to leave you in a better place than before you reached out. That’s the Altvia customer support difference: We don’t just resolve issues—we use them as springboards to help you get ahead. 

Customer Support as the Key to Success

Our team works directly with your firm to build a roadmap for ongoing success. We understand the challenges you’re facing and are here to help you achieve your specific goals.

We can do that because we make it our mission to understand your business. Working exclusively within the private capital ecosystem, we realize that a multi-family office is different from a middle-market buyout fund. 

And we know how to customize your system to reflect those differences. This ensures you gain ongoing value from our solutions and get the most from your technology investment. 

The Altvia Help Center: Self-Directed Customer Support

We offer the Altvia Help Center as a place for you to find helpful information, tips, and tricks that enable you to get even more from our products.

Within the Help Center, you can access instructional videos, how-to articles, and trailheads for users that want to expand their knowledge of our products and services.

The value that exceptional customer support can provide to an organization can’t be overstated. We work tirelessly to ensure our services help empower our customers to achieve their business objectives and more.

It wasn’t long ago that the only passwords a person needed to remember were for their email and their bank account. But now it seems that every time you turn around, you’re on a site that requires you to create a login and either sign in with Google or Facebook or create a new password to remember.

We find that password managers can be a handy and secure way to keep track of passwords for email, data rooms, Cap IQ, Preqin, and any of the dozens of other online sites that require the creation of a password.

Based on our experience, below are a few thoughts on password management and tools to manage passwords.

1. Password Managers: To Use or Not To Use?

The thought of storing dozens of your most important passwords in one place might terrify some people. But the fact is, short of memorizing a different 8+ character random alphanumeric password for every system you access, password managers may be the most secure way to protect these precious character strings.

Using the same password in multiple places around the web obviously is a flawed strategy because you’re taking a huge risk every time you create a new online account.

If the password for that new account is compromised, the password for all of your accounts is compromised. And depending on how often each service requires you to change your password, you could find yourself constantly making modifications to ensure all your accounts stay in sync.

Password managers are also invaluable when you lose a device or have one stolen. All of your passwords may be on that device, but if they’re protected by a password manager that is properly configured, they aren’t likely to be lost along with the hardware.

2. Doesn’t My Browser Help Me Manage Passwords?

Yes, most modern browsers will store passwords for you as a convenience. Many people utilize this feature nearly every day. But it provides virtually nothing in terms of security.

And with many browsers offering password sync across devices, passwords stored in your browser may be even more vulnerable.

3. RoboForm vs. LastPass to Manage Passwords

Two of the more established names in the password management space are RoboForm and LastPass.

Both are solid options in terms of usability and security. And in terms of the features they offer, they’re very similar—down to the way they capitalize their names. If you’re new to the tools used to manage passwords, either of these two proven winners should suit you.

4. Manage Passwords With Dashlane—The New Kid On the Block

Dashlane seems to be the new favorite for password managers, based in part on the $22 million round of funding they raised.

Skeptics are saying that this largest-ever fundraising round for a password management tool might be an overreaction to the Heartbleed bug, but Dashlane’s product is a slick option for those seeking a cutting-edge password management tool.

5. Two Additional Approaches Used to Manage Passwords

There are two other password management techniques that are commonly used and you may be familiar with. The first is what’s called single sign-on (SSO). With this approach, one set of login credentials is used across multiple systems.

For example, if you have a Gmail account, another cloud-based solution that you want to access may give you the option to “Sign in with Google.” If you select that option, the system confirms that you’re correctly signed into the account you’ve linked to and lets you in without requiring an additional password.

The second password management technique is called two-factor authentication. You may also see it referred to by names like dual-factor authentication, two-step verification/authorization, etc.

Basically, this means a user is required to provide two pieces of information, rather than just one, to gain access to a system.

For example, you might have to enter your password and then answer a security question. Or, after entering your password, you may need to enter a code that is sent to you in a text message.

6. Manage Passwords for Your Altvia Products

At Altvia, we take security very seriously. Fortunately, Salesforce does, too. But if you lose your password, the system does allow you to reset it.

The reset process involves receiving an email. If you find that nothing is happening when you click Reset Password, there are steps you can take to ensure you get password reset emails from Salesforce.

Compared to measuring public market investments, private equity benchmarks for fund performance are an entirely different animal.

As a relatively new asset class with irregular cash flows, private equity funds require a different way of thinking than other asset classes.

Over the past decade, Limited Partners (LPs) have been using public market-equivalent (PME) benchmarks to measure fund performance. While PMEs are more complex to calculate, they do offer methodological benefits.

Still, many firms prefer to leverage their own measurement techniques, often based on comparing Internal Rate of Returns (IRRs) to stock indexes.

In any event, a good benchmark should be applicable, understandable, and reflective of the underlying portfolio. A critical part of managing risk, benchmarks help firms evaluate past investments, understand the overall picture, and ultimately, make informed decisions. In order to stay relevant—and stay ahead of your competitors—General Partners (GPs) must have the ability to report on fund performance with metrics that LPs can easily compare to industry benchmarks in order to choose the fund manager that’s best for them.

Crucial Components of Private Equity Benchmarks

Assessing private equity performance can be a complex task. While benchmarks should reflect the fundamental characteristics a firm believes will make a good investment, the types of benchmarks often vary from LP to LP. As a result, LPs can use their benchmark choices to differentiate their firm from competitors.

Of course, before deciding whether or not to invest, firms need to fully understand what they’re measuring against their chosen benchmarks. They need to know:

• Is the investment liquid or illiquid, private or other asset?
• What’s the performance over time?
• What’s the opportunity cost of investments?

Generally driven by mandates like non-U.S. funds under $1B versus broad global PE portfolio, private equity benchmarks can be broken down into four main types based on their function:

• Compare a fund or portfolio to the industry
• Compare a fund or portfolio to the public markets
• Compare the industry to the public markets
• Compare a fund or portfolio to the public markets and compare that to how well the private equity industry did relative to the public markets

Finally, when you establish a robust benchmark to evaluate the performance of an actively managed portfolio, consider to what extent multiple measurements will allow for a more holistic view. Are you capturing quantitative and qualitative measures over both short- and long-term periods? This is the kind of data that will help your firm have the big-picture view necessary to make informed investment decisions.

Technology Streamlines the Benchmark Process

Today’s data analytics solutions can help your firm eliminate unnecessary risk by ensuring your team is always working from a single source of truth. Not only can you increase the transparency and accuracy of the data you collect, your firm can also gain critical backend efficiencies when you choose a solution designed specifically for private equity.

Altvia Answers, for example, helps firms connect data from disparate sources and easily gather meaningful information they can use to create more powerful private equity benchmarks. With a central repository for all of your firm’s data—and analytics you can obtain without IT assistance—your firm can also quickly access the information investors request and need in order to make good decisions.

Adopting tools designed for private equity can help your firm provide a fully transparent experience that builds trust with stakeholders and investors, and that empowers you to stand out from the competition.

Global Private Equity Benchmark Considerations

Today, many private equity firms use U.S. benchmarks like the S&P 500., However, some firms are beginning to recommend switching to a more global or blended benchmark system. If this trend takes hold, expect a slow progression, as changing a benchmark is a complex process requiring the approval of a firm’s board.

For now, investors should take care to understand what’s being measured, how it’s being measured, and what is being used to benchmark returns.

With Private Equity Data Delivering More Insight Than Ever Before, It’s No Surprise More Firms Are Using Technology To Stay Competitive.

Making deals and raising funds may seem to be all about the numbers. However, any experienced fund manager will tell you that success depends on how effectively private equity firms can leverage relationships with a fund management system.

These days, managing relationships requires tracking vast amounts of private equity data. Deals move fast, and the competition is fierce.

You can’t afford to fall behind because you don’t have all the information you need. In an industry where trust and confidence are key, you can’t look like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Today’s top-tier private equity firms have a holistic view of their network and the influence they yield at their fingertips. Firms do this by using a CRM system built specifically for the unique and evolving needs of private equity.

Chances are you’re currently recording contacts, conversations, and notes in multiple disparate ways:

• Spreadsheets
• Emails
• Calendar invites
• Handwritten meeting details
• Sticky notes

Obviously, this is no way to manage your crucial relationships and funds effectively.

Private equity data management systems like CRMs, connect data from reports, conversations, emails, and meeting notes seamlessly. A CRM records the history of each contact—from how they are connected with the firm to their current industry position to previous roles.

When you’re ready to improve your firm’s efficiency by leveraging your valuable private equity data, here are the considerations to make for your CRM system.

Connect Data to Your Fund Management System

No doubt about it: Companies that know how to harness their private equity data and the insights it provides are the ones that will succeed in today’s digital world.

Private equity firms have been collecting data for years. However, many struggle to use it due to a lack of integration. Add in the rapid advancement of technology and it’s easy to understand why fully leveraging private equity data is the number one challenge reported by industry executives.

Accurate private equity data is crucial during every stage of a deal. Yet accuracy isn’t always a guarantee. Private equity firms have access to more data than ever before. However, many use inefficient reporting and tracking systems that slow down the process and degrade the quality of the data.

With no consolidated repository for important information, teams face many challenges and risks, including:

• Hours wasted hunting down data
• Time spent creating workarounds to make sense of disconnected facts and figures
• An increased chance of errors and greater risk to the firm
• Making investment decisions based on inaccurate information
• Failing to keep up with regulations
• Wasting budget on solutions that don’t work

Centralizing all of your deal data in one place frees up valuable resources and increases the accuracy of your data to improve decision-making.

Your fund analysts, for example, can spend less time on administrative tasks like sorting through emails, calendars, and Excel (read 10 Reasons Excel Falls Short for Fund Managers) and more time deriving value and meaning from their private equity data to inform your firm’s strategy.

More importantly, having confidence in the accuracy of the data also leads to confidence in the decisions made based on it.

Choose the Right Fund Management System

If you remember one piece of advice from this article, make it this: You must develop your data analytics strategy to solve the problems you need solved, not around your current systems.

Your private equity data management system should be tailored to the industry’s unique demands. When evaluating solutions, ask the following about the platform:

• How well does the provider understand our firm’s particular fundraising requirements?
• What kinds of workflows does the system offer for deal tracking?
• Do the tools and the team demonstrate an understanding of how investors think?

The system you select should be backed by people who are committed to serving as your business partner, not just your software provider. Adopting any new software is a change, and the switch to a new CRM requires change management, particularly during the implementation phase. You will need a support team that is committed to serving your team as you transition and understands the private equity business model. (Find tips on managing the implementation process here.)

Finally, decide whether you want a standard or customized solution. While a standard solution may promise the convenience of an integrated suite of technologies, you’re often stuck with lackluster capabilities that don’t serve the specific and unique needs of your firm.

Customized solutions, on the other hand, offer more flexibility to meet your evolving business requirements. This is especially important if you want to continue using current applications, meet your investors’ unique needs, or even help your team adopt a new approach to their work.

This is why Altvia partners closely with Salesforce to develop the most successful CRM platform for private equity firms and one that is continually evolving and improving.

How to Find the Right Private Equity Data Tool

Integrate Your Email Inbox with Your Private Equity CRM

There is extremely valuable data sitting in your inbox, from contact information to details about meetings, deals, fundraising, and more. What’s the best way for you to accurately and securely integrate this valuable data with your private equity CRM?

Our platform allows you to seamlessly integrate your email inbox including Gmail and Outlook, straight to your CRM.

In our marketplace, private equity firms and managers are challenged with increasing compliance requirements, demand from stakeholders for greater transparency, and growing competition. Easily capturing and tracking information from your inbox should be an integral part of your day-to-day, but because email platforms are designed to function outside of CRMs, it can be challenging, time-consuming, and error-prone to transfer interactions and data manually from your inbox into your CRM.

8 Capabilities to Look for When Considering a CRM Email Integration Solution

1. Easy Access

Your time is valuable, so consider a solution that helps streamline your workflows with convenient and easy access anytime, anywhere.

2. Automation

We recommend looking for a tool that allows you to simply or automatically add new contacts and emails in your CRM and has auto-sync capabilities.

3. Stop Alternating Between Programs

When you stop trying to alternate between your inbox and CRM in order to enter or update information, you’ll notice a significant increase in productivity. Look for a solution that allows you to create and update CRM records without ever leaving your inbox.

4. Intelligence

The information stored in your inbox includes intelligence on how your contacts are interacting with your communications. Consider a tool with email open and website visit analytics.

5. Up to Date Accuracy

Before you make a call or attend a meeting, arm yourself with up-to-date information about the most recent interactions with your contacts. There are email-CRM tools that allow you to do this from your inbox.

6. Security

We’re operating in a digital age where we can access almost anything at any time, and security is becoming increasingly top of mind. One of the most vital requirements when looking for any kind of technology solution that integrates with your data is secure.

7. Product Integration and Compatibility with Other Solutions

This can depend heavily on your business requirements. Think about which email application you’re using (Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, etc.), your contact and data management system or CRM (Salesforce, AIM, etc.), and which types of devices you’re using (Mac, Windows, Mobile, Tablet). Make sure that the solution you’re considering is compatible with what you need.

8. Database or Hardware Maintenance

Do you have a team member dedicated to managing technology solutions in-house? If not, there are many options available where the technology or solution provider can maintain the system for you.

At Altvia, we’re focused on providing solutions that help you streamline your business, including a tool that allows you to sync your inbox with AIM, the private equity solution on the Salesforce platform. Easily capture data from your Microsoft Outlook or Gmail inbox and add it to AIM. With the complete integration, you can easily view, create and edit AIM data right in your inbox without alternating between systems, and without third-party contracting.

The Private Equity and Venture Capital industry have taken leaps forward towards digital transformation due to the pandemic. While the interest in a centralized technology platform has been recorded through surveys for years, it is only recently that more firms realize the necessity of working remotely. The Altvia capital markets platform leverages the best technology to maximize fund management and improve investor relations. Salesforce is a one size fits all solution. While firms can directly install Salesforce, it lacks features that Private Equity and Venture Capital need to run effective operations.

We’ve summarized five significant points to consider before turning to Salesforce for Private Equity and Venture Capital.

1. Salesforce Objects and are Not Specific for Fund Management 

Salesforce out-of-the-box comes with seemingly familiar objects such as Accounts and Contacts but does not include specific, custom objects for fund management like Deals, Funds, Investors, etc. The Altvia product has these objects built into a template so that on day one your team has the pieces it needs to run a capital raise or manage a complex set of funds and investors.

Additionally, the terminology found on Altvia’s platform aligns with the terms most used in the capital markets industry. This was a thoughtful design feature from Altvia’s product team so users can pick up the software and quickly start using it in no time.

2. Salesforce Doesn’t Capture Investor Communication Preferences

Success in Private Equity and Venture Capital is based on the relationships built with LPs and other fund managers. Many of these relationships have special requests or nuances of which all employees at the firm should be aware of.

A popular feature of Altvia’s platform allows users to segment investor contacts into specific lists of funds, making it easy to launch fund-specific emails to recipients. If the firm is using  ShareSecure, Altvia’s LP Portal, investors manage their selections for receiving fund documents — email, portal, or both — and the investor relations professional spends less time managing these communication preferences.

This self-selection option is a favorite and sets firms apart because of the control offered directly to investors.

3. Salesforce Doesn’t Allow for Multiple Investments Under An Account  

Often LPs and GPs make investments into several funds at any one time. The Salesforce generic platform cannot seamlessly manage the one-to-many relationship of a firm making multiple investments in different funds causing the creation of redundant data.

Altvia’s product engineers designed a system that matches the firm’s hierarchy of data and relationships, creating the true ‘Salesforce for Private Equity’ platform.

4. Salesforce Limits Records of Committed Capital and Passed Investment Opportunities the Fund Management Data 

Before committing any capital, LPs and Fund of Fund firms typically review several investment opportunities in their pipeline, including ones passed. Out-of-the-box Salesforce lumps all opportunities into one funnel without giving the option of storing passed opportunities, restricting the ability to analyze data from partners.

With Altvia’s Pipeline feature, firms track funds under a Fund Manager even if the investment wasn’t initially considered. Additionally, because of the custom Fund object, managers are able to easily track both committed and uncommitted capital that is not tied directly to investment.

5. A Customer Success Manager that Understands Private Equity

Salesforce provides countless training materials–video how-to’s, articles, and an online community to ask others for advice or assistance. This works for those who enjoy being self-taught with technology; however, the reality is, most employees juggle multiple tasks and need to be up and running quickly. Altvia provides a named Customer Success Manager to help firms understand best practices and get the most out of the product.

A Customer Success Manager sets any firm up for success including pointing out dashboards for visibility on areas that matter the most, such as current fundraises, investors last contacted, or stages of a current deal. Additionally, during the implementation process, training sessions are set-up and recorded for both power users and specific teams to understand the key pieces to manage at go-live. Finally, ongoing webinars and a community to offer support on-demand.

Altvia’s fully integrated product suite is capable of optimizing the Private Equity firm’s life cycle for deal flow management, investor relations, and fundraising.

Altvia’s investor and deal management product is designed to capture interactions of investor investments, portfolio performance, and back-end systems to scale your growth. Successfully raise and deploy capital, ensure compliance, and deliver a trusted and transparent experience to stakeholders and investors.

View our client case studies to see how Private Equity and Venture Capital firms leverage the platform.

In today’s fast-paced, digital world, a Private Equity CRM is essential for any firm, regardless of size.

As organizations come to grips with changing work dynamics brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, more firms are realizing they will need to transition from spreadsheets or an off-the-shelf CRM to an industry-specific platform.

What technology buyers find as they get serious about implementing a CRM are the many options out there. They’re also discovering that there are key PE-focused features that a solution must have in order to deliver the most value to users.

Essential Elements of a Private Equity CRM System

As you assess private equity CRM systems, be sure to look for these features:

1. Cross-team capabilities
Your private equity CRM must support your deal team, fundraising team, and investor relations team. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you require multiple separate systems to give everyone at your organization the tools they need.

Even if your firm is currently small, you want a system that provides the functions you’ll need as you grow. Your system should give all your internal stakeholders a holistic view of where deals are in the pipeline or what stage of fundraising you are in. Altvia’s AIM CRM provides that capability and won the 2020 Best Buy-Side Technology CRM award from WatersTechnology.

2. Investor or portfolio company reports
Success as a PE firm is largely from the consensus of investors. Limited Partners want to know how efficiently you manage and distribute information. Consequently, you need a CRM that empowers users to answer important questions quickly and clearly.

What stage of due diligence are we in? How many deals are in our pipeline? How many investors opened our fundraising email announcement? When was the last time we contacted business owners in a specific region? A well-informed team is best positioned to make next-step decisions and move confidently into areas of opportunity.

3. Easy integration
A private equity CRM is most valuable when it serves as the hub of your firm’s activities, integrating with other mission-critical systems. For example, your CRM solution should seamlessly sync with an email communication tool like Correspond Market Edition or MailChimp to streamline the creation and execution of email campaigns for fundraising, firm announcements, or other purposes.

Integration with a portal or data room like ShareSecure gives stakeholders real-time access to documents and media files from anywhere. And being able to pull in data from providers like DataFox, SourceScrub, Crunchbase, and Preqin can make life easier for your teams and accelerate their efforts.

Awareness of Often-Overlooked Private Equity CRM Features

Good CRM systems are robust, feature-rich platforms, so it’s easy to get distracted by all the bells and whistles and overlook the key features above. But now that you’re aware of their importance, you can ensure that they are on your firm’s “shopping list” as you do your research.

If you’re interested in seeing what an award-winning private equity CRM platform can do for your firm, we encourage you to request a demo below.