It should go without saying: no private equity investor wants to move too slowly, miss opportunities, or waste time.
And yet, this is what happens without robust CRM software designed specifically for the unique needs of investing in alternatives.
A private equity CRM solution should simplify the complexities of private equity investing and make life easier for time-strapped GPs and deal teams. Do you have the right tools at your disposal? Here are five things a private equity CRM solution should do for you.
(1) Manage key relationship and deal information, right from your inbox.
There’s a whole world in your inbox. All of those conversations form a critical history with important detail – if only you can find the information when you need it.
You’re likely spending a big chunk of your day in your inbox. Wouldn’t it be nice, when you receive a key piece of correspondence, to update and organize key activities, documents, deal information and communications in your CRM without ever leaving your email? Your CRM should integrate with your email provider so you can stay organized, seamlessly.
(2) Automate routine tasks.
Your investment team possesses many incredible capabilities, but most likely, performing routine tasks consistently and accurately all the time is not one of them. Wherever it’s possible to introduce technology and automation, you will increase your ROI by enhancing efficiency and keeping your team focused on higher-value activities that promote growth and optimize results.
A good private equity CRM should automatically distribute recurring reports, extract data from documents and emails, auto-populate records, generate reporting metrics, and schedule and track email communications. Intelligent automation increases productivity, accuracy, and consistency and makes it possible to scale without overwhelming resources. The natural outcome is stronger client relationships that grow as higher levels of service and responsiveness are unlocked.
(3) Build efficient workflows.
A CRM system should contain workflows that initiate deal flow processes when triggered by certain conditions. The workflow can function as an additional task-master team member, automatically assigning tasks to team members, sending reminders, and escalating tasks if they are not completed on time.
For example, when a potential deal meets established criteria, your CRM system should trigger a workflow to start the due diligence process. Relevant team members can be automatically assigned tasks and notified about their responsibilities and the system can collect and organize due diligence documents from various parties. Automated reminders and notifications ensure timely completion of due diligence tasks, while progress updates are logged in the CRM. Later, a similar workflow could marshal a timely and organized deal execution process. Your CRM should have the ability to customize workflows to reflect your firm’s unique processes and preferences.
(4) Visualize opportunity, portfolio, and risk data.
To effectively seize on distinct opportunities, private equity investors need to make sense of a lot of complex data and extract insights quickly. Data visualization is a key capability needed to make sense of the vast amounts of information so that informed decision-making becomes more effortless.
When analyzing potential investment decisions, charts, graphs, and interactive visualizations help quickly grasp key information such as financial performance, market dynamics, relationship scoring and risk profiles. Monitoring the performance of portfolio companies becomes clearer and more effective with visual dashboards that display key performance metrics at-a-glance. Visualizing portfolio data can also highlight areas of vulnerability or risk so they can be proactively managed.
(5) Integrate disparate online data sources.
Private equity professionals rely on a variety of online data sources for deal origination, due diligence, and networking purposes. Because these data sources are often disconnected, synthesizing and utilizing information consumes valuable time and energy.
A CRM with robust and secure APIs can intelligently integrate external data sources, allowing you to view contact, company and financial information within your software solution. Targeted data should be retrievable by linking specific fields (e.g. company name, email addresses, etc.) to these sites, or directly synced to your CRM, so when you are in a deal or contact record, you can instantly view additional information.
At the end of the day, the goal of making private equity investors’ lives easier is really about achieving better investment outcomes. By making it more effortless to get all the details right, the bigger picture can come into sharper focus.
A Private Equity CRM to Make Deal Management Simple, Seamless and Systematic
Leading GPs around the globe trust Dynamo to power their deal lifecycle. Learn more about how we’ve designed our comprehensive, industry-tailored CRM with fund managers’ deal processes in mind.
Learn More About Dynamo Software’s CRM and Deal Management Solution
Arie Oustinoff, Chief Revenue Officer, joined Dynamo Software in 2016, following his tenure at SmartBear Software, where he served as the Director of Sales. While at SmartBear, Arie led global sales, growing the business from $2.5M to $25M+ over 4 years. As Dynamo’s CRO, Arie leverages his 10+ years of experience building and leading high performance sales teams.
