No matter the size of your firm, there’s sure to be many moving pieces to many different deals at any given time. With the rush to close these deals before the holiday season is upon us, it’s critical that the team meet their deadlines and stay focused. For the leadership teams within private equity and investment banking firms, it can be especially difficult to keep track of people and their activities.
To make sense of all the comings and goings, as well as all the day-to-day milestones and events, we suggest creating a firmwide calendar integration into your CRM. This technology can help you manage and increase visibility into firmwide business development efforts and travel plans at any time of year. Below, we explore several commonly-asked questions and examine where and how technology can help.
Who’s traveling this week/month, and to where?
While it may seem like a simple suggestion, a great number of private equity and investment banking firms still don’t keep track of each individual’s travel plans. Providing a firmwide calendar integration increases visibility into the key trade shows, conferences and events that the firm will be represented at. It also shows which geographic regions a person or team of people is traveling to. Having a quick reference calendar in a centralized place will help your team members more quickly triangulate relationships and further business development opportunities.
How prepared are we for this month’s activities?
The leadership at private equity and investment banking firms should encourage the use of calendars and highly-visible deadlines for planning purposes, as well. We suggest integrating these calendars into Monday morning meetings so that the group can discuss what each person needs. From the need for new marketing collateral to the need for increased diligence resources in the run-up to an LOI, these calendar integrations will help the team become more prepared for all of the upcoming and various business development and deal activities.
What major deadlines are about to hit?
Another use case for creating a firmwide calendar integration is to maintain increased visibility on deadlines and deal milestones. These can and should be customized to match the business development and deal processes that exist elsewhere in your CRM. So, for example, if your firm is tracking several management meetings and IOIs, those can be seen on the calendar.
Are there any roadblocks? Which team members have bandwidth to assist?
Increased transparency helps your team to more quickly identify potential roadblocks or barriers to getting a task completed or a deal to close. If these impediments are identified, it’s important that you’re able to act quickly. Leveraging tools like staffing dashboards (seen below) can help you easily discern which team members have the capacity to jump in and help. The calendar, with its visibility on the team’s travel plans, will also help you to see if that person will be in the office, working remotely or out of pocket.
Having this type of transparency will help the firm’s leadership team maintain a view of the staff’s progress towards its goals. It also encourages team members to help one another out when needed. With the New Year quickly approaching, it’s a great time to encourage your team to make new habits – such as calendaring their activities – to help move the needle forward for the entire firm.
To learn more about our best practices for maintaining visibility on firmwide activities and goals through calendar integration, contact us today!