How Investment Banks are Aligning Their Technology Needs

In an ultra-competitive and crowded market, investment bankers need to work much harder to show their value to clients and need to work much smarter in order to stay top-of-mind in the eyes of financial sponsors. Over the past decade, many high-performing firms have invested time and resources into technology systems and infrastructure that help transform the way they do business.

Technology implementations and roll-outs, however, cannot be done in a vacuum. The day-to-day workflows of every team member – from the most senior banker to the greenest analysts – need to be considered before shopping for or buying a technology platform.

In this article, we discuss the key goals any investment bank or M&A advisory firm should have for their team, based on the seniority level of the banker. We also provide insights into just how our clients are making those goals a reality by leveraging purpose-built technology.

Managing Directors

Managing Directors within an investment bank are key relationship managers that need to have quick access to key accounts and top opportunities – and they need it all on-the-go. At this level, bankers look to technology to help them not only keep a pulse on industry trends and market movements, but on the year-over-year successes and shortcomings of the firm:

Real time view of current pipeline: MDs need to know where every deal stands in the pipeline. This helps them address certain questions and challenges without confusion or delay.
360⁰ view of the client relationship: MDs who manage key relationships need client-centric dashboards that highlight proprietary touch points. These can be enriched with third-party data, as well.
Benchmark performance and drive resource allocation: It’s important for MDs to track revenue by business unit or industry specialization. They also need to track banker productivity to make more informed staffing and hiring decisions.
Optimize and track firm strategy: MDs also need to keep their eyes on long-term goals, so they should seek out tools that allow them to pull automated reports weekly, monthly, and quarterly.

M&A dashboards, like the one seen above, help Managing Directors stay abreast of fee generation and live deals with one click.

Vice Presidents and Directors

Vice Presidents and Directors are similar to MDs in that they are often key relationship managers, but they are also staffed on active deals more regularly. They’re responsible for driving more profitable business from the client list and need to communication key information across product specialists, managers, and client teams. Because of that, they require unique capabilities that help them execute day-to-day, such as:

Easy access to client communications: From the desktop or from the phone, VPs need to quickly pull up details for every deals, meetings, notes, contact, email or document across their coverage universe.
Cross-product communication and collaboration: VPs need proactive notifications for specific activities that spur further collaboration across industry verticals or products.
Staffing and resource management: For those VPs that manage teams, they require real-time views of junior bankers’ workload and capacity in order to efficiently manage resources.
Create and track deal workflow and deal checklist: VPs are typically the ones ultimately responsible for making sure all due diligence items checked, so it’s important that they have a workflow engine that helps them automate, assign and monitor all deal-related tasks from initiation to deal close.

VPs can quickly and easily edit their deal workflow using DealCloud

Analysts and Associates

For analysts and associates at investment banking firms, it’s critical that they have access to training and support for any technology that’s new to them. Once they are up and running, it’s important that they begin to incorporate the technology into their every day dealmaking activities.

These team members are responsible for executing on tasks and project management. The items below can make a huge difference in the productivity of a junior-level banker or M&A advisor:

Aggregate market intelligence: Analysts, who are often tasked with research projects, must have a centralized platform to store and access data. These bankers need the ability to search various third-party data providers such as Pitchbook, FactSet, Preqin, etc. with ease.
Track every client interaction: Especially for in-flight deals, it’s important the junior bankers have the ability to quickly and easily sync every client touchpoint in one place.
Track productivity: We’ve seen countless investment banks and advisory firms put together productivity dashboards. These helps increase the level of team-wide transparency and shows a junior-level banker exactly where they stand as compared to their peers.

Analysts and Associated need visibility into whether or not they’re on pace with or behind their peers when it comes to phone calls, emails, and other business development activities.

Don’t set arbitrary goals for your firm. Make sure that you’re aligning your technology to the real goals for your organization. Be sure to gather input from all parties, and you’ll find greater success when it’s time for implementation and adoption. Get in touch with our team and learn more at by clicking here.