Tenured investment professionals know that strategic relationship facilitation and a strong understanding of outcome-driven analytics are vital to the delivery of successful results. In an age when new connections are more attainable than ever before, the ability to manage a dealmaker’s complex web of relationships can no longer be managed by manual processes alone.
So why are software adoption rates still so low? To put it simply: Traditional CRMs can’t keep up with the fast-paced lives of investment professionals. Firms adopt CRMs with the goal of streamlining and simplifying the burdensome task of housing and analyzing valuable relationship data — and when the software falls short, users are only left more frustrated. Tools that only offer a fraction of the solution still leave firms with a fraction of the problem, and the relationships suffer as a result.
Your capital markets firm needs a single source of truth that automates relationship intake, identifies opportunities for new connections and deal origination, customizes the platform experience to meet your firm’s unique requirements, and proactively offers insights and analytics for dealmakers to act on. DealCloud, the industry-minded pipeline management solution for capital markets professionals, has built an extensive relationship management suite designed with features that deliver meaningful relationship intelligence and outcomes.
Save vital time spent on manual data entry and stale contact data
Many firms seek and adopt traditional CRMs in the hopes of helping their dealmakers save time. However, most CRMs require dealmakers to take on the time-consuming task of manually uploading their data to the platform. Not wanting to fall behind in their current work, dealmakers often forgo this task in favor of pipeline initiatives, leaving these CRMs with missing or stale relationship data that is unhelpful to relevant stakeholders.
DealCloud automates relationship data intake to save dealmakers time, and serves as a single source of truth for housing and accessing a firm’s relationship network. Through DealCloud’s integration with Microsoft, existing contact books are automatically synced and added to the platform, so users don’t need to upload existing names and addresses manually.
Additionally, when a firm integrates inboxes from individuals to a larger, more connected relationship network, the firm can access insights such as common connections, potential overlaps in client communications, and institutional knowledge that outlives employee turnover.
DealCloud also offers contact signature scraping, a feature that automatically captures expanded contact information found in email signatures — such as job titles and phone numbers — and adds or updates them within the relationship management solution. This saves individuals time otherwise spent on manually ensuring their contacts are as accurate as possible.
Beyond contact information capture, the Microsoft Exchange connection also integrates relevant information — such as shared files, scheduled meetings, and email communications — directly into DealCloud. This lets users access the most up-to-date, contextual information for a contact at any time. The software also provides full transparency for deals with multiple stakeholders, so users can view interpersonal communications and pipeline updates without constantly regrouping.
Access actionable relationship insights
Without a connected firmwide network, it’s difficult for organizations to understand where common connections lie or how relationships are evolving over time. For example, a dealmaker may not realize that they’re focusing on target company that one of their coworkers already has a connection to. Or a dealmaker may forget to reach out to a vital contact, cooling the relationship.
DealCloud knows that firms need automated and robust relationship analytics that integrate with their current workflows to access insights that inform new strategies. When firms integrate their existing relationships in a shared single source of truth such as DealCloud, connections that aid in the dealmaking process become accessible at a firmwide level.
For example, after identifying a target company, a dealmaker can view personal connections from the firm to that target company within the platform. The dealmaker can then leverage that connection to make an introduction and begin the deal process — because as every dealmaker knows, a personal introduction typically goes further than cold outreach alone, and often leads to more successful opening conversations.
When firms select DealCloud, they also gain access to Relationship Intelligence, a tool designed to automatically assess the frequency of communication among contacts to produce a relationship score. Relationship scores help dealmakers understand how strong their relationships are, then adjust accordingly. For example, if a key contact has a low relationship score due to infrequent communication, the dealmaker may decide to reach out and schedule a call.
Successfully identify new relationships using third-party data
As detailed above, firms can use DealCloud to discover connections within their existing network — but how does DealCloud support the discovery of new contacts?
Unlike traditional CRMs — which usually require dealmakers to seek outdated and more difficult methods for relationship origination — DealCloud offers integrations with leading third-party data providers to bring enriching data discovery directly into a firm’s pipeline management solution. This allows firms to automatically include existing contact and company records in a contact’s view, giving context to an otherwise surface-level contact.
When external databases are brought into internal processes, firms have access to potential relationships outside of their existing contact address books. DealCloud offers third-party data integrations with tools including:
- Equilar — Unlock trusted corporate leadership data
- FactSet — Identify investment opportunities and uncover risk exposure in a timely and reliable manner
- PitchBook — Access verified public and private capital markets data
- Preqin — Enhance your firm’s private markets knowledge base and supercharge your fundraising and investor relations initiatives
- PrivCo — Accelerate research and build business development pipelines more efficiently
- SourceScrub — Access actionable market data to ease the burden of data entry
- SPS — Enable deal professionals to leverage actionable transaction and M&A data in deal sourcing and intermediary coverage initiatives
- S&P Global Market Intelligence — Leverage robust, differentiated data on private and public companies, newsworthy developments, key professionals, and industry metrics
- Dun & Bradstreet — Analyze potential investments by accessing a database of more than 300 million business records
When both proprietary and third-party data is accessible in a firm’s pipeline management solution, relationship management is better equipped to save time and produce results. View our full list of data partners and learn more about our third-party data integrations.
Better manage proactive relationship outreach
Organizing your existing relationships within a single source of truth for capital markets firms is important — but it’s what dealmakers do with these contacts that matters. Insight without action leads to wasted potential, and dealmakers need to feel confident that they’re building processes that deliver results.
Identifying important contacts, monitoring their progress, and managing outreach for new and existing contacts all require dedicated time and momentum. But when dealmakers integrate their network within DealCloud, they can automate those processes and tier their contacts appropriately to better manage their priorities. For example, relationships that require constant communication can be labeled appropriately, and notifications can be created to alert the user as soon as a relationship starts to cool.
Users can also create templated emails to simplify their contact follow-ups. Once a user is alerted to a cooling contact, they can deploy a templated check-in communication with one click. Dealmakers can use these templated communications to schedule plans for future communications and prompt outreach at the appropriate time.
By automating and simplifying the outreach process, firms eliminate the need for manual checks. This saves vital time across the firm and allows users to manage even more relationships without additional heavy lifting.
DealCloud simplifies relationship management
Despite their need to leverage new and existing relationships, very few capital markets professionals have had dedicated tools to support their efforts. Now, firms can use relationship data within DealCloud to drive deal origination and outreach efforts.
DealCloud was built by capital markets professionals to address the unique problems they faced in their own roles. When a firm integrates DealCloud, Microsoft Outlook, and third-party data in one single source of truth, that firm can easily automate intake, prioritization, and outreach in a way that delivers results and makes relationship management easy.
Ready to explore DealCloud’s relationship management capabilities? Schedule a demo today.