We’re trying out a new survey approach for identifying and monitoring industry trends.  Our first survey addresses the provision of Fund Communications before, during and after the current market disruption.  You can complete the survey here and if you leave your details we’ll email you a summary of the responses once the survey is complete.

The recent and ongoing challenging market conditions have seen Investment Managers adopt a range of new Fund Communications techniques and tools.  Alongside this, the macro-level factors of increased technology adoption, pressure to generate efficiencies, and the emergence of Generation Y clients and staff can be seen to change the dynamics for Fund Communications in the future.  The purpose of the survey is to establish how far these new techniques and tools have gone in the industry, and to see if they will persist beyond the current volatilty.

Click here to take the survey - it shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes.

The business challenge

We’re undertaking a vendor selection for a client seeking a Marketing Automation and Email Marketing solution.  They want to introduce efficiencies into an already very busy Marketing department while improving the service that they provide to the wider Sales and Servicing communities.

Potential vendors

Based upon an initial criteria of integration with salesforce.com CRM, the shortlist comprises the following:

All of these vendors have some integration with salesforce.com and Investment Management experience.  However, this is a very immature software category in the Investment Management industry.  The salesforce.com integration is a key factor so there are no other vendors in play at present.  However as the industry and software matures, maybe there are some emerging solutions that need to be considered in future.

A wider net

So has anyone experience with other Marketing Automation vendors?  Are there some that don’t currently integrate with salesforce.com but are a strong enough proposition to be considered in isolation? We welcome all suggestions and comments.  In return, we’ll happily share our experience of Marketing Automation within the Investment Management industry with you.

Do you have a query about our company, services, projects or website?  We’d be more than happy to hear from you.

Please use the form below to send your query:

Identifying solutions to the key business and technology challenges   At Tomtom Consultants, we have extensive knowledge of vendors and products in the Sales, Marketing and Client Services area. Rather than provide a long list of all vendors that we’ve seen, heard of or encountered, we prefer to identify, understand and add value to partners that we see as market leading. . At Tomtom Consultants we maintain and monitor a full view of vendors, solutions and products. Whether a result of recent engagements or our regular market assessments, we can accelerate your understanding and identification of appropriate solutions in the marketplace.

► Client Communications and Reporting

► CRM and Salesforce Automation

► New Business and Proposal Management

► Marketing Automation

Client Communications and Reporting

	DeskNet Inc. is the leading provider of software solutions for Enterprise Customer Communications. DeskNet’s ContentWelder is a powerful and easy-to-use platform that has been used to deliver proven solutions in areas such as 1-to-1 customer communications and automated compliance workflow. .
	FundWorks is a specialist provider of client communications solutions for the investment community. FundWorks was founded in 2003 by a team of senior industry consultants and managers. FundWorks management team has over 9 years’ average experience in the asset management sector, previously holding senior positions in operations, sales and marketing, project management and IT. The company currently employs 40 staff and is headquartered in the City of London, with support and development offices in Glasgow and Nagpur, India.
	Client Reporting Software Specialists for Asset Management companies. Vermilion Software is an independent software house located in London, England. We are dedicated to developing business excellence through the continued development, implementation, training and support of the Vermilion Reporting Suite (a best of breed client reporting software solution) and Data-Gateway Service (a web-based data gateway / middleware solution) software products.

.CRM and Salesforce Automation

	Onyx Software Corporation is a worldwide leader in CRM, Customer Process and Customer Performance solutions for the enterprise. Onyx provides flexible CRM solutions that enable organizations to automate, manage, and evolve their customer processes quickly and cost-effectively for strategic advantage. By providing an integrated suite of customer process automation applications encompassing customer relationship management, process management, and analytics capabilities, Onyx enables enterprises to reduce costs, increase productivity and grow revenue.
	Pivotal CRM is the customer relationship management (CRM) product suite of CDC Software, The Customer-Driven Company. CDC Software is a provider of enterprise software applications designed to help organizations deliver a superior customer experience while increasing efficiencies and profitability. The CDC Software product suite includes Pivotal CRM (customer relationship management); c360 CRM add-on products, industry solutions, and development tools for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform; Ross ERP (enterprise resource planning) and SCM (supply chain management); MVI real-time performance management; IMI warehouse management and order management; and Platinum China HR (human resource) and business analytics solutions.
	Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services. More companies trust their vital customer and sales data to salesforce.com than any other CRM company in the world.
	Satuit Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in On-Demand and On-Premise vertical market sales force automation (SFA) and client relationship management (CRM) solutions that are easy to implement and provide  clients with the precise tools they need to increase sales, better serve their clients, master information-intensive business relationships, and cut costs.

 New Business and Proposal Management

	Kadient helps you improve sales performance by arming your team with the content, messages, and strategies they need to win at every stage of your customers’ buying cycle. Using Kadient’s on-demand sales knowledge application, inciteKnowledge, sales people can sell on value, stand out from the crowd, provide sales coaching, and accelerate their sales cycle. Marketing teams gain more control and consistency in the messages delivered to the marketplace and have greater impact on revenue.
	Proposal Software is the world’s leading proposal technology company, offering support to the proposal professional with ‘best in class’ tools that reflect ‘best industry practices’. The driving force behind our organization is helping proposal professionals achieve superior work group productivity. The underlying architecture and search engine technologies of our solutions mirror today’s most advance database techniques, while Microsoft Office compatibility interfaces ensure immediate user orientation and acceptance.
	The Sant Corporation is a provider of proven software and expertise that improves sales effectiveness. We help companies who provide value-based solutions win more business by accelerating the production of persuasive proposals, RFP responses, presentations, and related documents. Businesses choose Sant to improve productivity, increase sales, and develop accurate, consistent sales documents for their customers.

Marketing Automation

	Eloqua gives you the power to create, execute and monitor powerful multi-channel, multi-touch demand generation campaigns. Automatically score and profile each lead. Deliver only qualified prospects to sales. Show marketing results and drive more revenue.
	ExactTarget offers financial service organisations a single user interface to define, modify, and send one-to-one communications in response to their constituents’ needs
	smartFOCUS DIGITAL, a leader in email and digital marketing, makes it easy to turn every online communication into a powerful business generation tool. Our on-demand software Email Reaction, enables marketers to more effectively deliver relevant personalised and timely communications that inspire customer relationships and improve results.

Transforming Investment Management Sales, Marketing and Client Services   Based on a detailed vision and previous experience of transformation projects, we provide specialist services to support any Investment Manager seeking to:   improve their Client Communications, Reporting, CRM, Contact Management, Fund and Marketing communciations processes and offerings transform their Distribution firm through technology, process and organisation-enabled change programmes establish a shared, centralised Sales, Marketing and Client Services platform that enables global, multi-product, multi-channel support

For many years, Investment Management has underinvested in it’s Distribution capabilities. The challenges of selling, marketing and servicing in an increasingly complex market have been accentuated by an environment of manual processes, tactical systems and unstructured organisations. . We are now seeing increasing activity to alleviate this situation. Our services assist Investment Managers to enable this change through:

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• a technology vision that develops a Distribution Platform for Investment Managers and Financial Service companies

• process design, re-engineering and change management

• structural organisation change to take advantage of specialist and centralisation

Specialised support packages

Tomtom Consultants has assisted a number of companies with their initial CRM projects, enabling both the technology and  processes that result in success for the business.  Once up-and-running our clients are able to support the majority of ongoing needs internally.  However, a regular programme of external support, education and development often helps keep CRM in the shape that the business needs it.  At present, we provide support packages focused around the following business areas:

• CRM for Financial Services SalesForce Automation; more details are in the brochure here

• Client Communications for Institutional Investment Management

• New Business Management for Financial Services

• Client Service and Support for Institutional and Corporate channels