Rapid development of a robust CRM strategy for Investment Managers and Financial Services firms

In order to assist firms that are looking for a fast and effective approach to accessing our expertise, we have devised a series of packages that are designed to build towards a successful business transformation and adoption of a CRM-enabled strategy.  Each of our CRM Accelerator stages develops the business and technology understanding of CRM capabilities to ensure a fully-tailored and focused strategy is defined.  One that meets the individual needs of your firm as the basis for business and technology change that fully embraces CRM as the new "business as usual".

Click on a link below to find out more about our packages:

• a fifteen page report on the Current state of CRM in Investment Management
• a fifteen day project to define business strategy and a CRM Accelerator
• a Distribution and Servicing strategic platform built on our Investment Relationship Management Suite

Our experience in defining, enabling and delivering CRM business and technology strategy over this period has developed unparalleled expertise in meeting sales, marketing and client servicing challenges.  Based upon an in-depth understanding of the Investment Management industry standards combined with comprehensive knowledge of CRM processes, data and reporting, we help firms take advantage of the technology solutions to develop new markets, increase profitability and maximise client retention.

We have devised an approach that is designed to allow firms to pick and choose depending on their stage of CRM development, but work towards our strategic vision of an Investment Management Distribution Platform.  A platform that integrates organisational, operational and technology capabilities to meet the strategic needs of Investment Management firms globally.

Our Current state of CRM in Investment Management report provides unparalleled insight into the drivers, requirements and usage of CRM across the Investment Management industry.  At fifteen pages long, it provides business and technology leaders an immediate step up to developing and managing a shared strategic platform.  Based upon research from the past 18 months, this report provides expert analysis on:

• what challenges and opportunities are firms meeting with a CRM-based strategy, and what does the business look like when it embraces the information, tools and processes
• how are firms developing their CRM capabilities beyond contact management to support sales, marketing and client servicing in new and existing markets
• who are the major CRM vendors in the UK and European marketplace, and where will the technology sit in the Investment Management and Financial Services operating model

The CRM Accelerator package is designed to quickly identify strategic business drivers and deliver a basis for developing the required CRM capabilities.  Over a few weeks, workshops and interviews form the basis of analysis for a fully-tailored Business Strategy and Potential Solutions package.  Our unique and specialised approach is based upon a number of value adding components:

• collected best practices from leading investment management firms covering business development, marketing and client management business disciplines
• template and proforma workshop materials and documentation that quickly capture and reflect business drivers, requirements and solution features to allow a fully-tailored service and outcomes
• industry-leading and independent analysis of the features and capabilities of the leading CRM solutions, resulting in a detailed evaluation of alignment with business drivers and requirements - a firm basis for further decision making

The emergence of CRM, Client Communications, Digital Marketing and other solutions has presented a new set of challenges to Investment Management and Financial Services firms.  These tools are able to dramatically improve the effectiveness of Distribution for these companies while introducing greater efficiencies.  However, while these technologies have developed businesses have yet to fully comprehend how orwhy they should be used.

The Investment Relationship Management Suite is the first platform to be developed solely with the needs of the Investment Management and Financial Services industry in mind.  Rather than a single software product, the platform integrates a series of leading tools to create a set of best-practice processes that quickly take firms to the next level of using web 2.0 technology to signficantly improve their Distribuion functions.

Utilising the integration power of cloud computing and based upon several years development, the Investment Relationship Management Suite enables firms to quickly ramp up capabilities in key areas, including the following:

Fundworks have distributed a press release today announcing that JP Morgan Asset Management have implemented FundNets content management solution.  It’s a decent win for Fundworks with a prestige name - see eFN, Is JP Morgan now the best bank in the world?

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3i Infotech have published a report on the value of Client Reporting teams.  You have to provide your details when registering for the report here or send an email to marketing.we@3i-infotech.com.  The title of the report is ‘Client Reporting Teams - The Unsung Heroes of the Investment Management World’, which gives a clear indication of the audience, and the key findings identified are:

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Some client reporting news, Mercer have selected Vermilion for their client performance reporting.  As a ‘Tier One’ consultant, that means that a number of FTSE 100 companies will be receiving performance reports automated and produced via the Vermilion Reporting Suite.  You can see the full press release at http://www.vermilionsoftware.com/News.asp?Action=detail&id=50

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Fundworks have announced that Schroders in Singapore has selected to use their Client Reporting solution.  This follows on from the decision in May by Schroders UK to select the Fundworks Client Reporting solution.

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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.

While the SaaS CRM market in Financial Services has been dominated by Salesforce.com for the past few years, recent entrant has to be considered a threat to this dominance.  While Netsuite and RightNow have been beaten off, the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM online offering – crm.dynamics.com – creates a new alternative that must have the pepped up the Benioff team.

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Microsoft CRM has been an on-site offering for a while and VARs have provided hosted versions as ‘competitors’ to the salesforce.com offering.  However, in Financial Services we’ve seen little headway made by the On-Site offering and the leverage provided by the SaaS community around salesforce.com and it’s new Cloud Computing offering, force.com has increasingly steamrollered the hosted approach – not just for Microsoft but for all ASP providers.

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In general, when carrying out vendor selection or market research projects, our experience is that firms select Microsoft when budget is tight or when the “We’re a Microsoft house” badge carries sufficient weight that IT overrule any other factors.

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However, the release of an SaaS offering, albeit from the same software family, has to be considered separately from the legacy offering.  It’s now in the land of the application alongside salesforce.com, Google docs, eBay, Facebook and the rest.  It will be interesting to see how it fares.  On first glance, our analysis draws the following initial conclusions on the Microsoft CRM Online solution.

+ves

• SasS offering is now available
• Weight of Microsoft marketing and budget behind it – business users are bound to see some advertising if Microsoft throw their dollars behind it
• 99.9% of companies have a relationship with Microsoft – Linux desktop or OpenOffice are yet to make that big a dent
• While it’s not IBM, most IT departments are comfortable with buying Microsoft

-ves

• Change the name – it’s too long and doesn’t make it clear what it does.  It tells us what it is, but to the business user it falls behind salesforce.com in terms of who uses it and how.
• VAR-led distribution > the ability to execute depends upon the quality of the VAR not Microsoft, and there are a lot of VARs with little or no CRM experience in the network
• Little penetration of the Investment Management market
• Development resources required for onsite application
• SaaS is very new
• Microsoft limited track record of providing Enterprise-level applications