Suite 506
Ardmore, PA 19003
Private Equity Manager: Deal Management and Investor Reporting
A private equity manager decided to implement a system that could systematize investor reporting and be an enabler to its deal management process. Union Park was hired to provide subject matter expertise, surge capacity, and project management leadership.
7 months for administrator integration, portfolio management and investor reporting
Challenge
A private equity manager was manually generating investor reporting in excel from third-party administrator data. In addition, deal management and portfolio company data was maintained through a mix of disparate sources including a legacy CRM system, spreadsheets, and personal notes.
The private equity manager decided to implement a system that could systematize investor reporting, provide more real-time access to their fund cash flows and performance, and be an enabler to its deal management process for both its direct investments and fund of funds business.
The CFO hired Union Park to provide subject matter expertise, surge capacity, and project management leadership to its team during the implementation.
Solution
Deal Management
First, UPC migrated and reconciled all CRM and deal management data, including 4,000+ records across contacts, companies, funds, deals, and investors, as well as meeting notes and documents.
Once data migration was complete, UPC worked with the vendor to mirror the manager’s deal management processes in the system. This included:
- Pre-investment checklist implemented in the system that would ensure each new fund or deal went through the appropriate diligence steps.
- Deal pipeline summary report used to guide weekly investment team meetings and easily highlight deal progress and how resources are being allocated across the team.
- Dashboard for recent and upcoming meetings to promote transparency and share market intelligence across the investment team through organized meeting notes.
UPC configured separate deal management setups for the direct investments and fund of funds business, which provided tailored environments to suit each of their unique diligence processes.
Investor Reporting
In order to generate systematic investor reporting, UPC imported and reconciled 10+ years of accounting history. UPC configured the system to calculate key metrics such as unfunded commitment, dry powder, TVPI, and IRR based on a direct feed of transactions and quarterly PCAPs from the manager’s third-party administrator.
In addition, UPC led the specification and testing of investor and fund performance reporting including tearsheets for the private equity manager’s funds and investors, as well as a quarterly report that is available at the “click of a button”.
During each phase of the project, UPC provided onsite and virtual training sessions to the team. In addition, UPC drafted a procedure manual and “how to” guide to ensure best practices were maintained across the team.
Results
UPC migrated the private equity manager to the new CRM and deal management solution in 5 months. The new system improved information sharing across the organization and provided greater visibility into resource allocation across the investment team.
The integration with the third-party administrator enabled the entire team to access its accounting data alongside its CRM and deal data. In addition, the new system provided more timely performance metrics to the entire team such as calculating real-time IRR, which was ad hoc and a highly manual process before implementation. The new systematic investor reporting saved the private equity manager 4 hours per quarter per fund to generate quarterly reports and provided more robust performance reporting to its investors.
The private equity manager also expanded their scope of implementation since the initial engagement, which Union Park has continued to support.
