Zlatan Ibrahimovic famously said, “You don’t buy a Ferrari to drive it like a Fiat”. This quote perfectly illustrates our belief surrounding Research Management Systems (RMS) – they should not only centralize data, but should also optimize and manage key workflows for your investment office.

 

 

 

Over the past year, we have had several investment offices request our help with the implementation of an RMS. We’ve found that, despite impressive horsepower and capabilities, an RMS is often underutilized, becoming little more than a storage container.

 

We would like to share three examples of how your RMS can transform and enhance your research management processes.

 

 

 

Example #1: Meeting Note Automation

 

Rather than relying on users to manually create meetings in the RMS, set up a calendar sync that systematically creates a meeting record when an email address is copied on a meeting invite (e.g., investments@).  Once the meeting occurs, the user can find the meeting record in the RMS, review the systematically created entry (e.g., date, manager relations) and paste in the meeting notes.

 

The automation not only saves time (e.g., creating the meeting, assigning a date, relating a manager, etc.), but also makes it easier to record meetings in the RMS.  Reducing barriers on data entry will help your dataset become more complete.

 

As a bonus, the calendar sync functionality can also build up your contact dataset.  A new contact can be systematically created for all meeting attendees that are not in the RMS based on their email address.  A team member can review the new contacts weekly and ensure each record is complete.

 

 

 

Example #2: Create Workflows for Manager Consent Documents

 

Instead of relying on circulating documents via email for review and approval, leverage an RMS platform to track documents that require a decision and/or action.

 

As documents are received into an RMS, check off documents that require an action such as LPA amendments.  In some RMS platforms, the check box can then systematically create a task or an additional checklist that will guide the document workflow to completion.  Users can be notified via email of assigned, incomplete, and/or past due tasks.

 

The RMS will not only maintain the status of each document, but also an audit log.  In addition, you’ll be able to quantify the volume of documents that went through the workflow for future resource planning.

 

 

 

Example #3: Streamline New Fund Onboarding

 

In place of manually setting up a fund in both your RMS and Investment Book of Record (IBOR), allow your RMS to feed new funds into your IBOR once the fund reaches a certain pipeline stage.

 

While the integration will not completely set up the fund in the IBOR, the RMS can feed details such as fund name, currency, manager, asset class assignment, and various custom fields.

 

You can then leverage the RMS to remind you of the remaining fund onboarding steps via a fund onboarding checklist such as assigning benchmarks and pacing models or marketable liquidity terms.

 

Each of these examples illustrate how redesigning your processes around your RMS creates efficiencies, improves data integrity, and maximizes the value derived from the system.  Keep reassessing your existing processes to identify additional opportunities where an RMS can further streamline and drive improvements.

 

 

 

Additional Announcement: Investment Operations Benchmarking

 

 

We’re pleased to announce that Union Park Consulting is launching an investment operations benchmarking service.  The service stems from an unmet need we’ve found among investment offices: Seeing how their operational efficiencies stack up compared to their peers and using that insight to identify areas for improvement.

 

Subscribers will receive a list of survey questions surrounding various operational functions such as accounting, cash management, reporting and risk management.  Union Park Consulting will then aggregate the responses and disseminate an anonymized report that benchmarks your responses against other subscribers.  We will then host a webinar for subscribers which will cover the results of the survey, trends we see across environments, and recommended actions for each investment operations function.  If you would like more information about the survey, please email beth@unionparkconsulting.com.

 

 

Thank you for your support and engagement throughout 2024.  We hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

 

 

 

Union Park Consulting