A CRM is a CRM is a CRM. There are only so many ways you can track email communications, meetings, calls, and opportunities. So why did we make the strategic decision to go out and built yet another CRM platform at Obsidian? And how did this decision reshape our business, and won us recognitions for the best CRM system and most disruptive technology solution at the annual HFM gala in New York last month?
Before committing an enormous amount of time and resources a few years back we did a thorough analysis of available CRMs and identified a large gap with respect to what fund managers need, and what was out there.
What we found was that in today’s interconnected ecosystems, it’s not what the CRM software does, but how it connects with the rest of your business that truly matters when it comes driving sales results, improving retention, and minimizing effort.
For a CRM to avoid the pitfall of going silent after a few months, it has to weave in a constant flow of useful information from various sources. Client facing staff have to know right away if a client has logged into their portal, what documents they looked at, have they read your marketing email, and most importantly what their account performance and stats look like at any given time before taking a call.
So, at Obsidian, we decided to design our CRM into every step of the investment process…
We looked at every point of a client’s life cycle, and worked hard to close the loop to maximize efficiency and traceability. For example, prospects are automatically given access to due diligence packs via the Obsidian deal room, and all interaction are reported back to the manager. As they decide to invest, our SmartDocs onboarding suite takes over, collects all KYC information, generates an electronic subscription agreement, and facilitates an electronic signature. As they become clients, we connect into administrators to pull in all raw numbers on trade activity, positions, and our portal suite delivers a best in class, visual experience to investors and advisors. Finally, Obsidian business intelligence and machine learning suite help transform this information into actionable intelligence that provides insights into optimizing the business further.
During this process we created the Obsidian CRM which is now the corner stone of all of our suites, and ships as a standard feature set to all of our clients.
With the pressure on fees only about to get worse, it’s not only how you invest that matters… it’s how you streamline your business that’s going to make a difference.