New York-based Imagineer Technology Group offers award-winning solutions to help hedge fund managers address the transparency and workflow demands necessary to succeed in today's marketplace. These solutions, which include an industry-specific client relationship management (Clienteer CRM) software, a web reporting portal (WebVision) and a fund research and due diligence platform (FundInsight), have been designed to build workflow efficiency and help firms communicate more effectively with investors and prospects.
"The platform is quite comprehensive in terms of the day-to-day workflows of our clients. In as much as investor transparency requirements and regulatory requirements have changed over the years, our clients' reporting needs have grown tremendously. A regular hedge fund's annual filing requirements have risen from six to 60 filings. This places a tremendous burden on the operations team.
"The Clienteer CRM platform not only manages investor relations, operations and sales and marketing workflows, but also tracks relevant compliance data such as ERISA levels, FATCA compliance, and Form-PF questions on investor data. Having a full audit trail gives hedge fund managers the comfort of knowing that if they are ever asked a question on historical data, they have it at their fingertips," explains Erol Dusi (pictured), Founder and President of Imagineer.
The ability to seamlessly handle data collection, archival and regulatory reporting requirements in a single platform can help ease pressure at a time when the compliance burden is probably higher than it's ever been. Another key function of Clienteer, in conjunction with WebVision, is the level of investor transparency it affords.
By controlling multiple inter-relationships between investors and fund products and tracking all activities with investors as well as all account transactions and balances, the system can immediately serve up the relevant information needed by the IR team when an investor calls.
"It's becoming important for hedge fund managers to focus on client service and to have the capability to respond to investors quickly and efficiently in order to set themselves apart from other funds," says Dusi. "Having an easy to navigate online portal where investors can access their statements, newsletters, or historical information on a fund, is also an important aspect of communicating effectively today. Combine all of those capabilities into a single platform, across Clienteer and WebVision, and it becomes a highly efficient process rather than having to manage disparate tools for reporting and investor communications. We feel that this is solving an important piece of the puzzle for our asset manager clients."
From a capital raising perspective, fund performance will always be a primary consideration when investors do their due diligence. However, those who can demonstrate operational efficiency, and enhanced levels of communication, will be well placed to stand out from their peers when pitching to potential investors.
"It's a good point. If you are in business development mode and providing access to information on your WebVision portal to 100 different prospects, knowing which of those prospects logged in to the portal, the number of times they logged in, which documents they viewed, can provide a tremendous amount of insight as to their level of interest," remarks Dusi. This gives managers the ability to focus their attention on those investors that are showing the strongest levels of interest, thereby making their capital raising process more focused and strategic," concludes Dusi