Challenge Accepted: Modernize Investor Relations for a Global Private Equity Firm

HSO’s smart, technical consultants’ main goal is to deliver client solutions that make it easier and more pleasant to do business. They possess energy and enthusiasm to take on technical, business challenges that metamorphize the customers’ organization.

In this Challenge Accepted blog post and interview, you’ll hear directly from an HSO functional solution architect, Matthew Case, who shares his story of a business challenge accepted and conquered.

The project I’m talking about here was one of those. While there were very antiquated processes, those processes were indeed working. However, there were a lot of manual steps involved. Those steps were not going to translate well to modern technology as we proceeded to automate and improve those processes.

As we went through the discovery process, we realized this was going to be one of those life-changing projects.

It feels good to deliver that kind of project because you truly know you’re doing more than a “lift and shift”—or a linear move. It’s going to be transformational. It’s going to make their processes better and their reporting more accurate. It’s going to give time back to people who are working hard and smart.

That’s when it’s exciting—when you’re on a project that helps a customer come into the modern age

Everybody knows what technology can do because everybody has a smartphone nowadays. So, it’s understandable that businesses want tools that are as easy to use as a smartphone. While that’s not exactly “easy,” it certainly is possible. When you can do that, you kick off a true transformation.

One area of particular concern was investor relations. Manual processes only recorded requests—or requests from custodians on behalf of investors—which were tracked in an Excel spreadsheet. With multiple divisions, not everyone in the firm would be speaking directly to the custodian or investor. So, investor relations depended on this spreadsheet to track those communications and get them to the right places within the organization.

It might seem hard to believe that a firm with billions in assets under management would be using Excel. Any Excel user will tell you that it’s very dependable and gets the job done. The issue is that it was clearly not the most efficient way to do the job. There was a lot of potential to simply make things better.

To me, this was akin to introducing someone from the stone age to an airplane. We had an opportunity to blow their minds. In my mind, one of the most exciting things about this project was the opportunity to transform the person who manages the spreadsheet into a data steward—complete with the tools she needs to support her position—because, in essence, she was already managing billions of dollars’ worth of requests. She just needed better tools that would improve the process.