Posted by Leah Stashko on Mon, May 21, 2012 @ 09:53 AM
It’s no newsflash that the financial world is tightening; government regulations are being put in place, shareholder demands are increasing, and competition for raising capital is becoming stiffer. As alternative investors are being put under the microscope, transparency and good governance are now a necessity. This increased scrutiny has created increased demand for automation or “straight through processing” to be put in place.
As a result, there has been a progression of VC and PE firms investing in “back office systems” to help manage and automate workflow of things like capital calls, LP communications, and accounting. With cloud-based and SaaS vendors steadily making their mark in the industry, this structure and automation has become more readily available. So it seems only natural that front office automation would be next. It is practically essential to leave the world of manually building Excel spreadsheets and storing in email folders. As of now, financial information tends to be kept in long and cumbersome spreadsheets. This creates information loss, inaccuracies, and inefficiency. A structured, automated, easy to read system would not only takes care of these issues, but would offer the good governance and transparency companies need today.
“In another year, using automation in only half the office will just not cut it”, says Farid Naib, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and DocDep CEO. “Adopting a more complete system will provide exponential benefits to VC/ PE firms. Increased automation will allow firms to more easily comply with standards such as Dodd-Frank, and improve business continuity and operational efficiency.”
This new operational efficiency is available with cloud-based, structured systems, such as Sonar from DocDep. With tools such standard and ad hoc report writers, predefined and customizable snapshot matrix views of investment information, and sorting and filtering capabilities, the front office can join the automated world.