As part of the investor relations team for an equity long/short, Rob wears many hats. Among them are capital raising and sales and marketing, so he spends a lot of time with his broker-dealers, mining them for introductions.
Alyssa works for a large insurance company, where she hires and tracks the third-party managers – subadvisors – that run her group’s alternative investment portfolio.
Brian is on the procurement team for a leading investment consultant, and deals with the many data providers the firm contracts with to source performance data.
Rob, Alyssa, and Brian are all Backstop clients. Now, with the release of Client-Defined Entities, we’re adaptable enough to support all of them on a single platform. Talk about flexible – it’s like our productivity suite has mastered yoga!
With Client-Defined Entities – “CDEs” as we’ve lovingly termed them – our clients can use Backstop to identify, differentiate and house relevant information about all of Rob’s, Alyssa’s and Brian’s investment business relationships and more.
Here are some examples of how Rob, Alyssa and Brian can leverage Client-Defined Entities in Backstop:
Rob’s Broker-Dealers: Rob has leveraged his relationships with broker-dealers and evolved them into a primary source of capital, cap intros and other referrals. Rob really wants to understand which relationships have come from his firm’s broker-dealers while actively monitoring the pipeline related to each broker-dealer channel. His firm keeps a portion of its assets with a few broker-dealers as well, giving Rob another reason to track them.
Instead of giving himself migraines trying to distinguish the organizations that are prospective LPs from those that might help him find prospective LPs, Rob can now use Client-Defined Entities to create a specific view for each of his broker-dealer entities. You might say that CDEs are like a Forward Fold pose helping calm Rob’s mind.
Alyssa’s Third-Party Managers: Alyssa needs to track third-party managers/subadvisors separately from the broader organizations because of the specific fund and firm-level information being captured. She also wants to standardize management company tracking for funds in which her company has invested or researched, all the while tracking firm overview, history, ownership and affiliations. Ultimately, Alyssa’s challenge is understanding which funds are managed by each manager/subadvisor.
Client-Defined Entities can help Alyssa avoid sleepless nights worrying about what she might be missing in her management company tracking. CDEs offer her 360-degree insight into managers’ relationships (custodian, prime broker, consultant, etc.) and a thorough understanding of material changes affecting her company’s investments or research processes. For Alyssa, CDEs are like a Plow Pose helping her get a better night’s sleep.
Brian’s Data/Service Providers: For Brian, it’s important to track data providers differently than other vendors because of the differences in the specific information he’s tracking for each.
Client-Defined Entities can reduce Brian’s stress level by keeping track of rep contact info, service types, contracts, renewals and license info. CDEs can also track licensed users via relationships to monitor who has access, report costs by user and track how costs change year over year; all the while providing insights into where resources are needed or how they might be reallocated between teams. The way CDEs reduce Brian’s stress level, you’d think they’d perfected the Camel Pose.
The power to configure Client-Defined Entities themselves allows Rob, Alyssa and Brian to gain both control and agility over their own workflows. Some organizations – like a fund of funds – might even have Rob, Alyssa, and Brian all as employees sitting in various departments. Having software that “can do yoga” means our clients get maximum flexibility, while also enjoying the efficiencies achieved with using a single integrated platform.
