dCRM Augustus Asset Managers Case Study
Enhancing Visibility, Insight and Control across the Marketing and Investor Servicing Functions
Augustus Asset Managers Limited (‘Augustus’) was formed from the management buy-out of Julius Baer Investments Limited early in 2007, and derives its name from the Roman Emperor Augustus, successor to Julius. The change in ownership of the business granted the management team control over business strategy and from an infrastructure perspective, drove the need to completely decouple the IT systems from those of its Zurich-based former parent.
This presented Augustus with a unique opportunity to specify a purpose-made, highly robust, marketing and investor servicing infrastructure upon which to build the future growth of the business. Achieving this within the specified timescales was key to the future success of the new business entity. This case study describes the process undertaken by Augustus in partnership with Digiterre to achieve the desired outcomes.
The Marketing and Investor Servicing Challenge
Augustus manages assets within Absolute Return strategies, Long Only accounts and single strategy hedge funds. Each business has different marketing and Investor Relations processes and this creates increased management complexity when compared to many Hedge Fund-only or long-only businesses. Managing each business stream efficiently, without increasing the marketing and IR headcount, was threatening to become an increasing problem.
Historically, the associated business development and marketing processes had been highly manually intensive. Data was stored in a multitude of hard to control spreadsheets while emails and contact history were stored in Lotus Notes. The key objective in the first instance was to implement a flexible and scalable Client Relationship Management (CRM) system designed to support the growth and development of the overall business.
In the words of Edward Dove, President of Augustus "...we were looking to significantly up our game and develop a more ordered and structured approach to our marketing and IR functions." The long term goal is to use the system as a platform to develop an enhanced CRM strategy designed to optimize the total lifetime value of the Augustus investor base. This would be achieved through enhanced visibility, insight and control of all key aspects of current and prospective investor relationships.
Selecting Digiterre’s dCRM Application
Augustus wanted much more than a standard contact management system: they wanted a CRM "hub" or central building block around which to construct a robust, scalable investor servicing infrastructure, ultimately with integration to aspects of the middle office function. Furthermore they wanted to partner with a company that would support the overall growth of the business on a long-term basis, by providing a fully managed service post implementation for a minimum 5 year term.
After a detailed review of a number of alternative CRM applications and associated service providers, Augustus selected Digiterre to implement its buy-side specific dCRM system, primarily because it satisfied the following requirements:
- Extensive functionality aimed specifically at investment managers was available out-of-the-box
- Digiterre could demonstrate a proven ability to perform additional customizations cost-effectively
- Ability to integrate specific middle-office and client extranet functionality into the system
- Seamless integration with MS SharePoint for document storage and management
- Inclusion of a "fund" module to map investor holdings contact profiles within dCRM
Creating a Successful Implementation for Users
Drawing upon more than eight years of experience in designing and implementing CRM systems, Digiterre recommended an iterative approach to implementing the system as the most efficient way to achieve the objectives set by Augustus. The process encompassed installation, data migration, customization and training. In the words of Sonal Amin, CTO "the data mapping and migration from Lotus Notes was the really tough bit. The Digiterre team did an excellent job and achieved this in record time, while maintaining an extremely good working relationship with Augustus throughout the project."
The Result
The system went live on time and to budget and in the words of Edward Dove, President "dCRM has met our expectations in full. It’s an extremely powerful tool which will undoubtedly help us to grow our business significantly in the future. To achieve this we will require constant education from Digiterre on how to get the most out of the system as we continue to move up the CRM strategy curve."
Thought leadership and ongoing client education is all part of the Digiterre service designed to maximize the value our clients derive from dCRM over the long term.
Future Vision
Digiterre have already commenced the second phase of the implementation, which involves the mapping of fund holdings data from Northern Trust and IFS, administrators to the funds that Augustus manages. The third phase of work will involve the implementation of a web-based client extranet and its integration with dCRM to automatically ‘push’ investor holdings data, monthly newsletters and product updates into a secure area tailored to the profile of each investor. The aim will be to continue to provide a highly efficient, personalized service level to investors while enhancing the scalability of the Investor Relations function to support the future growth of the business.
Augustus - www.augustus.co.uk
