We are excited to share the journey of a leading asset management firm as they adopted DiligenceVault’s technology to streamline their Investor Relations and RFP/DDQ processes.
In the words of our asset manager client: “We have been a user of technology to support our client-facing and consultant relations teams, but we wanted better control, efficiency, and scale with our RFP/DDQ processes, as we now have two distribution lines: institutional and wealth.”
This blog explores the asset manager’s technology buying process, the challenges they faced, and how DiligenceVault’s industry-specific features and pre-built templates helped them streamline operations while maintaining high quality investor engagement.
Q: Why did you adopt a new technology for Investor Relations and RFP/DDQ team?
We adopted DiligenceVault (DV) technology recently. The decision to adopt DV was because of a couple of factors. The complexity of investor diligence has increased as we expand our distribution capabilities and as a general industry trend.
We also pride ourselves on the quality of our diligence and marketing materials. With DV’s asset management industry specificity and a lot of pre-built diligence templates, it gives us additional efficiency we need to manage at a larger scale.
Q: What were you using before DiligenceVault?
A few years ago, we were saving down our DDQs in Word files and searching for the best answers on shared drives. Didn’t happen often, but we did end up using stale answers, which then created a bottleneck during the review process as a lot needed to be corrected at the last minute.
Two years ago, we moved to a RFP/DDQ technology platform to centralize our content. This definitely helped us in creating a single view and removed our dependency on Word DDQs and shared drives.
Q: It seems some of your goals were being met. Why did you switch to DiligenceVault?
The challenge with our technology solution was that it was not built for the industry. We had to manage content and save it based on tags. Which content is relevant for a global equity strategy vs. global fixed income. Which content is relevant for US investors, vs. say Australian investors.
Also, we rely heavily on our product specialists and subject matter experts to help us craft the answers. That collaboration was happening via email. This is very complex as so many new topics are being added to the diligence content library… ESG, DEI, Cyber risk, AI, market movements, etc.
Q: Who did you consider when making the switch to a new RFP/DDQ technology?
Fortunately, we had been answering questions across a few portals, with DiligenceVault being the leader in terms of market share.
We evaluated the market and looked at a few providers, including two newer technologies which are industry agnostic, one offering similar to DiligenceVault, and two Gen AI agents.
Q: Why did you select DiligenceVault’s RFP/DDQ technology?
What we liked about DiligenceVault is that they were honest during the sales process. They did not oversell benefits and ensured that we understood that the full value comes from process innovation and firm-wide adoption. To facilitate that, their pricing is also built around firmwide adoption.
The technology is easy to use. We already use the technology for responding to requests from common investor clients and investment consultants, and the number of investors adopting DiligenceVault keeps increasing rapidly each quarter.
Their support. Even as free users, they always responded to our queries and have also set up a user advisory group.
Their future product roadmap includes not just technology features, but a transformative product rollout that will reduce the friction across the industry.
Q: Where did DiligenceVault’s RFP/DDQ technology offering score lower?
When we were evaluating DiligenceVault, they didn’t have Gen AI integration. But they explained their focus on R&D instead of rushing at a time when most asset management firms were in POC mode. They have launched GenAI integration this year, and we are excited about their additional Gen AI use cases for our RFP/DDQ workflows.
DiligenceVault offering is also more expensive, but we value the full package of all they deliver including support and continuous R&D. We recognize that our industry is unique and complex, and we acknowledged that their industry knowledge and technology would be at a premium, and were able to secure internal budget approval.
Q: Why did you not pick a GenAI agent?
It takes a village to manage the diligence process. It’s a continuous process across managing standard DDQ, responding to custom DDQs, and maintaining content for everyone to reference when responding to ad hoc client queries.
With few GenAI agents, they can help answer the DDQ if we give it a source document. But then, it misses things that are not in the document. We also don’t have a collaboration and review workflow. We also need an audit trail for managing this process which is missing.
We want GenAI solutions to be integrated in our workflow and not have disparate agents.
Q: What feature do you like the most in DiligenceVault?
I’d like to pick two. The ability to classify content based on firm, strategy and product is immensely valuable.
The auto-fill feature is my next favorite. Initially, we could auto-fill from the most recent entries, another diligence project, or a product. They have turbocharged this feature to include partial auto-fill, AI-powered similar questions auto-fill, and, more importantly, the ability to customize the source of the auto-fill.
Q: What additional feature or functionality do you wish DiligenceVault had?
Ability to distribute our materials to investors, so even investors can have the same digital experience, and we can track. Having a single platform which would help not only manage content, but also create diligence materials based on this content, and then ultimately distribute these would help us create a seamless experience.
Q: Do you have a checklist or a pro-tip for your asset manager peers who are looking to implement an RFP/DDQ and investor relations technology?
- Document your future state and your pain points, and prioritize top 3 features or outcomes that you must have
- Identify technology partners based on these three priorities and narrow down further to pick one
- Always look at the total cost of ownership – The annual price you pay for the technology is an important factor. Equally important is to understand what internal team resources are needed to maintain the technology, and the quality of implementation and ongoing support provided by the technology partner
- Ensure you get internal adoption. Have a champion on your team who will help drive the adoption. Have a 30 and 60 day milestone
We appreciate the candid discussions with our clients during the sales, implementation, and user advisory engagement phases. Looking to evaluate your RFP/DDQ technology? Please get in touch with our team to explore possibilities with DV!
