Investment Management Software: A Case Study

The Challenges

Agro Capital Management Berhad had been growing on a double-digit growth and at such a growth rate, they needed to automate their operations. Some of their processes were overly time consuming and that was when they realized the need to have systems in place and digitally transform their business.

• With the increase in the number of new investment plans and the variety and complexity that each one of those investment plans demanded, Agro Capital Management Berhad needed a robust investment management system that could manage all the complexities.
• The number of appointed agents and the sales team had tripled over the years and this called for proper sales management and automated calculation of sales commissions.
• With new investment plans being launched, the number of investors had greatly increased as well, and this invariably had brought about an increase in service requests from the investors thus increasing the need for the Operations team to respond in a timely manner.
• Commencement dates for investment plans varied and the dividend calculations and keeping track of payouts were quite a challenge for the Finance team.
• Due to the complexities of the business, reporting was a vital component and generating these weekly reports took the Operations team laborious hours.

The Solutions

Upon being awarded the project, the first thing that the Second CRM team did was to put a clear implementation blueprint in place. This was crucial as it outlined all the key components of the investment management system and the spiral of workflows that are associated with each and every component. Once this was agreed upon, then the project roll out commenced.

• The core of an investment management system is its database. As such, the first thing that we did was to put in place the database and structure to the entire product offering followed by the customers as well as sales agents.
• The products were classified by type and tenure and all the intricate details as in payout timelines, dividends, premature withdrawal terms etc. were incorporated.
• All customers data were now in the system and this includes information such as their list of investments, maturity, dividend payouts, banking information, contact details and many more.
• The sales agents were captured in the system, mapped to the relevant investors and ranked based on their hierarchy. Beyond that, all sales commission related information was also set up in the system.
• Each time a new investor comes on board or an existing investor increases his investments, a set of workflow kicks in and takes the burden away from the Operations team. This even extends to the point of automatically generating the investment contracts and this eliminates all kind of possible errors & omissions as well as eradicate any possible unauthorized contract amendments.
• There are complex calculations associated with sales commissions as these include direct payouts as well as overrides, depending on the hierarchy of the sales agent. This entire formula had been built in the system and now, the system automatically calculates all sales commissions and overrides, and this automation eases the burden on the Finance team.
• The complexity and variety of dividend calculations were also taken care off in the system. Now, the system can automatically pull out the investment contracts that are due to be paid on a daily basis, calculates the dividend payouts and generates a report for the Finance team which summarizes the daily, weekly and monthly payouts for processing.
• To manage the ever-increasing numbers and demand coming from sales agents and investors, we then implemented two separate portals which encourages self-service. They are the Agent’s Portal and Investor Portal. Now, both agents and investors could manage their accounts, investments, update contact details and even log service requests through this portal. Agents could see their commission payouts and the same goes to investors who can view their dividend payouts in real time. Schedules, statements and even newsletters were made available within these respective portals and can be downloaded anytime. This removes a huge burden from the Operations team who previously needed to respond to each and every request manually.
• Second CRM’s Investment Management System comes with lots of standard reports. Above that, there is a report builder tool which allows Agro Capital Management to generate any reports that they wish to have anytime in the future. As part of the implementation, we had also created numerous other reports which previously use to take hours of laborious work gathering information from multiple Excel files. Now, these are all automatically generated at the scheduled time and emailed to the Management team.

The Management and team at Agro Capital Management Berhad were truly amazed with the investment management system that had been implemented by the Second CRM team. Now, lots of manual work were replaced by technology and overall productivity had improved manifold. If you are with an investment management company and would like to have a chat with any of our consultants to discuss your problems, please feel free to reach out to us at +603 8687 4433 or email us at sales@secondcrm.com .