Most emerging hedge funds operate on a restricted budget, and implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system to support their sales and investor relations process is often not a priority. The result? The loss of valuable early-stage data. Details of past activity – from calls with prospective clients to meetings with investors – can be entirely lost if not appropriately stored.

Most hedge funds do eventually adopt a CRM. As the fund grows, it becomes essential to deploy specialist software to support business development and relationship management. However, critical data is generated even prior to the fund’s launch. Hedge fund managers that delay the adoption of a CRM until months – or years – down the line stand to lose this data. The pre-CRM history is scattered across generic systems such as spreadsheets, inboxes, and calendars. Information lives in the minds of employees until such time they forget or move on. As the business continues to grow, the volume of data may become impossible to track and manage and CRM adoption beyond this point is significantly more challenging.

For emerging fund managers, the benefits of implementing a CRM earlier in the fund’s lifetime are manifold. First, the CRM delivers value from day one. A CRM keeps every member of the team in the loop about ongoing conversations and relationships, streamlining operational efficiency and delivering a better investor experience. Where the CRM is part of a wider fund marketing solution, it lends the fund manager credibility, portraying it as established, even in the early days.

Second, early adoption of a CRM lays the groundwork for future growth. It avoids the time and effort required to migrate historical company data onto the system, which as discussed may exist in a plethora of different formats and systems. Having the right tools in place positions the operation to scale quickly as the fund grows.

In our recent white paper, we discuss how early CRM adoption can drive operational efficiency from day one, diving deeper into the value of the CRM and considerations when selecting a hedge fund CRM. For more information, check out the white paper now.