Advest Brokerage is one of the nation's oldest Brokerage firms with an active investment banking
practice. Advest Group's investment advisory group provides customized balanced,
equity and fixed-income portfolio management to high net worth individuals and institutions.
The Need
Advest bankers needed to target, research, and track companies involved in multi-million
dollar merger & acquisition deals. As M&A opportunities progressed and active interests
with prospective Clients developed, the dealmakers at Advest and their staff were
having a difficult time tracking who said what to whom and when. Each dealmaker
at Advest had his/her own contacts and notes, and marketing efforts could not be
managed and coordinated to avoid duplicate efforts, and management level information
could not be extracted regarding status and progress on deals in process.
Consequently, Advest management explored a number of off-the-shelf contact management
systems, and quickly discovered that these systems were designed for individuals
to track individuals, and lacked much of the functionality required to track companies
and industries, and were not geared toward managing M&A or financing deal lifecycle
processes.
The Solution
PCA spent several weeks analyzing Advest's business processes, functional
requirements, workflow, business priorities and primary operational needs. Within 6 weeks, PCA designed and developed
a solution that enabled data-rich screens to show views of companies, industries,
individuals, and deal engagements with customized standard screens for layers of
detail under each.
PCA designed and developed a custom MS Access Database solution to enable M&A
bankers and their teams to more efficiently manage M&A and financing deal lifecycle
activities — from initial client prospecting, through the sales process to close
and relationship management. PCA worked with Advest's M&A department to design
a solution from existing contact management applications and MS Excel spreadsheets.
The custom solution allowed dealmakers and their teams to quickly and easily target,
research, and track companies that are part of (or potentially part of) acquisition
deals, track active interest, and determine the best/most efficient way to move
deals forward. The system PCA developed needed to support an "occasionally-connected
road warrior," using a Laptop, so MS Access was selected as the appropriate system.
To enable Advest to consolidate historical data over time, PCA build data import
capability into the solution from other systems including Excel Spreadsheets, ACT!,
and other CRM and contact management systems.
