Buy-Side Technology Awards 2014: Best Buy-Side CRM Platform—Advent Software

As human interactions have become increasingly electronic, so too has customer relationship management, which has evolved to take on a more electronic feel. That’s not to say that the one-to-one experience is lost, but in this competitive landscape where humans need to juggle more clients in the same amount of time as they did pre-2008, technology has been forced to serve as air support for a portfolio manager’s ground offensive.

It was this thinking that helped lead Advent to the cloud. Advent Direct Investor Management is run through the Advent Direct cloud-based platform and it is the first solution to be migrated to the cloud.

“APX has long been recognized in the market for its powerful integration of client and portfolio data in a single database, allowing key personnel across the firm to access critical client information,” says Matt Ahlstrand, senior director of solutions consulting for Advent Software. “We’ve taken the unique transparency of APX a step further by combining it with Advent Direct Investor Management.”

The combined solution leverages client and portfolio data from APX and delivers it through Advent Direct’s cloud, which allows managers to view client and portfolio data anytime, anywhere.“This new level of connectivity empowers client-facing teams to more effectively manage and grow relationships, and to be more productive, collaborative and responsive to actionable information about portfolios, products and people,” Ahlstrand says.

Users also have the ability to customize the interface so that they can enjoy a more personalized experience. In addition to going to the cloud, Advent has added improved workflows to cut down on manual processes, new tracking features among groups, and it has expanded the number of fields available—now unlimited—for contact and activity records in order to provide greater insight into client activities. This is the second time that Advent has won this category, adding to its 2012 victory. In the five years this category has been included in the BST Awards, Advent and Digiterre have each won twice, while Satuit Technologies has a single win in what has become one of the most competitive groupings.