BST Awards 2020: Best buy-side CRM platform: Altvia

Altvia, a Colorado-based software provider, wins the award for best buy-side customer relationship management (CRM) platform this year, dethroning Tier1 Financial Solutions, which won the category in 2019 and 2018.

Founded in 2006, Altvia builds investor and deal management systems for capital markets firms and institutional investors. 

CEO Kevin Kelly says the biggest shift for the company in the last year has been transitioning from selling distinct separate products toward offering a comprehensive platform. The CRM platform, AIM, currently has 164 active clients, adding 25 new accounts since 2019. 

“In the case of a typical fund manager, they really just do two things,” Kelly says, “They raise capital, and then they deploy that capital. If that all works out, then they return that capital to their investors.” 

AIM helps fund managers through that lifecycle, from the starting point of securing funding up to the capital returns process. Communication with investors during that process is something that Altvia is focusing on currently.

“We have been working on new functionality for being able to collect information from portfolio holdings,” Kelly says. 

The new functionality will be able to collect information like portfolio companies and real-estate holdings, curate the information for investors, and present it in the form of reports or dashboards.

Kelly says 2020 has been a strategic year for the firm in terms of expansion. Earlier this year, Altvia recapitalized with Denver-based private equity firm Bow River Capital.

Currently, about 70% of its clients are in North America, and about 30% of clients are located in Europe after expanding into the UK around eight years ago. 

Since May, Altvia has focused efforts into expanding its product and engineering team, doubling the workforce from 10 to 22.