Buy-Side Technology Awards: Best Buy-Side CRM Product—SatuitCRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is often one of the most unheralded business processes across the buy side, in the sense that it tends not to play a direct role in the money-management process. But in today’s industry, where it is important to know your clients well and provide outstanding levels of service, tailored to their specific needs, CRM plays a hugely important role. Norwell, Massachusetts-based Satuit Technologies, founded in 1994 by a number of investment industry veterans, wins this year’s best buy-side CRM product category thanks to its SatuitCRM platform, a product designed by asset management professionals for asset management professionals, supporting five primary processes: compliance, sales and marketing, consultant relations, client retention, and client communications.

SatuitCRM is designed to provide the generic functionality offered by all CRM platforms, but with substantial additional functionality focused on buy-side firms’ specific needs. It excels in the areas of new business, client on-boarding, client retention, and up-selling, with typical implementations for new users averaging less than 90 days.

The foundation of the Satuit “many-to-many” data model was specifically designed to manage the complex relationships that investment professional address daily. A buy-side firm may manage one or more products for multiple plans at a single client. They often deal with many contacts, some of whom are third-party influencers or service providers to their clients. They have the added challenge of sorting out complicated reporting requirements at both the relationship and individual account level. SatuitCRM handles all these tasks with the minimum of fuss.

From a technical perspective, SatuitCRM is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, built on Microsoft’s .Net framework. Satuit’s most recent upgrade offers users a flexible interface to enter, search, filter and report on data with a few clicks, while maintaining an intuitive user interface. Satuit’s application program interface (API) supports integration with back-office portfolio accounting, e-marketing and Telephony Application Program Interface (TAPI) software. Additionally, Satuit provides a number of plug-ins for key industry back office and data vendors.

But perhaps the most telling endorsement of the value Satuit offers through its service and technology is its client-retention rate. It is therefore hardly surprising that Satuit, with over 300 clients and an astonishing client-retention rate of 97 percent, scored so highly in this area. —VBA