Dealmakers know that success lies in relationships. They also know that time and resources are precious. Too often, firms find themselves bogged down by poor relationships, wasting energy on intermediaries that fail to deliver. In fact, 45% of executives say their biggest challenge when it comes to strategic partnerships is keeping them active and mutually rewarding. It is frustrating to invest in connections that do not yield value while potentially overlooking those that could make a significant impact.
At the same time, many firms struggle to not only input intermediary information but also aggregate it to make informed decisions on which relations to prioritize and nurture.
Recognizing these challenges, this blog explores practical tips and best practices for intermediary analysis, specifically in the Intapp DealCloud platform. We will guide you through the process of tracking and evaluating the intermediaries you work with, enabling you to identify which relationships are worth your time and which ones may not be. By leveraging these insights, you can focus your efforts where they’ll have the greatest return.
Get the Inputs Right
The key to leveraging advanced analytics pertaining to intermediaries is the data that lies underneath. There are a two main aspects essential to get right:
- Interactions and Activities: The conversations you and your team are having often contain valuable information that can only be obtained straight from the source. Ensuring that the key points of meetings, phone calls, and conversations make their way into DealCloud is essential. Leveraging as many tools as possible to make the entry of these activities into the system is the key to success. Reducing barriers by leveraging features like Contact Activity Capture, making sure the UI is logical, and only relevant information is required to log an activity is a great start to this.
- Sourcing Information: From a data entry standpoint, the key things to capture for deal sourcing are straightforward. You need to know what firm you sourced the deal from, and the individual at the firm that gave it to you. Those two datapoints alone can be used to drive a host of analytics on the deals you receive from intermediaries.
Then Focus on Analytics
Once you begin tracking your activities and deal source information, you can begin analyzing the data across the board to gain valuable insights. Some of the questions you can answer with the right reporting are:
- How many deals are being sourced through each intermediary?
- Who are our top intermediaries?
- Who are the individuals at these firms that give us the highest quality deals?
- Is an intermediary sourcing us quality deals, or are they all dying in the first few stages of our process?
- All things equal, which firms and individuals are sourcing us the best deals if we were to “score” them?
Using the above information, your team can then prioritize intermediaries accordingly, using DealCloud to ensure they stay in touch with the intermediaries that provide the strongest leads. Our team has a strong grasp of best practices for all the above. We can build these quickly, let your team try them out, and adjust from there. Typically, once the possibilities are known, creative, firm-specific ideas start flowing.
Let Monarch Help You Maximize Your Intermediary Relationships
DealCloud offers the ability to centralize data on intermediaries and use it to gain actionable insights that can transform your business. By partnering with Monarch, you can ensure that your DealCloud setup is optimized for tracking and analyzing intermediary performance.
At Monarch – we have more experience with Intapp DealCloud than any other partner in the market. We’ve helped private equity, venture capital, investment banking, and many other clients get the most out of their relationships using the DealCloud platform.
For more information on how Monarch can enhance your intermediary analysis processes, contact us.
