At Cobalt, we understand that security and privacy are a top concern for our clients. With the sheer volume of data private equity and venture capital firms handle daily, it’s only fitting that safeguarding this information is of paramount concern. Cobalt is committed to protecting your data as if it were our own, ensuring that strong security and privacy measures are always in place. 

Data residency is a growing concern we have noted amongst the firms we work with, especially those located outside of the United States. With data residency regulations varying from one country to another, firms are rightfully worried about where their sensitive investment data ends up being stored and processed. Certain jurisdictions even mandate data storage within their borders, adding complexity to the decision-making process when selecting software vendors. 

To address these concerns, Cobalt has launched new data centers in various regions across the globe. The goal is to provide our clients with a choice of where their data is stored and processed. Our new data centers will help mitigate data residency concerns, and more importantly, ensure that our clients can effortlessly comply with their respective country’s data regulations and their firm’s data governance policies.  

With Cobalt, your data is not just secure; it’s where you want it to be.  

Get in touch with the Cobalt team to learn more about our multi-region data residency support:

Successful implementation of investment portfolio management software isn’t just some ideal-state dream. It’s a must-have tool for any competitive private capital manager. And with some basic understanding and advance planning, PE and VC teams can avoid common implementation pitfalls and enjoy the efficiencies of modern portfolio management.

As a provider of investment portfolio management software, Cobalt has helped PE and VC teams of every size prepare for and executive successful software implementations. Here’s a sampling of the best practices we’ve learned along the way:

• Define the business objectives of implementation. What does your company aim to accomplish by adopting new systems? How will workflows improve? What does success look like? Without clear goals, implementation can miss the mark on strategic outcomes.
• Cement a go-live date and stagger deadlines—and plan for workload surges. A detailed schedule with department-specific expectations will help you meet target dates. Recognize that extra effort will be required to get new systems off the ground—so consider allocating extra manpower during implementation to avoid overworked staff, missed deadlines, or both.
• Outline your strategy for managing historical data. Existing data will need to be loaded into your new system. Determine which data will be transferred and identify the locations of all data you will need. To ensure nothing gets overlooked, assign responsibility for each element of data to a specific team member.
• Inspire your team. Humans chafe at change: Some resistance to your implementation objectives is par for the course. Limit opposition by ensuring that all members of your team will truly benefit from investment portfolio management software—and then communicate those benefits. Make sure all parties know how this shift will make their jobs easier.

Approaching software implementation with intentionality and foresight allows private equity and venture capital firms to reap the benefits of investment portfolio management software—from advanced collaboration capabilities and sophisticated analytics to streamlined reporting and personalized dashboards—with minimal discomfort.

To learn more about typical pain points during software implementation and how to avoid them, download our white paper, “The Private Equity Firm’s Guide to Painless Software Implementation.”

Software for investment portfolio management eliminates busy work. Here’s how.

An overhaul for private capital firms

The phrase “investment portfolio management” calls to mind sleek offices with gleaming monitors and sophisticated professionals. Indeed, private equity and venture capital are elite fields, populated by some of the most agile minds. You’d be forgiven for assuming that specialized software for investment portfolio management is de rigueur. But beneath the glossy patina lies an unspoken truth: In many ways, private capital firms are stuck in the Dark Ages. (Or whatever you call the 1990s.)

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The data management status quo

Due to a combination of inertia, tech ambivalence, and aversion to big spends, private equity and venture capital firms have clung to decades-old operational practices. Many continue to rely on spreadsheets and other subpar data management methods to handle streams of fund and portfolio company information crucial to their businesses.

Ongoing reliance on spreadsheets invites inaccuracies, perpetuates inefficiencies, and burns brainpower. And, in firms that have yet to adopt software for investment portfolio management, such problems are not isolated to a single department: Teams across private capital firms contend with tedious tasks, risking potentially disastrous fallout. Consider:

Deal teams moving data

Members of deal  teams do more paper-pushing than they’d care to admit. Deal teams need to track portfolio company financials, often through a constellation of spreadsheets: Portfolio companies send over metrics in their chosen format. Deal teams move that information into their organization’s internal spreadsheets. The data may then be moved yet again to a sheet for comparing deals.

When one considers how many portfolio companies are being monitored, that’s a lot of time spent relocating data. What’s more, all that movement can turn a firm’s clean data into an error-ridden mess. Meanwhile, deal teams  who use software for investment portfolio management can spend more time actually sourcing deals, giving them a competitive advantage.

Finance teams ferrying figures

From valuations to back-office accounting, finance teams are collecting and manipulating huge amounts of data. Beyond comparing balance sheets for valuations, they also project cash flows, evaluate potential scenarios, and consider how investors value comparable companies. And, internal accounting requires finance teams to gather even more figures on a regular basis. 

Recognizing these drags on employee productivity, leading private capital firms are embracing software for investment portfolio management that easily ingest data and store financials—improving productivity by wide margins.

Investor relations teams gathering records

Keeping investors informed of portfolio company performance involves handling data requests (read: scouring spreadsheets for very specific information). It also means providing regular reports (read: manually preparing tear sheets and cash flow summaries).  And LPs want track records of existing funds, which entails…you guessed it.

For these teams, software for investment portfolio management is a godsend. Best-in-class systems automatically generate tear sheets and reports, freeing up IR teams for higher-level tasks.

Leading private market firms are saying sayonara to manual processes and adopting software specifically designed to automate investment portfolio management and create workflow efficiencies.

Want to learn more? Download our latest white paper, The GP’s Guide to Productivity:

Finding the Best Portfolio Management Software

The private equity and venture capital world is divided into two groups of people: old-guard defenders of Excel spreadsheets and reform-minded advocates of portfolio monitoring software.

Are we being dramatic? Maybe. But debates around the relative merits of Excel spreadsheets and finding the best portfolio management software are happening at PE and VC firms everywhere. It’s a serious question with major implications for productivity, data accuracy, and workflow optimization. And while the right answer undoubtedly varies from firm to firm, considering both sides of the argument offers a useful lens for examining your own organization’s data needs.

Despite our being a portfolio monitoring software company, we’re not insensitive to the arguments wielded by spreadsheet defenders, including these:

• Spreadsheets are a known entity. There’s no denying there’s comfort in the familiar. For a long time, Excel spreadsheets have been the bread-and-butter of investment management. And their usage is intuitive to anyone born this side of 1970. 
• Spreadsheets allow for data manipulation to meet diverse needs. Many firms have an (unofficial) resident Excel whiz adept at arranging data for various reporting functions. From collecting quarterly financials to meet LP data requests, to preparing sheets with customized metrics to compare portfolio company performance—Excel offers endless ways to organize numbers for meaningful analysis.
• Spreadsheets can become highly-designed, tailor-made templates. For formats used over and over again—quarterly reports, portfolio company tear sheets, etc.—many PE and VC firms use Excel (and other Microsoft Office tools) to create templates with spacing, fonts, and designs that match their brand identity.

Of course, advocates of portfolio monitoring software have their own set of talking points, such as:

• Portfolio monitoring solutions offer real-time data. These next-gen software systems function as a single source of truth, ingesting fund and portfolio company data into a centralized database and ensuring constant accuracy. No need to manually update information across multiple files
• Portfolio monitoring solutions automatically generate reports and interactive dashboards. Whether you’re working on cash flow calculations or scenario modeling, portfolio monitoring solutions automatically configure data in innovative ways, streamlining any analysis.
• Portfolio monitoring solutions simplify creation of custom metrics and KPI tracking. Users can create and manage financial and operating metrics for portfolio companies. Each team member can view KPIs relevant to their role. And with best-in-class portfolio monitoring solutions, employees can also track the history of a given metric over time.

The good news? This battle need not end in a stalemate. At Cobalt, we believe even the best portfolio management software need not totally supplant spreadsheets. It is our belief that the marriage of the two is often the best way to enjoy the benefits of each. 

Leading portfolio monitoring solutions offer plug-ins that allow users to seamlessly send data between Excel spreadsheets and software systems. This way, trusty standbys can remain in use, but fueled by more accurate data and more efficient processes. For more on the ways portfolio monitoring software augments the power of your spreadsheet, read our white paper, Four Excel Power Hacks for Fund Managers.

Private market investing is a collaborative enterprise. There’s a lot of information sharing among staff within a general partner and with portfolio-company management, limited partners, and a host of outside partners. And since the Covid pandemic forced all industries to scale back our face-to-face interactions, private-market investors have needed more ways to exchange data electronically.

That’s why a recent release to Cobalt’s Portfolio Monitoring software includes sophisticated collaboration and sharing capabilities. Foremost it’s now possible to design a report or dashboard in collaboration with others, so multiple people can work on a draft report simultaneously before it’s published.

And there’s more.

Once completed, reports can be shared in multiple ways: they can be sent directly to someone or put in a folder to which a group of people have access. Users can be designated as viewers or editors. But any change can be rolled back to a previous version. Anyone familiar with Google Drive will feel very comfortable with the approach in Cobalt. 

In addition, we’ve made our software smarter about the roles played by all the investors in a deal. Now data can be displayed from the perspective of your firm, other outside investors, or all investors as a group.

With so many ways to collaborate, it’s time to build reports worth sharing. Cobalt has been working on this, too. We’ve published a white paper outlining the five essential dashboards every private equity manager needs. You’ll see the best ways to organize information about a portfolio company’s financial performance, valuation, marketing, and ESG commitments. There’s even an overview dashboard designed for the Monday morning partners’ meeting.

Download your copy of the white paper here:

Data, they say, is the new oil. And just like petroleum, raw data needs to be cleaned and refined before it’s a useful fuel. For few is that more true than private equity managers, which must keep track of hundreds of data elements for each of their portfolio companies.

This was the theme of a recent Webinar for fund general partners titled “Value In, Value Out: Business Intelligence Starts with Quality Portfolio Data.” During the event, Hank Boggio, chief commercial officer at Cobalt, offered that “Rather than a necessary evil, portfolio company data is the backbone for reporting and analysis, often driving strategic firm decisions.”

The webinar drew on the experience of Cobalt, a leading provider of portfolio monitoring software, and Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm with expertise in private equity performance improvement and analytics.

Here are four of many insights from the event that might surprise general partners (GPs):

Collecting data from portfolio companies saps productivity.

A typical small or midsize private equity manager typically gets financial updates by email from portfolio companies, with an associate copying data to spreadsheets. The data is often copied again from the spreadsheet into reports for partners and updates sent to investors. Taken together, all this is a drain on the firm’s resources. “General partners tell us on a regular basis they want to ensure that the investment team spends less time collecting and re-keying data and more monitoring and managing the companies in their portfolio,” Boggio said.

More data has more problems than most understand.

The ad-hoc process for gathering information too often doesn’t spot errors and inconsistencies in the data provided by companies. All that manual copying, in fact, introduces more. “If you haven’t taken a close look at the state of your data, you may not really understand the problems you have,” said Cole Corbin, the senior director of fund analytics and reporting services at Alvarez & Marsal. “We’ve seen all kinds of issues, from major integrity problems to cases where like-for-like comparisons were not being done right.”

Employee turnover can undermine data.

Another consequence of informal approaches to collecting information is that a lot of critical knowledge about the process is in the minds of a firm’s investing staff. Experienced associates not only know how to transfer information from company reports to your internal spreadsheets, they also can spot anomalies and errors. “In these times of the Great Resignation, we’ve seen GPs look for ways to lessen their reliance on individuals to collect and organize their data,” Corbin said.

Automating data collection improves data accuracy and saves time.

Instead of manually entering information, GPs have a few options to automate data ingestion into a portfolio monitoring software (such as Cobalt). These workflows can be designed with logic that flag errors and other data-quality problems. They can spot internal inconsistencies, e.g., when the revenue line items don’t add up to the total. And they can alert the investment staff if any data element changes unexpectedly from prior periods.

The webinar also explored how portfolio monitoring software can identify risks and opportunities in private equity portfolios. These analytical tools can be very powerful, but only if the data they are based on is reliable. “The basic mechanics of collecting the financial, operating, and performance metrics from each portfolio company is very repetitive and highly prone to error,” Boggio concluded. “As with any data-centric system, ensuring that the information captured for reporting and analytics is critical.”

Watch a replay of the webinar here:

Cobalt is an industry-leading FinTech company for more than just its technology. At Cobalt, we believe that when we listen to our clients and put their feedback first, our product will be the best in the industry. Our client-centric approach to product development is our product strategy. We take action on client feedback and implement it on our platform as efficiently and effectively as possible. 

Cobalt’s Customer Success and Implementation teams are hands-on with every client starting on Day 1. These teams, in addition to our Product Development team, solicit client feedback on an ad-hoc basis to continually improve the user experience on the Cobalt platform. We conduct research and discovery calls with everyone on the team, not just senior leadership. 

In addition to the ongoing ad-hoc feedback, there are many other ways that Cobalt looks to garner all-important client and partner input.

“Our goal is to improve day-to-day efficiency for every user at the firm”, explains Ashley Smith, Head of Customer Success and Implementation at Cobalt. “We conduct regular feedback sessions with clients and partners to identify opportunities for improvement, and we even run ‘a day in the life’ work sessions to support development of new workflows and products”.

The feedback loop is always alive and well at Cobalt with its Live Chat function and regular “office hours” for clients. While much of the feedback that has been received is applied throughout Cobalt’s products and workflows, it is also on full display within an additional unique Cobalt resource, the Knowledge Base. This application allows clients to access real-time support through step-by-step guides, how-to videos, and detailed descriptions of the most-utilized features on Cobalt’s platform. And “Tip of the Week” emails curate and share the most timely and useful updates as well.

“Some of the most successful organizations (think: Apple) employ a user-centric approach, and the way we build our platform is reflective of that,” says Emily Monaghan, Chief Technology Officer at Cobalt, “Cobalt’s Customer Success and Design Teams gather feedback from all of our clients and then incorporate that collective insight directly into our product roadmap.” 

Regular client and partner design sessions for UX enhancements are another example of a forum in which Cobalt designers are able to garner feedback efficiently and apply it to the interface to make it even more user-friendly.

Through all of this, an ancillary yet significant benefit to Cobalt clients is that each of these sessions also provides a forum for private market firms to be able to network with one another – it is a platform to discuss and implement best practices and solutions that ultimately drive performance. By providing clients with connectivity across the top PE and VC firms globally, Cobalt enables a secure and essential space for knowledge sharing.

Have questions? You can reach out to our Customer Success Team at customersuccess@cobaltgp.com.

As private capital managers build more sophisticated technology that enables data-driven decisions, nothing is more disheartening than finding that the various systems the firm uses give different answers to the same question. If the computers can’t agree on the cost basis for an investment or even the phone number of an LP, why should anyone trust anything they say?

It’s no surprise then that a recent discussion about technology at private equity firms kept coming back to the quest for “the single source of truth.” The occasion was at the recent Intapp Connect Conference with DealCloud, a Cobalt partner, titled “Offense and Defense: How Finance Firms Build, Maintain, and Protect Data Ecosystems.” Participants were Rob Kaufman, Vice President for Investor Relations at FTV Capital (a Cobalt Client), and Chase Paxton, Director of Finance and Valuations at NGP Energy Capital Management.

Each professional emphasized both aspects of the goal:

• Having only one answer for any question
• Ensuring that the data was as close to the truth as possible

Here are the five most useful insights from the discussion:

1. Consolidate to the “best-of-breed” system for each function.
   In theory, the best way to create a single source of truth would be to put all of a firm’s information into one system. In reality, Kaufman and Paxton agreed, no one software suite could handle all their needs. FTV has been trying to reduce the number of systems it uses. It consolidated a lot of data about investors and deals into DealCloud. But it concluded it needed specialized tools for a few other functions. “We’ve always had a best-in-class class technology ecosystem,” Kaufman said. “For portfolio company information, Cobalt will be the single source of truth. And Investran will be for accounting and finance data.”
2. Connect all systems.
   NGP is reducing the potential errors from inconsistent information by connecting all of its systems together using application programming interfaces (APIs).“A lot of data gets captured in multiple places,” Paxton said. “We want to get away from producing a report in one system, and then someone manually puts it into another because that creates a lot of issues with a single source of truth. As FTV builds out its portfolio monitoring and accounting systems, it is keeping them separate from its DealCloud CRM. But it is using a design that will allow them to exchange information in the future.“The same portfolio company lives in DealCloud, Cobalt, and Investran,” Kaufman said. “We want some connectivity, so someone doesn’t have to look in multiple places to find information about a particular company,”
3. Swear off spreadsheets.
   Perhaps the most important way firms can improve their data quality is to wean partners and staff from the spreadsheet habit.“We’ve got really good systems in place,” Paxton said. “We continue to need to make decisions at the firm not to store information in Excel. The more we can train the firm to put data in the system, the more successful we can be with our overall data strategy.This is more challenging than it sounds. While FTV also is trying to move all of its data into the cloud, Kaufman conceded that “I use a few Excel schedules all the time. They could live in the cloud, but I really like them, and someone is going to have to forcibly take them away from me.”
4. Encourage self-service.
   One powerful way to ensure that data is accurate, Paxton said, is to encourage everyone at the firm, especially the partners, to interact directly with the systems rather than asking associates to print reports for them.“It’s important for the people that supplied the data to take ownership and see kind of what the output looks like,” he said. “The more senior leadership is using the dashboards and questioning the data, the better data quality that we get.”The work-at-home regime of the last two years has encouraged even more adoption of cloud systems by senior leaders, Kaufman observed.“Pre-Covid, we’d print three hundred pages reports for our investment committee meeting, and at the end of the day, you’d see piles of paper in the recycling bin,” he said. “Now we don’t print anything, and people are being much more resourceful about using technology.”
   
5. Prepare for lots of questions.
   Investment firms are receiving a lot more requests for specific information from limited partners than ever before, often long questionnaires related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. To answer these questions efficiently and accurately, the firm has to commit to keeping its cloud-based systems up to date.“We got a hundred ESG requests last quarter,” Paxton said. “We want to be positioned to be able to easily not only show that information but also show the improvements that we’re making internally. The data, data quality, the analytics, and presentation are really significant.”

Read our latest whitepaper on how the right portfolio monitoring platform will help create a single source for your firm’s data:

Taking Next-Level Portfolio Monitoring Technology to Private Market Firms Globally

Now, more than ever, private market firms have a growing need for a complete workflow solution that connects differentiated data with sophisticated tracking and portfolio reporting.

Cobalt’s Portfolio Monitoring platform provides private market firms with intuitive technology for collecting, analyzing, and reporting on fund and portfolio company data. FactSet is a global provider of integrated financial information, analytical applications, and industry-leading service.

Together, Cobalt and Factset will deliver an end-to-end solution for private market firms to simplify their investment processes. The features and benefits of Cobalt, a FactSet company, include:

• Advanced data & cash flow analytics
• Personalized fund and portfolio dashboards
• Flexible, recurring performance reporting
• Top-tier data sets & investor intelligence
• Excel plug-in & APIs
• Dedicated client support and consulting

Schedule a call below to learn about Cobalt + FactSet’s Private Market solutions:

Mondays are arduous enough without all of the stress and pressure that naturally comes with those inevitable morning meetings. Precious hours that should be allocated towards productive, consequential tasks are instead wasted on gathering information and creating reports.

In the world of finance, efficiency is paramount – and this was the inspiration behind our new portfolio management software. After all, there’s always so much to do and only so many hours in a day.

That’s why Cobalt is changing the way private equity firms report forever. Our cutting-edge portfolio monitoring system lets fund managers customize and automate reporting as they see fit, replacing daunting tasks with rewarding results. Prioritize what’s important with tailor-made dashboards that highlight the goal-oriented objectives that matter most:

Cobalt’s Portfolio Monitoring Platform lets private equity firms:

• Leverage customized portfolio company tear sheets for optimal meeting preparation
• Tap into aggregated fund and portfolio analytics for the latest insights
• Zoom into any portfolio company on demand for data-driven intuition
• Access much-needed reports from the office and beyond
• And so much more

With Cobalt, you’ll have compromise-free access to your fund performance, whenever and wherever.

The last thing you want before a big meeting is chaos, so isn’t it time we made Mondays a little easier? Request a demo today: