Friesland Bank Investments (FBI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Netherlands-based Friesland Bank, has selected 3i Infotech-Framework (Framework), a UK-based provider of software solutions to the private equity community, to manage its private equity investment portfolio.
Framework will allow FBI to centralize all of the information on its portfolio companies in a secure environment, where previously it was stored in multiple spreadsheets across its IT network. The investment team will now be able to access all information pertinent to a specific investment immediately and the speed at which they can access new views of the overall portfolio will be improved, allowing efficient management.
The consolidation of all portfolio company information will facilitate the production of management information reports, which will also aid investment performance monitoring.
Among other things, FBI will also take advantage of Framework’s CRM capability to store all of the team’s contacts in a central repository thereby creating a shared corporate resource. Moreover, the whole team will be able to add relevant information about contacts to build up a strong knowledge management tool.
RHM de Kruijf, director of finance at Friesland Bank Investments, said: “After a thorough selection process we chose Framework; not only does the solution meet our requirements but the team also demonstrated extensive understanding of private equity which they were able to translate to our business. Following the implementation we will have all of the tools we need to monitor and evaluate efficiently the performance of our portfolio companies.
“The selection of Framework has also provided us with the opportunity to standardise and streamline our business processes which will be configured as part of the Framework implementation and will help ensure operational consistency.”
Bulent Osman, director of sales and marketing at 3i Infotech-Framework, said: “Similar to many private equity firms, FBI has switched its focus from transactions to monitoring the performance of its existing portfolio companies which meant that it also needed to review its systems and processes.
By moving away from spreadsheets and adopting Framework, FBI will be able meet its objectives including providing investment managers with quick and easy access to portfolio company information as well as an overview of the complete portfolio.”