Product Development and Implementation - Fund Management Framework for Private Investment firms

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1 Case Study Product Development and THE CUSTOMER Vantage Reporting - A provider of enterprise solutions for leading global investment firms that have raised more than a billion dollars in private investment capital. THEIR NEED Private investment firms often rely on multiple solutions to track investment and valuations, leading to inefficiencies. Traditional packaged software provides a broad range of functionalities, but does not cater to company-specific requirements. Conversely, pure custom solutions can do exactly what a firm needs, but they may take a long time to implement due to their uniqueness. Quick Facts Engagement Model: Partial Onsite-Offshore Stage of ISV: Growth Phase Customer Since: August 2004 Customer Location: Boston, USA The customer wanted to capitalize on this gap in the market between packaged and custom-built solutions, and eliminate the inefficiencies resulting from using multiple solutions. Hence, the customer wanted to develop component-based software that would extend and enhance any existing investment management tools of private investment firms. The components that the customer identified initially were Deal Management, Investor Relationship Management and Portfolio Management. OUR DEED Aspire partnered with the customer to develop the components encompassing the complete private investment management lifecycle from fundraising and portfolio management to partnership and investor servicing. Aspire also aids the customer by deploying functionalities that are custom-made for their end users. TECHNOLOGIES USED. NET, VB.NET, C#, Crystal reports 9.0/10.0/11.0, SQL Server 2000, XML, Share Point Services, Outlook 2003, Index Server, Windows Service 01

2 Fund Management Framework Aspire developed several core components for the product including Investor Relations Management, Deal Management and Portfolio Management using Microsoft.NET. Aspire developed several core components for the product including Investor Relations Management, Deal Management and Portfolio Management using Microsoft.NET. These components integrate virtually with other applications from trading and accounting solutions to online communication portals - used by private investment firms. Satisfied with Aspire s technical expertise on developing the core product components, the customer also entrusted Aspire s engineers with precision tailoring of their framework that involved customization of the core product to meet their end customer s requirement. This framework encompassed the breadth of functionalities of private investment firms including - Deal flow management (DM), Portfolio performance analysis and reporting (PM), Contact management, Funds-of-funds deal flow and Investor relations (IR). These individual software components could be integrated easily to SQL database or third party data sources, such as fund administration or accounting databases, office products (Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel) or any combination thereof. 02

3 Aspire s partnership with the customer to customize these solutions for their endusers resulted in substantial features-additions of the individual core components. This resulted in finished products in each of the specialized areas - Vantage Contact, Vantage Deal Management and Vantage Investor. Customization Requirements Aspire developed a scalable, robust product framework for the customer to provide easy customer-specific enhancements. This involved integrating certain modules of the product with other applications like Microsoft Outlook Express. Aspire explored the technology feasibility of this and enabled this to be accomplished as follows: OLDM (Outlook Deal Management) Aspire provided an add-on utility - Outlook plug-in - to the Deal Management (DM) system of the core product. This module integrates Microsoft Outlook Express and the Deal management modules to manage s and contacts related to the deal. Further to the successful integration of DM with Outlook, Aspire and the customer were involved in the integration of this plug-in to other modules of the product. 03

4 IR customization This customization of the customer s Investor Relations Management system enables users to track all contacts and accounts related information. Aspire s team deployed a complex financial system in a user-friendly manner and also implemented an index search on any of the entities in the system. Challenges resolved through Onsite presence Aspire was involved in educating the customer on the offshore working model as this was their first offshore engagement. Through the presence of an onsite Project Manager for the initial few months, Aspire and the customer arrived at defined processes and documentation practices for requirements gathering and change management. Aspire deployed a complex financial system in a userfriendly manner and also implemented an index search for any entity in the system An effective knowledge transfer mechanism was also established to reduce the training and learning timeframe; induction of new resources in the team was also made easier. Resource scalability The customer s requirements vary at different times of the year. Aspire s relationship with the customer has allowed for 6 to 15 resources to be part of a dedicated team for the customer at any given point of time. This scaling up and down of resources is easily managed by Aspire due to effective processes and bench strength maintained. Strategic Engagement Aspire s association with the customer has become strategic, where Aspire is involved in the requirements phase of all end-user implementations and customizations. The customer s entire spectrum of development activities for their product requirements have been outsourced to Aspire. Besides this, Aspire does their technology planning and has from time-to-time suggests improvements in their product roadmap. Recently, a suggestion by Aspire to move to a different licensing model was wellreceived by the customer and Aspire handles all the customer s Project Management activities from offshore. Key benefits to the customer Aspire developed a scalable, robust product framework for the customer to provide easy customer-specific enhancements. This framework increased the re-use of existing components, reduced development times and enabled the customer to offer featurerich products to their end-customers. Initially, Aspire was involved only in the development of certain modules of the core product. Today, Aspire serves as a strategic partner to the customer handling their entire product development, enhancement and implementation activities. This has provided the customer with a multitude of advantages like resource flexibility, quickness to market and offshore cost savings. 04

5 Aspire s technology leadership, project management abilities and resource flexibility allows the customer to focus on their core competency of product marketing, selling and thought leadership in the private investment space. Aspire is committed to excellence and work very hard to satisfy our needs. Their technical skills are world-class! Because of Aspire s competence and flexibility, we are able to place additional projects into production very frequently. Gregory J. Woolf, Chief Executive Officer, Vantage Reporting, Inc Key benefits to the customer include technology leadership and management from Aspire, resource flexibility, quick time-to-market and offshore cost savings ABOUT ASPIRE SYSTEMS Aspire Systems is an Outsourced Product Development firm committed to helping our customers build software products better and faster. We work with some of the world s most innovative Independent Software Vendors and software-enabled businesses, ranging from start-ups to established industry leaders, transforming the way software is built. Aspire provides complete product lifecycle services, ranging from new product development and product advancement to product migration, re-engineering, sustenance and support. Our product development teams are spread between our Global Innovation Center in Chennai, India and offices in the United States. For more information : Website : info@aspiresys.com Phone :