Majedie Asset Management has around 85 clients, with an average investment figure of £50 million. Keen to differentiate itself in the market and to compete successfully against hedge funds, known for information opacity, Majedie Asset Management became an early adopter of SharePoint Portal Server (SPPS) 2001. Using a simple web-based extranet with strong security granularity, individual clients could log in to view their own portfolio information. Impressed with the functionality and eager to realise even further benefits, Majedie engaged Perspicuity to migrate the solution to SharePoint 2003 and, more recently, to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.

Business need

An established fund management boutique managing assets that total over £4bn ($8bn), Majedie Asset Management focuses on delivering the best possible experience for its clients. It operates in a competitive, risk-based industry where client confidence is crucial to retaining business.

Information transparency

Majedie places a huge emphasis on information transparency. Simon Hazlitt, Client Director at Majedie says, “The greatest risk for us is a period of underperformance because clients lose confidence. We want them to be able to see, whenever they want to, exactly what we are doing with their money. This gives a sense of control and confidence that they would not necessarily get elsewhere. We want our clients to have self-determined access to the same facts and figures that our fund managers see and use.”

Information availability

Majedie Asset Management has no internal IT hosted servers; it operates a ‘Software as a Service’ model with all information and assets web-based and distributed over the Internet.

Hazlitt says, “We view our office as a place to dial out and share information with those who need to see it, and we need easy management of our technology solutions. We try to avoid any tendency towards silos of information – a potential downfall of relying on numerous different service providers.”

Solution

Perspicuity initially upgraded Majedie’s solution from SPPS 2001 to SPPS 2003, creating an intranet for Majedie internal users and an extranet for clients. Custom Web parts for both the intranet and extranet provided a more sophisticated user interface, with enhanced portfolio analysis tools, document management and search.

Hazlitt says, “It gave us even more functionality that we could use to make information available to clients. We were able to build a dynamic view of clients’ portfolios, giving them the ability, for example, to query month end data and look at fund performance during specific periods.”

Improved user experience

The more recent upgrade to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) delivered further technology and user benefits.

Perspicuity improved the end user experience by replacing Majedie’s legacy system for displaying financial data to clients with AJAX-enabled web parts. Operating within SharePoint and communicating via web services, the web parts retrieve data from Majedie’s SQL Server databases: this data can be refreshed without the need to reload the entire page every time, making it more akin to using a desktop application than to Web browsing.

Integration with Salesforce.com, Majedie’s CRM system, improved both usability and productivity: using Web parts that interact, via a services layer, with the Salesforce API, Majedie clients can now access Salesforce.com without leaving the SharePoint user interface.

Dynamic view of portfolio data

Hazlitt says, “We are able to offer a much richer client journey. For example, clients can view their portfolio data in any given period and this changing view is represented dynamically, giving a sense of drift over time. Clients can click on a graph and see it dynamically refresh.”

Benefits

Hazlitt is clear on the benefits of Majedie’s investment in SharePoint and Perspicuity. He says, “The way we can now make information available reflects the real relationship between fund manager, client and advisor. We are able to differentiate ourselves with something valuable and can demonstrate the tangibility of our service offering. As far as we are aware, none of our competitors can offer anything close to this in terms of technology or information availability.

Increased productivity

“Our SharePoint investment with Perspicuity means that our fund managers are free to concentrate on managing funds rather than dealing with requests for information. Not only are we making information more easily available to clients, we are also reducing the burden on fund managers to supply it.”

Compliance

The SharePoint solution also provides compliance benefits. Hazlitt says, “For example we can show clients exactly what regime we are running for them, according to particular industry regulations. Clients can even submit workflow tasks to Salesforce.com from within SharePoint, and we can be sure that these tasks are properly tracked and audited.”

Stronger client relationships

Giving clients such open access to their portfolio information allowed Majedie Asset Management to build deeper client relationships.

Hazlitt says, “Our clients can see real information and that we are not afraid to show our mistakes. This has enabled us to build trusting relationships. The value-add service that we can provide with SharePoint has improved the ‘stickability’ of business. I believe that we are managing clients’ money for a number of quarters longer than we would have been had we not been able to give them such sophisticated access to their financial data.”

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