In a Private Equity webinar recording with Brad Koontz of Microsoft Dynamics partner Customer Effective (www.customereffective.com), Eric Souza, Director of IT for Berkshire Partners talks about their CRM Implementation. The topic was CRM for
Private Equity and Souza described their CRM journey and what made them
successful.
Berkshire was founded in 1984, and has invested in over 100 companies with more
than $20 billion of acquisition value. Their investors include many of the
world’s largest endowments, foundations, pension funds and insurance companies.
Berkshire Fund VIII is a $4.5 billion fund that was raised in 2011.
Private equity firms typically use CRM to manage some of their key processes,
which include fundraising, deal flow, and portfolio company management.
Berkshire started their CRM journey with fundraising. “This was priority number
one for us….We were in the process of fundraising for our latest fund, so there
was a strong institutional need to improve this process,” said Souza. “Our old
method of tracking limited partner activity was using Excel files and passing
them around in email. This was not an efficient way to work,” said Souza. “With
CRM, we are able to track our Limited Partners and their past and future
interactions. From this information, we are able to generate what we call our
fundraising profile report.”
The recorded webinar can be viewed by following these links:
Part 1: Intro
to Customer Effective 6:03
Part 2: Berkshire
Partners CRM Journey 11:52
Part 3: Demonstration
of Customer Effective: Private Equity, inc. Outlook integration, company 360
degree view.
Part 4: Demonstration
of Customer Effective: Private Equity, inc. deals, fundraising opportunities.