Streamlining Global Investment Operations with No-Code Workflow Automation

One of the world’s largest investment management firms with more than $1 trillion USD of client assets under management serves more than 2,000 clients in over 50 countries. More than 800 investment professionals in over a dozen global office locations serve as trusted investment advisors to central banks, sovereign institutions, pension funds, endowments and foundations, mutual fund sponsors and wealth managers worldwide. The firm’s market presence, track record and family of funds for fixed income, equity, multi-asset and alternatives span asset classes in nearly all sectors of the global securities market.

The Workflow Challenge

After an internal strategic planning initiative, the firm re-organized the support teams from three fund services groups into a single shared services team to support global fund operations. In order to provide ongoing oversight, shared services needed to establish one standard set of metrics by consolidating three different sets of legacy processes, databases, spreadsheets and vendors. This business-driven process involved reviewing 1,500 repeatable tasks, adopting a common language framework and evaluating whether to “build vs. buy” a workflow solution to meet its complex reporting, compliance and auditing requirements.

The HighGear Solution

After a 90-day pilot, shared services determined HighGear’s enterprisegrade workflow platform addressed the firm’s demanding procurement, information security, application design and architectural review board requirements. The no-code, visual workflow designer empowered nontechnical admins to create custom business processes all on their own with no IT involvement. Enterprise task management allowed the team to get out of spreadsheets and optimize thousands of repeatable tasks. And the non-repudiable audit trail enabled managers to prove compliance with internal operating procedures and complex financial industry regulations.

The Results of Automation

HighGear provides shared services with real-time visibility, aggregated reporting and measurable metrics across the entire firm, from global operations and fund services to product development, legal and compliance. Executives are also able to calculate capacity, review resource utilization and track the individual levels of effort for the audit, compliance, market open, treasury and transfer teams. HighGear’s power, flexibility and ease of use allows the team to focus on data, innovation and process improvement to maximize efficiency, mitigate risk and achieve better scale through automation, centralization and standardization.