How financial services firms improve pipeline management with Intapp DealCloud  

Recently, financial industry voters chose Intapp DealCloud as the Best Fundraising Solution in the Private Equity Wire European Awards and the Best Data Provider — Overall in the Private Equity Wire U.S. Awards. 

Private Equity Wire staff spoke with Amit Lalwani, Vice President, Financial Services Industry at Intapp to learn more about this award-winning deal and relationship management solution. They discussed DealCloud’s Applied AI features, and how financial services firms are using the platform to improve pipeline management, grow business, and capitalize on market trends. 

Below are highlights from the conversation, shared with the permission of Private Equity Wire. 

Tell us about DealCloud and what makes it special. 

Amit Lalwani (AL): Intapp DealCloud is a deal and relationship management solution built by industry professionals. It helps investor and advisory firms close more deals and generate higher returns by providing one centralized location for accessing and applying firmwide intelligence. Unlike generic customer relationship management (CRM) systems, DealCloud enables firms to manage complex multi-directional relationships with ease.  

Why do clients choose Intapp DealCloud? 

 AL: One reason is that DealCloud is built specifically to meet the unique needs of financial services firms. We have spent decades studying the industry and understand that firms interact with a wide range of constituents on every fund raise and capital deployment. We also understand that trusted relationships are everything.  

DealCloud helps professionals work more effectively, accelerate deal closings, and strengthen relationships by allowing them to map, manage, and nurture all their connections within one platform. 

Another reason firms choose DealCloud is because they’re able to take advantage of best practices we’ve developed from serving more than 2,400 clients. These best practices are incorporated into “blueprints” tailored for private equity, private credit, venture capital, and other types of private capital firms. These blueprints, which include a preconfigured site structure, reports, and workflows, enable many firms to go from signature to production in just weeks. 

Private equity firms also choose DealCloud because it offers Applied AI features that help them improve critical processes and decision-making while respecting their data access models. For example, our zero-entry feature uses AI to automatically capture data. This eliminates tedious manual work so professionals can focus more time on strategic priorities. An AI-generated relationship intelligence feed also provides insights that help professionals make more informed decisions.  

How do your clients take advantage of your technology? 

AL: Our clients use DealCloud to manage and improve just about every aspect of their businesses. The most common use cases include:

• Pipeline management — Firms accelerate deal execution with DealCloud’s automated task workflows, alerts, and customizable pipeline activity reports. 
• Business development — Because institutional knowledge is centralized in the DealCloud platform, firms can accelerate their business development efforts with insights into client investment preferences, their professionals’ expertise, and deals pitched, won, and lost. 
• Deal sourcing — Clients uncover new business opportunities with AI-driven recommendations generated using proprietary data and integrated third-party intelligence. 
• Relationship management — Clients gain a first-mover advantage leveraging network updates, follow-up nudges, and actionable information from DealCloud’s AI-powered relationship intelligence feed. They also identify the strongest potential paths of introduction to new contacts using AI-driven relationship scoring that identifies existing internal relationships.  
• Email marketing — Our email marketing tool, Dispatch, saves clients time with AI-assisted email generation.  

Our clients also use our mobile app frequently. They tell us it saves them significant time because they can quickly view data and deal progress while on the road. For example, if they’re headed to a conference, they can get tear sheets and see real-time activity for companies they’re meeting with while on the plane or in a taxi. 

What are your most noteworthy product or service innovations from the past 12 months? 

AL: Our most noteworthy innovations from the past 12 months include: 

• AI-powered relationship management functionality — Intapp Assist for DealCloud, our new generative AI offering, delivers insights and time savings that provide firms with a competitive advantage.

  These features include the relationship intelligence feed we mentioned earlier as well as contextual email outreach. Contextual email outreach makes it faster and easier for professionals to nurture relationships by automatically generating engaging email content informed by a firm’s history with a contact, relationship intelligence, and relevant news.  

• Advanced collaboration capabilities — Firms can automatically provision, govern, and maintain deal-centric workspaces in Microsoft 365 — right from DealCloud. These secure workspaces accelerate deal execution by allowing professionals to share information and collaborate within one convenient location.

  Integration between DealCloud and Microsoft 365 also allows users to view DealCloud dashboards from within Microsoft Teams, and include actions related to Microsoft Teams and SharePoint in DealCloud workflows.

• Enhanced Microsoft Outlook integration — We’ve made several new enhancements to our DealCloud Microsoft Outlook add-in that save professionals time. The add-in, which integrates emails, events, and attachments with DealCloud data, now allows professionals to search, add, and edit DealCloud entries directly from Outlook. For instance, professionals can run engagement summaries and email them to clients — or view pipeline data before sending a team update — without ever leaving Outlook.  

• Document ingestion service — This new service provides commercial real estate firms using DealCloud with a powerful way to improve productivity while ensuring data integrity. It automatically extracts key data from offering memorandums (OMs), or investment memorandums (IMs), which is then reviewed by human eyes for accuracy. Once the data has been validated, it can be integrated with other information or used to build proprietary datasets that inform decisions on real asset deals.  

What are the most significant changes you’ve observed in the European private markets industry, and how does Intapp DealCloud help firms capitalize on them?​ 

AL: One is an increased focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations. Rising concerns about climate change, social disparities, and corporate governance — coupled with regulations and societal expectations that prioritize sustainability — are fueling growing interest in ESG-friendly investments. 

As a result, potential investments in European private markets are increasingly assessed on ESG-related factors as well as their financial performance. 

In addition, private equity firms with a demonstrable commitment to sustainability can secure capital and deals more easily. This puts pressure on them to improve ESG performance and embrace more sustainable investing approaches. 

Firms that use solutions like Intapp DealCloud have a distinct advantage when it comes to executing ESG investment strategies. For one, they provide the advanced analytics and reporting firms need to prioritize investment opportunities based on ESG criteria. Also, by consolidating ESG data in one platform, they allow firms to monitor ESG performance across portfolio companies and identify areas for improvement.  

Another significant change is the surge in secondary market activity. Many investors want to unlock capital from illiquid assets that have dropped in value due to economic conditions. This is driving a massive increase in the formation of secondary funds made up of assets purchased from cash-strapped investors. 

Firms interested in secondary funds can benefit greatly from solutions such as DealCloud that provide specific capabilities for managing the secondaries pipeline and tracking investment preferences. 

Connect with us to explore how Intapp DealCloud can help your firm improve pipeline management, accelerate growth, and build stronger relationships.