How Cassel Salpeter & Co. uses Intapp DealCloud as a single source of truth

Cassel Salpeter & Co., LLC, is an independent investment banking firm, founded in 2010, that provides advice to middle-market and emerging growth companies in the U.S. and worldwide. The firm advises clients on mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, restructuring transactions, fairness opinions, solvency opinions, and valuations. Cassel Salpeter provides investment banking and financial advisory services to clients in a broad spectrum of industries including aerospace and defense, consumer products and services, financial services, healthcare, and technology.

The Challenge

For Cassel Salpeter, the challenge wasn’t adopting a CRM solution, it was finding the right one to fit its unique needs. After years of using Microsoft Dynamics and other CRM systems, it experienced ongoing maintenance issues and found the platforms cumbersome for a firm of its boutique size (less than 25 full-time professionals). It spent a significant amount of time and money attempting to tailor those systems to fit the needs of financial services and dealmaking, but after months of frustrations, realized it needed an industry-specific solution like DealCloud.

Implementation

DealCloud’s account management, implementation, and training teams worked hand-in-hand with the Cassel Salpeter team to identify its needs and create a custom-fit implementation structure. The DealCloud team focused on data migration and workflow optimization. The Cassel Salpeter team proactively chose not to migrate contact data of those with whom it hadn’t engaged with in over two years, providing them with a fresh start and clean baseline data set to leverage. In addition, since DealCloud is a large part of its employee onboarding process, the firm focused on full team training to deliver a fully implemented solution in just two months.

DealCloud has become an integral part of our business, facilitating operations from day-to-day actions to our customer relationship management, to project management, to our onboarding process. From the moment that we started working with DealCloud, the platform and its team have continually and consistently adapted to our needs, rising to meet all challenges we presented them with.

SCOTT SALPETER, PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER, CASSEL SALPETER & CO. LLC

The solution

DealCloud’s purpose-built, cloud-based solution allowed Cassel Salpeter to have a single source of truth, a place where all information surrounding the firm’s data was accessible, and a system of record that ensured team members were held accountable for a certain level of activity. DealCloud was designed specifically for financial services professionals and has allowed Cassel Salpeter to optimize the below functions:

  • Workflow Management: Using the DealCloud solution, Cassel Salpeter created efficiencies and transparency in its workflows. The client onboarding is now more dynamic and team members are able to onboard new clients quickly, accurately, and with greater sophistication through the platform.
  • Productivity and Performance Tracking: The Cassel Salpeter team is given real-time insight into what work is being done and by whom through DealCloud’s productivity and activity tracking dashboards. Each team member uses DealCloud to perform and track day-to-day responsibilities, which can then be viewed and assessed by the firm’s leadership team.
  • Relationship Management: By implementing DealCloud, Cassel Salpeter can better manage the integrity of its relationship data. The firm now hosts all clients and prospective clients’ contact information, amongst other data, in one secure and cloud-based platform that can be accessed from anywhere.
  • Reporting: DealCloud’s reporting functionality allows Cassel Salpeter to dynamically create custom reports, saving time that can be reallocated to other key activities. For example, generating a project’s weekly status report, which previously took hours to complete, now takes as little as 15 minutes.
  • Marketing and Communications: Using DealCloud’s integrated marketing tool, Dispatch, Cassel Salpeter can proactively distribute emails and track engagement metrics with contacts in the DealCloud CRM. This level of transparency allows the firm to better triangulate relationships and assess which clients need support and/or where opportunities lie.

Partnering for success

Working closely with DealCloud’s team of investment banking experts, Cassel Salpeter designed a solution and roll-out plan that enabled deal professionals to focus on optimizing workflows and increasing productivity.

For Cassel Salpeter, success included:

  • Implementation and data migration services
  • Global user training through DealCloud University
  • Dedicated account management and client success teams
  • End-user self services reporting

Executive Summary

  • Used by every member of the firm; three of which are DealCloud University certified
  • Utilized on all client projects, including managing, monitoring, and internal and external reporting on all project aspects
  • Highly recognized as an integral part of the employee onboarding process
  • Actively executing marketing campaigns through DealCloud Dispatch, with several scheduled through the balance of 2020
  • Increased transparency and efficiency through workflow optimizations