This blog post was last updated on Tuesday, January 9th.
In 2024, investor expectations are higher than ever as all eyes turn to data-driven decision making and prudent risk management. Simultaneously, many firms are bracing for a wave of opportunity by keeping their ears to the ground for market activity to build a proprietary deal database, and crystallizing a digitized investment process to move quickly on winning opportunities.
At Dealpath, our priority is to empower your firm to back every investment decision with data-driven conviction and build operational efficiencies from sourcing, through screening, underwriting, DD and closing. In this post, we’ll review 13 ways you can position your firm to maximize value creation on Dealpath with the help of your Customer Success Manager.
Jump to:
- Eliminate Manual Data Entry with Dealpath Data Ingestion (DDI)
- Revisit Data Analytics and Reporting Templates
- Audit All Pipeline Deals and Clean Up Team Reports
- Analyze Dead Deals to Identify Process Bottlenecks & Refine Investment Strategy
- Configure Underwriting Model Comparison to Understand Performance in Shifting Conditions
- Track Owned Assets
- Download Mobile App
- Create Document Templates to Leverage Dealpath for Word
- Configure Task Approvals
- Allocate Deals to Funds
- Schedule a Team Training
- Integrate Dealpath With Platforms Across the CRE Ecosystem
- Make Dealpath the Single Source of Truth By Adding Team Members
1. Eliminate Manual Data Entry with Dealpath Data Ingestion (DDI)
What if you could capture every deal across your target markets–all without adding resources or taxing your team? Dealpath Data Ingestion (DDI) eliminates manual data entry and the risk of human error, adding new deals to your pipeline based on the contents of OMs or flyers.
After adding a new deal, your team can kickstart underwriting and act before the competition, or simply capture a comparable to inform future decisions. Consequently, your firm can effortlessly build a proprietary database of market intelligence.
An AI-powered version of DDI is currently in beta. If your firm already manages its pipeline in Dealpath, contact your Customer Success Manager about joining the beta.
2. Revisit Data Analytics and Reporting Templates
In an increasingly data-first world, robust data analytics and comprehensive reporting are vital to defending your competitive edge, particularly as new opportunities emerge. Consider how your firm can better leverage institutional knowledge to make every decision data-driven.
When is the last time your firm reevaluated its deal screening, underwriting and evaluation process? Are there other data points or comps that could better inform decision making? Could new dashboards help your firm to measure and audit risk?
For example, leveraging data ingestion empowers your firm to build a rich comparables database as you amass new intelligence. Or, consider how your firm can better leverage existing data with clearer reporting.
Your Customer Success Manager can share reporting and analytics best practices based on high-performing institutional investors.
3. Audit All Pipeline Deals and Clean Up Team Reports
Accurately tracking deal stages is critical for prioritizing deals that are furthest along in the pipeline, while maintaining real-time visibility. If deal information in Dealpath doesn’t reflect real-time changes, then it could be blocking progress.
One simple way to kick off the new year is auditing all deals to ensure that deal stages are up-to-date based on internal decisions and any external deliverables. This exercise prepares your team to take the next step on every deal. Encourage your team to leverage mentions, follow-ups, tasks and reminders in Dealpath for optimal collaboration and centralized communication.
The new year is also an ideal time to ensure your team is on the same page by having team members make in-line edits to shared reports.
4. Analyze Dead Deals to Identify Process Bottlenecks & Refine Investment Strategy
Historical and dead deals offer endless insight into your pipeline, portfolio, processes, and trends, which your team can easily tap into on Dealpath. As you prepare for the new year, try thoroughly auditing these dead deals to identify bottlenecks and refine your investment strategy.
Some bottlenecks can be solved or minimized through simple process changes. For example, if a high percentage of deals die in due diligence, then it might make sense to increase rigor earlier on. On the other hand, a higher rate of dead deals in a certain submarket or sector might warrant less focus.
Are there commonalities between similar deals that dragged on, such as internal team ownership or legal counsel? If so, consider how you can optimize these processes or reallocate resources.
5. Configure Underwriting Model Comparison to Understand Performance in Shifting Conditions
Even when your team is well-versed in modeling, it’s challenging to make investment decisions without understanding return profiles across various financial scenarios. Dealpath’s new underwriting model comparison tool helps teams to visualize performance in bear, bull and other scenarios to see if a given deal pencils out, even if the most challenging scenario comes to fruition or more details come to light via due diligence.
Models in Dealpath can be viewed, filtered and sorted by milestone, creator and more. If you’re a Dealpath customer, schedule a meeting with your Customer Success Manager to start using this feature and customize a comparison configuration that meets your needs.
6. Track Owned Assets
Even after a deal closes, your team needs easy access to the data, files and investment decision logic that led to the close, all while tracking owned asset changes. Dealpath’s new suite of tools makes it even easier for departments across your organization to easily track assets, months or years after closing, without altering the original transaction record.
Breaking down communication silos can help asset and portfolio teams to more accurately compare actuals against projections. Similarly, easy access to deal records ensures deal teams can tap into historical data to streamline their work by, for example, finding favorable, legal-approved contract language.
To begin leveraging asset records, speak to your Customer Success Manager.
7. Download Mobile App
In 2024, you shouldn’t have to wait until you’re back at the computer to share an update or take action on next steps. Dealpath’s mobile app enables on-the-go dealmaking with data at your fingertips.
Teams can now access, update and opine on deals from the easy-to-use mobile app. From adding pictures of a new greenfield development to a deal while on-site, to showing an off-market asset to a potential buyer at a networking event, Dealpath Mobile makes it easy to manage your deals from wherever you are.
Download the mobile app now to get started.
8. Create Document Templates to Leverage Dealpath for Word
If creating new deal documents is a cumbersome, time-consuming and error-prone process, your team can build operational efficiencies by kickstarting the process in Dealpath.
Dealpath for Word is an integration that helps your team import real-time, accurate data from Dealpath into properly formatted, branded documents, like an LOI or IC memo, in Word.
After downloading the Word Add-In, create document templates that include simple placeholders to pull in Dealpath data. Then, add the document templates to the corresponding tasks in Dealpath so your team never has to search high and low for the right templates.
9. Configure Task Approvals
Embedding deal closing approvals directly into your Dealpath workflows reduces email traffic and creates a clear audit trail. Once submitted, stakeholders can review the request, then approve or reject it. Approvers can view all relevant information in Dealpath, or quickly approve new tasks directly from their inbox.
Consider configuring deal closing approvals to push deals to the right stakeholders at the right time with powerful automation.
To learn more about automating task approvals or learn about best practices, schedule a meeting with your Customer Success Manager.
10. Allocate Deals to Funds
If your portfolio management team is still relying on the back of a napkin or your memory to track fund allocations, there’s a better way.
Dealpath’s new fund allocation functionality enforces internal protocols and mitigates internal fund and compliance risk by ensuring that deals are shopped around to the right funds. If anyone raises concerns, you can circle back to a clear audit trail to see why a particular fund was offered a given deal, and even report on monthly, quarterly or annual offers and allocations.
To strengthen investor relations with clearer visibility into fund performance in 2024, schedule a meeting with your Customer Success Manager to begin leveraging fund allocations.
11. Schedule a Team Training
Dealpath is intuitive and easy-to-use, but even high-performing teams might benefit from a refresher or broader team training. Re-training your team ensures that all team members are delivering on expectations based on your unique Dealpath configuration and business goals:
- Your team is following proper internal investment processes and protocols
- Deals are ingested, evaluated, and reported on properly according to internal standards
- The team is leveraging all relevant functionality and following best practices
Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to schedule a team training session.
12. Integrate Dealpath With Platforms Across the CRE Ecosystem
Dealpath sits at the center of the modern real estate investment management ecosystem, helping deal teams access data where and when they need it. To make even more informed decisions, build a custom integration to connect Dealpath to relevant solution providers via the open API framework:
- Market Data/Analytics: Harness the insights required to stay competitive in a fast-paced environment in one place
- Asset/Lease/Tenant Management: Leverage owned portfolio data to inform investment decisions with rent rolls, tenant mixes and property information
- Capital Projects: Automate project kickoffs, reconcile critical dates and analyze ongoing budgets to keep stakeholders informed
Connecting the top and the bottom of the funnel with Dealpath’s open API enhances holistic decision making across your firm. Learn more about native integrations and Dealpath’s open API here.
13. Make Dealpath the Single Source of Truth By Adding Team Members
Dealpath’s goal is to centralize critical deal information so that your team can build efficiencies and collaborate effectively. It only fulfills this goal, though, when everyone on your team can access, update and view the deals and data they need.
As the new year begins, consider how adding new team members might help establish additional efficiencies and transparency across your organization. While nearly all professionals benefit from real-time visibility, many teams build efficiencies by adding team members from the following departments:
- Asset management: Find transaction records and track changes
- Portfolio management: Manage, track and report on fund allocations
- Debt origination: Manage debt and equity deals in one command center
Schedule a Working Session With Your Customer Success Manager
Have your firm’s strategies, goals or targets shifted from 2023?
At Dealpath, our Customer Success team has worked with leading real estate investment managers spanning every deal type, market, and niche. Based on this experience, we’ve learned best practices that drive success for teams of all sizes.
To learn how your firm could better leverage Dealpath, schedule a working session with your Customer Success Manager. They can help you work through integrations, identify and solve bottlenecks, and offer other platform guidance to ensure your team is gaining maximum value.
Feel free to reach out to your assigned Customer Success Manager to schedule a working session.
If you’re not currently a Dealpath customer, schedule a meeting by clicking the link below.
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