Dealpath Case Study
Dealpath generates all of our pipeline reporting, it assists with due diligence, and it serves as a critically important repository for our deal data.
Origin Investments is a private equity real estate firm that acquires, operates, and provides debt financing for office and multi-family properties in eight strategic markets. Based in Chicago, Origin is known for its unique combination of crowdfunding and a more typical institutional-based approach. The firm’s first two funds averaged a 24% net return, and their recent $151 million Fund III is comprised of over 450 accredited investors.
Origin Investments, a Chicago-based private equity real estate firm, boasts an elite team of analysts, underwriters, investment managers, and institutional investors. While their wealth of expertise plays a vital role in Origin’s success, the acquisitions team realized that in order to further empower their business growth, they needed to be able to scale their operations.
Without a centralized database, members were spending too much time searching for data rather than focusing on underwriting and analyzing deals. In addition, building reports and analyses for senior leadership was highly challenging because “to find anything about our historic deals, you’d have to go back, dig through emails and shared drive,” said Annamarie Bjorklund, an associate at Origin.
The lack of a centralized, real-time deal pipeline diminished the team’s ability to align resources when and where needed, and impacted the team’s ability to report effectively across departments such as Marketing, Investor Relations, and IT. Given Origin’s highly collaborative nature, the team recognized the significant need to incorporate technology to help them manage both pipeline and historical data.
With Dealpath, we don’t have duplicative work anymore, and we’re now able to get new employees up-and-running in a matter of minutes, not months.
In late 2017, Origin began their search for a software solution that would serve as not only a pipeline management system, but also a deal database that would empower the team to run accurate analyses and make well-informed investment decisions. Bjorklund, the associate tasked with the responsibility to research potential comparable solutions, quickly identified Dealpath as the software to move forward with after seeing “how configurable the system was and how easily we could update from our [Origin’s] end.”
With a flexible platform purpose built for real estate investment, Dealpath’s capability to serve as the single source of truth for deals, combined with its reporting features and workflow management, matched Origin’s need for organization and efficiency. Origin selected Dealpath as their real estate deal management platform in order to create a holistic deal database, run comprehensive reports and analyses, and grow their business with scalable processes.
Since implementation, which includes preloading all of their historical data, the Origin team has had their entire deal database at their fingertips, with access to powerful deal analytics to optimize Origin’s investments and give them a distinct competitive advantage.
Having structured data and streamlined processes has also enabled Origin to quickly expand their team and onboard new members.
Even when faced with the periodic large influxes of deals that used to be so daunting and overwhelming, with Dealpath as part of their business, Origin is now able to stay one step ahead of the game and manage deals with precision.
