It’s safe to say that 2017 was a banner year for the global asset management industry. A strong bull market sparked massive inflows and tremendous profitability. In North America alone, for example, assets under management increased 13 percent to $37.4 trillion, fueled in large part by a 14 percent surge in the United States. Meanwhile, that total ballooned to a staggering $79.2 trillion globally. And while such growth is certainly impressive, it’s unlikely to be sustainable when the economy inevitably cools.
That, according to a new report from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), is among the reasons why so many asset management firms are in the midst of a digital transformation. They’re looking to “re-invent their platforms for the next wave of growth, while protecting their business against future adverse conditions.” Or at least that’s what they should be doing. Of course, in an industry with a reputation for being a late adopter of technology, sometimes that’s easier said than done.
Fortunately, most of today’s asset managers recognize the importance of digital and analytics. They understand that getting it right will play a huge role in determining tomorrow’s winners and losers, so they’re adapting accordingly.
Practically speaking, that means that we can expect asset managers to start looking very different in just a few short years. For example, they’re likely to change their core value proposition and the solutions they offer, while also providing a growing number of value-added services. Beyond that, the transformation will change everything from how they manage talent to their approach to strategy and operations. It’s this last area of change — and its implications for sales and marketing in particular — that we’d like to focus on here.
The Need for Digitally Enabled Sales and Marketing
When it comes to sales and marketing specifically, BCG predicts that asset managers will increasingly deploy digital tools that feature predictive analytics. Their goal in doing so will be to not only offer more personalized products and services to their clients, but also to be much more proactive and tailored in their outreach.
One example where a growing number of asset managers are already doing this is with digital content management. Regardless of their size, creating and managing content has historically been a significant challenge for most asset management firms. It’s a time-consuming and manual process that diverts asset managers away from the things that they actually should be doing, like building new relationships and nurturing existing ones.
That’s not to say that content will be any less important in the future. Client reporting, portfolio reviews, thought leadership, and corporate communications are all essential tools for communicating with clients and ensuring that they feel both engaged and comfortable with the work being done on their behalf. Yet when creating all of that content is a painful process because it’s done in silos across the business, it can be problematic. All the more so when the compliance reviews that follow are both lengthy and error-prone.
Perhaps one of the biggest issues of all, however, is that most asset managers have no way of actually tracking how their content gets used. They invest hours and hours creating content without having any way of being able to see how it actually influences deals. That’s not how successful asset managers should be operating in the digital age.
A Better Approach
A good sales and marketing enablement solution will remove the pain points asset managers face when it comes to creating and managing their content. It does this by streamlining the content creation lifecycle, simplifying compliance reviews by taking the guesswork out of the equation, and providing insightful metrics into content usage.
For asset managers, embracing digital transformation is a business imperative. And while doing so won’t always be easy, sometimes it’s as simple as adopting the right tool. At Seismic, our platform is designed to enable a modern, streamlined approach to sales and marketing. The result is greater efficiency, far less frustration, and the confidence that comes with not only knowing that your content is always compliant, but also the exact impact it’s making on your business.
As asset managers look to the future, they need to find ways to embrace the best technology to help automate and transform the way they do business. By simplifying the content management process, sales and marketing enablement platforms have the potential to do just that.
