Tom Hirschmann is Managing Director and Head of Distribution for Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management. “I start my day by logging into one system and I can go between two views to see what’s happening in our institutional and retail channels. I run reports every day or quarter on activity for both channels because they input in the same way.” He looks at sales team activities such as phone calls, emails, and meetings. When these are shown alongside flow results, he can more effectively generate insights to help achieve their goals.
Until recently, Hirschmann’s workday was much more complicated. Hotchkis & Wiley used two separate CRM systems. The institutional CRM was structured for contact management with consultants and clients. The retail (intermediary) CRM was built to handle mutual fund flows from platforms and supermarkets. Neither system provided complete data for its channel. With two entirely separate systems, it was impossible to have a comprehensive view of sales activity. The only way to be a well-informed manager was to spend a large amount of time on the phone and exchanging emails with the team.
Industry expertise from a technology partner
The need for a single system with high-quality data was clear to Hotchkis & Wiley executives. How were they going to plan for such a complex project? What were the risks of down-time or failure? Where were they going to find a partner who understood best practices in the asset management industry?
They started by asking for advice from their industry peers and were enthusiastically referred by a SalesPage client. “It was SalesPage’s experience in the industry and their turnkey solution that influenced our decision,” observed Mark McMahon, Managing Director, Marketing & Client Service. While SalesPage listened, Mark presented the company’s need to support both distribution channels from an integrated data source. They wanted the data processed and resolved without intervention. They asked for the results to be presented in a modern CRM with intuitive user interfaces, meeting the needs of institutional and intermediary users. Plus, they needed to do all of this with a high degree of confidence that the project would be a success.
“It was certainly our job to understand Hotchkis & Wiley’s requirements,” said Tom Larson, Director of Business Development at SalesPage. “In a project that complex, it was also important to advise them about revising requirements to achieve the best results and to minimize risk.” SalesPage offered experts in the fields of data feed management, advisor identification, and CRM integration. These professionals had all, at one time in their careers, worked for an asset manager. “Data management is our core competence. Part of our value is to anticipate and address issues before they occur, based on deep industry expertise,” Larson added.
Hotchkis & Wiley evaluated CRM systems; with guidance from SalesPage, they selected Salesforce. “Salesforce is known as a leader in CRM, but the resources needed to configure it for our industry and business were a concern. It can be time-consuming, expensive, and you run the risk of it not being a good fit,” McMahon said. He and his team knew that many CRM integration attempts by asset managers have ended in varying degrees of failure. Consultants may know how to customize a CRM, but do they know the difference between SMA and mutual funds?
“SalesPage handled the conversions we were looking to do, and we didn’t have to explain what transactions we wanted to process or where they were coming from,” McMahon noted. “They could also meet our aggressive timeline—executing both conversions in a six-month window.”
Hotchkis & Wiley oversight + SalesPage heavy lifting
SalesPage presented a project plan designed to run parallel tracks for institutional and intermediary system migrations. This resulted in a shortened timeline and provided the opportunity for early successes. Intermediary data was migrated to the new Salesforce first and the results exceeded Hotchkis & Wiley’s expectations. “When a client gives us a project, SalesPage wants to validate their trust early and often,” Larson said.
The SalesPage project manager built the timeline around weekly one-hour meetings with the Hotchkis & Wiley team. These meetings rarely ran long. While Hotchkis & Wiley was often assigned necessary tasks, the heavy lifting was always a SalesPage job. Hirschmann and his team could focus their week on raising assets rather than on managing the ups and downs of a technology project.
When asked about lessons learned during this initial phase, McMahon said, “In the process of conversion, there weren’t any surprises. We had challenges with our existing data. If we’d had more time, we would have done more to scrub our data.” Hotchkis & Wiley made a practical decision to import some out-of-date and duplicate data to the new system rather than striving for perfection before the migration. This gave them the luxury of working to improve their data within the new system, in a more manageable timeframe.
New capabilities lead to improved results
After two successful migrations, implementation of a new data platform, and customization of Salesforce, Hotchkis & Wiley has advanced their marketing and distribution capabilities.
- Marketing—Thought leadership articles are distributed through marketing automation with Pardot, integrated with Salesforce. The integrated solution, facilitated by SalesPage, allows them to run targeted campaigns at the firm level, track engagement, and compare campaigns over time.
- Sales—SalesPage expertise was used to define and track activity for the distribution team. Now that a defined process is followed for inputting activity, the sales team has more accountability, and management has more visibility into where time is being spent. The CRM is performing equally well for institutional and intermediary users.
- Leadership—Managers now receive the information they need to have to process accurate and timely compensation. Leadership also uses their CRM to track activity, which they deem as one of the greatest metrics for forecasting new investment.
More time to sell
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McMahon emphasized, “We’re no longer having to maintain two systems, which has freed up resources. With SalesPage’s team handling resolution, we don’t have to spend time tracking down Firms, Offices, and Reps. We’re still refining our sales reporting, but it is much improved over what we had before.”
Hirschmann said, “Working with SalesPage was not only a technology implementation but a collaboration on developing best practices in how we capture activity and oversee the business.” He is looking forward to the next phase of their project, where he will be able to pull up their separate accounts and see purchases and redemptions for his institutional business, as he now does for intermediary. Right now, they see results at the end of the month in a flow report. “As a manager, it’s been great to go to just one place, and I look forward to where we’re headed.”
About Hotchkis & Wiley
Hotchkis & Wiley is a global investment manager serving institutional and individual investors. As disciplined value investors for over 40 years, they offer value equity strategies across the capitalization spectrum as well as expertise in high yield credit. As of September 2022, they managed 26 billion in assets.
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