Best CRM for private equity in 2024

In the complex world of private equity, there is a lot to juggle. 

From deal sourcing, investor communication, and stakeholder management. Remembering every interaction with key stakeholders is vital, a good CRM can be transformative. 

In this blog, we’ll unpack why you should consider a CRM if you haven’t before, the top features private equity teams should look for in a CRM, and compare the best on the market. So that you can make an informed decision.

Let’s get started.

Why do private equity teams need a CRM?

If you’re a part of a private equity team or running one, you undoubtedly have a lot of plates to manage. 

From getting the right person to invest on the right project, to keeping track of the investments your team handles. 

The interactions you make with your stakeholders are key. And a good CRM can help you remember important details on a particular contact, give you an overview of your investing and fundraising contacts, and empower your team to collaborate by building on each others notes, and allowing them to assign relevant teammates to follow up when the time comes. 

Top 7 features private equity teams should look for in a CRM

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Relationship management for deal flow: A core function of any private equity CRM. Investor management allows firms to maintain detailed records of their interactions with investors. The idea is to be able to collaboratively take notes and keep them in one place for easy access. This includes tracking investment preferences, past interactions, and ongoing communications so that everyone is on the same page.

Investor sourcing: As you identify new investors for each new project you win, a good CRM should help you import these without interrupting your research flow. The idea is to be able to use a Chrome extension to import new investor contact information straight to your chosen CRM. 

Contact enrichment:  Contact enrichment is a feature that automates the process of filling out missing contact information. Usually at a click of a button. Bonus points for CRMs who have an auto-deduplication feature too.

Email marketing: This feature allows teams to create, send, and track personalized email campaigns for fundraising purposes, follow-ups and more directly from the CRM system. Bonus points for CRMs who have contact sync, analytics and AI-support to help you personalize email campaigns to multiple recipients.

Custom pipeline view: A good custom pipeline view will help you track progress of fundraising deals. So that you will be able to see all your latest interactions, shared notes and set reminders for you and your team. 

Team collaboration: Instead of tackling projects individually, having all your data in a CRM will help you work collaboratively as a team. A good CRM can facilitate shared access to information such as contact lists, task assignments, and upcoming tasks so that you can avoid doubling up, and get a quick overview at a glance. 

User experience: A CRM with an intuitive and user-friendly interface is crucial for ensuring high adoption rates and minimizing training requirements. Afterall, good user experience leads to better engagement with the system and its features. 

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A comparison of the best CRMs for private equity

Let’s unpack the best CRMs out there for private equity teams. 

folk

folk is an all-in-one CRM that users love for its Notion-like features that make it easy to use without a complicated, steep learning curve. You can use folk to manage your investment lifecycle including investor relationships, track deal flows, manage business development and more. 

Relationship management for deal flow

folk simplifies investor management for teams, offering a contact profile view with team notes, reminders, and tasks. It enables creating collaborative contact lists for various investor projects, centralizing notes and tracking interactions in one place, ensuring seamless team coordination even during absences and time off.

Investor sourcing

folk streamlines sourcing investors for multiple projects. Its Chrome extension, folkX, allows for the easy import of investor contacts directly from web pages, facilitating group additions and organization. Additionally, folk provides a global investor list and fund profiles for enhanced sourcing.

Contact enrichment

folk's contact enrichment feature quickly updates missing investor details, eliminating manual effort.

Email marketing

folk’s AI tool 'Magic Field' can help personalize and manage email campaigns. You can also keep an eye on which campaigns have performed well and the ones that need improving with a handy analytics dashboard that can show you open rates and click-through rates. 

Custom pipeline view

In folk, you can configure your pipeline view to mirror your dealmaking process. Choose from list view, or Kanban-board to move people along your process. If you want to take out the manual step, folk can also automatically create pipelines for you, to save you time. 

Team collaboration features

With folk, you can say goodbye to silos. Stay organized as a team by building collaborative notes so that everything on each investor you contact is in one place. You can also add comments and assign tasks so that you have an overview of who is doing what to avoid doubling up. Adding new users is straightforward so you can easily share investor lists in moments. 

User experience

folk is one of the easiest, and impactful CRMs to use on the market. It offers an intuitive, user-friendly CRM suitable for individuals, small to mid-sized teams, and large businesses, without a steep learning curve. 

Price and plans

You can try folk for free with a 14 day free trial. After that, a monthly or annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month
• Premium: $40 per user, per month
• Custom: Starts from $60 per user, per month

DealCloud

DealCloud is a CRM system by Intapp designed for financial services firms, hedge funds, real estate investors and private equity firms to manage investor relationships and track deal flows.

Relationship management for deal flow

DealCloud offers customizable dashboards and real-time reporting with a flexible data structure approach. You can build contact lists for prospective and current mandates, including tear sheets.

Investor sourcing

Data import into DealCloud requires manual effort, lacking direct import support. You can import contacts from spreadsheets and use integrations to sync third-party application data. A signature scraping feature is available to gather contact details from email signatures in your correspondence.

Contact enrichment

As of now, DealCloud does not offer a contact enrichment feature.

Email marketing

DealCloud supports sequenced email campaigns and templated reports, including non-platform users. It also provides reporting and analytics tools.

Custom pipeline view

DealCloud enables pipeline tracking by engagement type, visualized as a pie chart, and a list view for prospective and active mandates. Users can create custom dashboards for a personalized view of ongoing deal pipelines.

Team collaboration

The platform supports team collaboration by allowing configuration personalization at individual, team, or firm levels.

User experience

DealCloud focuses on front-office operations but can be challenging to navigate. Its interface is not very intuitive and requires a significant learning period.

Price and plans

DealCloud's pricing is not publicly disclosed, but it's estimated to range from $50,000 to $70,000 for a 30-person team license, plus $30,000 to $50,000 for integration and setup costs.

Dialllog

Dialllog is a workflow-based CRM. 

Relationship management for deal flow

Dialllog enhances investment lifecycle management with features for overseeing deal pipelines, due diligence processes, portfolios, and supplier/vendor relations.

Investor sourcing

The platform doesn’t specialize in investor sourcing. Instead, it emphasizes the transfer and importation of existing data.

Contact enrichment

Dialllog lacks a contact enrichment feature, limiting the ability to quickly update missing contact details.

Email marketing

Dialllog integrates email with privacy controls and an embedded inbox, enabling on-platform email access and workflow creation for incoming emails.

Custom pipeline view

Dialllog offers a deal pipeline view to organize data and manage relationships within your network.

Team collaboration

The platform facilitates team collaboration in fundraising, tracking investor communications, and assigning team members to specific workflows.

User experience

Dialllog focuses on helping venture capitalists with workflow management, combining project management and CRM features. It includes task management, ESG tracking, due diligence, and portfolio overview but has limited traditional CRM functions. It offers basic relationship intelligence and tracks investor interactions.

Price and plans

Dialllog's pricing is not publicly available, but it's implied to be a significant investment.

4Degrees

4Degrees is a CRM and deal-flow management platform designed by ex-investors for family offices. Their goal is to help teams streamline origination, due diligence and deal life-cycle matters.

Relationship management for deal flow

4Degrees offers a contact profile view with a relationship score and overviews of team notes, reminders, and tasks.

Investor sourcing

The platform leverages existing data to recommend contacts for warm introductions, aiding investor sourcing.

Contact enrichment

Auto-enrichment is available for both contact and company information on 4Degrees.

Email marketing

4Degrees integrates email marketing, providing interaction overviews and syncs with Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and calendars.

Custom pipeline view

In the platform, you can customize your pipeline view to suit specific needs for deal tracking and management.

Team collaboration

The platform enables team collaboration by allowing access to team networks and shared contact lists.

User experience

4Degrees, being an all-in-one tool, may have a steep learning curve. It raises concerns about network privacy, particularly with personal contacts.

Price and plans

4Degrees keeps its pricing and plans private, suggesting a considerable investment is required.

Conclusion 

Private equity teams need tailored CRM solutions, unlike generic platforms that often have cumbersome interfaces and high costs. folk stands out as the ideal choice, offering a collaborative CRM focused on building key investor relationships and partnerships. It provides vital features such as AI support, email marketing, and automation to streamline your workflow. Experience folk's efficiency for free today.