A Well-Known Discovery Fund's Journey into Dynamics 365
What do you do when you’re certain there’s more to be gained from Dynamics 365, but you don’t know exactly how to go about it? Exactly—you ask your vendor questions. But what do you do when you don’t get any answers—and are even told, quite literally, that you’re ‘an odd one out’ in the customer base? That’s exactly what happened to Caroline de Groot, Manager of Corporate Affairs at the Commodity Discovery Fund. She decided to set out on a journey of discovery. In search of a different vendor…
Caroline's Challenges
“We’re a small team of five full-time employees and several freelance contractors in the Netherlands and abroad. That has its charm, because it means my job is incredibly diverse. Among other things, I handle administrative tasks related to investors joining and leaving our fund, ensuring compliance with AFM laws and regulations, as well as marketing, human resources, and IT. When it comes to technology, this means I often know what I want, but I lack truly in-depth knowledge of the technology itself. So a good partnership is crucial,” says Caroline.
Tracking the administrative process for participants joining and leaving the program was a labor-intensive, manual process. Changes—such as additional contributions to the fund, as well as client agreements—needed to be visible for each participant in Dynamics 365. This was necessary to maintain a comprehensive view of the client and to always serve participants with the most up-to-date information. Meanwhile, the Commodity Discovery Fund had grown steadily to more than 1,900 participants. Management also wanted a simple way to gain more real-time insight and maintain control.
The Journey of Discovery
The relationship with our Dynamics 365 provider at the time was sluggish. “I didn’t get enough support and experienced the bureaucratic rigidity of a large organization. Since we’re based in Aerdenhout, I was looking for a smaller, local provider—someone close by, pragmatic, and who would speak our language. Google led me to Alistar, and we clicked right away,” says Caroline.
The experience: “nothing but little tricks”
Caroline says that what she appreciates most is that Alistar literally provides “all kinds of handy tips.” The updates, which come from an external accounting firm, are now dragged into a template, bringing the entire participant database in Dynamics 365 up to date in just a few minutes. “This used to take me days of work.” Management can also view the number of participants and the total value of the fund in an intuitive dashboard, and additional contributions or withdrawals for each participant are automatically displayed. Finally, client agreements—made via email, for example—are also automatically added to the relevant client file.
“They really think along with us, and for every challenge we face, we quickly receive a professional response. That’s what I appreciate so much. My international colleagues in Hong Kong and Seattle also want to make better use of Dynamics 365. We use a Dutch system, but Alistar is now also creating the user manual in English.”
Results
- Time savings due to fewer manual administrative tasks related to the enrollment and withdrawal of participants;
- Up-to-date insight into the status of the Commodity Discovery Fund for the executive board;
- Better customer engagement with participants, because all up-to-date customer information is available in Dynamics 365;
- Close collaboration between customers and suppliers, in which small teams can support one another on a daily basis.
About the Commodity Discovery Fund Founder Willem Middelkoop began investing in 2005 in companies that had made a significant (mineral) discovery. He has been running the company since 2008 Commodity Discovery Fund. When a new location is discovered with economically viable concentrations of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum), base metals (copper, nickel, zinc), or other mineral resources (uranium, diamonds, phosphate), billions in value are created annually. Willem Middelkoop is also a member of the Advisory Board of the London-based economic think tank OMFIF. As early as the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001, Willem Middelkoop began writing columns for IEX.nl on financial topics. He is thus a well-known authority, writer, and entrepreneur in the financial world. Take a look, for example, at this Interesting video: “When Our Money Dies.”
