Private equity CRM software is the category name for two different records that happen to share a word. One is the deal record: companies, bankers, diligence and memos, kept by the investment team. The other is the investor record: limited partners, commitments, capital calls, distributions and the quarterly letter, kept by whoever answers investors. A PE CRM from any vendor is built around one of the two and tolerates the other. This page describes both records in the terms a fund actually uses, so a firm can tell from the first demo which record the product in front of it was built for.
The deal record: companies, intermediaries and the pipeline
The deal record is a graph of every company the firm has seen, every intermediary who introduced it, every partner who met it and every stage it reached. Its value is in capture: a CRM that reads the firm's email and calendar builds the graph without anyone typing, and a CRM that does not is a database the associates resent. Its outputs are the pipeline view, the deal memo and the relationship map that says who at the firm knows the person on the other side. None of that is the investor record, and a firm whose pain is on the deal side should buy for the deal side and read no further here.
The investor record: commitments, calls, distributions and what went out
The investor record starts from a commitment per investor and everything else is a fraction of it. A capital call is a percentage of every commitment; paid-in capital is the sum of the calls; DPI and TVPI are ratios over paid-in. The record holds each call and each distribution against each investor, and keeps each notice and each quarterly update as it went out, with its date. On the worked example on this site, a fund with ten million dollars committed and six and a half million paid in has three and a half million uncalled, and its total value of just over twelve million dollars is one point eight five times paid-in capital. A PE CRM built for the investor record computes those figures; one built for the deal record stores them as fields.
How to tell which record a product was built for
Ask for one thing in the demo: a capital call notice computed from a commitment and the calls to date, showing the amount due and the uncalled balance after it. A product built for the investor record shows it in a minute. A product built for the deal record shows you where to type the amount. Neither answer is wrong; they are different products. Then ask whether a saved notice is kept as it was sent or overwritten when the figures change, because an investor's question is always about the document they hold.
Which record a small fund needs first
A first fund's deal flow fits in a spreadsheet for longer than its investors do, because the deal record is read by the people who built it and the investor record is read by people who are owed money and accuracy. So the first paid product at most small funds is the investor side: the commitments, the calls, the distributions, the letter. The deal CRM comes with the second fund and the first hired associate. Rapportvo is the investor record only, and this site says so on every page rather than selling it as a thin version of both.
Questions people ask about private equity crm software
Is a PE CRM the same as fund administration software?
No. Fund administration is the general ledger, the NAV, the waterfall and the audited close, usually run by an outsourced administrator. A PE CRM keeps relationships and, on the investor side, the capital account as the fund sees it. The two reconcile; they are not the same product.
Do I need email capture for the investor record?
Less than you need it for the deal record. Investor relationships are few and slow, and what matters is the commitment, the calls and the documents, not who emailed whom last week. Email capture is the feature that decides a deal CRM; the capital account is the feature that decides an investor record.
Can the investor record hold prospective investors?
It should. A prospect is an investor row with no commitment yet, and the first close turns the row into a commitment. A record that needs a separate pipeline product for prospects is asking you to re-enter every investor on closing day.