How a Large Financial Firm Benefited from Automated Presentations

With over 2500 clients in 63 countries, this financial advising firm is one of the world's largest asset managers (more than $3 trillion in assets under management). They started to utilize Bigtincan a few years ago to automate their PowerPoint presentations.

Here is their story.

The Challenge

Before this financial advisor turned to Bigtincan, it took them at least five days to create a client's sales pitch. If a salesperson requested a presentation to present at a client's site, it took a whole week to prepare that document.

Every part of the process was customized. While this made for a great final product, the process of getting there was both time-consuming and inefficient. The team who assembled the presentation also often missed errors that ended up in the final document. Creating graphs was an incredibly drawn-out, painstaking process. Every person wanted a different chart, which only added to the complexity.

Outside of the lengthy production process, there was always a large compliance backlog. That meant that even after they produced a presentation, it had to sit in the compliance queue, adding more days to the week-long process.

This time-consuming process also made last-minute emergency pitches virtually impossible. When an advisor created a presentation with the old way of doing things, people did their best to quickly produce the presentation and often lost control over the end product.

Because of all these moving parts, creating presentations required a large team. If this business wanted more clients and more marketing, they had to hire more people.

Another massive downside to the old way of creating presentations was the cost. They were operating a team in the U.S. and also had an offshore team because it was more cost-effective.

Despite the offshore team's productivity, it was hard for the company to maintain a level of control that met their needs. This lack of control led to more mistakes and more expenses to fix those mistakes.

Solution Requirements

Due to the various issues with their current system, the advisors decided to document their requirements for a solution, including every feature their ideal solution would have. They wanted hands-free automation for the data points as well as an integrated workflow from start to finish.

The hope was that everyone involved could be aware of where things were in the process, and someone would be able to sign off when the system completed the work.

They needed more consistency and standardization across the board for all client-facing presentations and documentation. The platform needed to be easy to use for everyone, so they wanted something that had a customizable interface.

Because having a single source for content would also speed up creating presentations, they wanted a shared library to enforce standards and encourage reuse.

While the idea of an automated presentation seemed like a completely novel concept at the time, this financial advising firm knew it's what they wanted and wasn't willing to compromise.

They put all their criteria into a document and weighted all the desired features, deciding which items should have the highest priority. Armed with the list of prioritized features, the firm went to different vendors looking for the right solution.

In the end, Bigtincan had the most features that they wanted.

How the Partnership Works

The firm's partnership with Bigtincan led to numerous benefits. Bigtincan helped them define standards that applied to everyone and helped enforce those standards with a few exceptions known as "standard custom."

Bigtincan also advised them to audit all their data and content upfront before storing it. By tagging all this data with dates and names, while holding people accountable for that data, presentations instantly became more accurate.

For example, if a piece of data expires each quarter, it becomes dated. Once it expires, the owner of that piece of data receives an email reminding them of the expiration. They're also charged with the task of updating that data.

Whenever someone goes to push a button to run a pitch, the content is always updated and new! If it's not, they'll receive a warning and know the person to contact about getting the data updated.

Additionally, Bigtincan helped them create a footnote repository owned and maintained by their compliance department.

The Results of the Partnership

In about eight months, the business was able to roll out its first presentation. It was received very positively.
Since then, they've only continued to grow. They now have a library of standard, pre-approved content and reusable templates. Now the team can go in, select a strategy or fund, input some basic info like their name and the date, and end up with a presentation in mere minutes.

On average, it takes about 10 minutes, depending on the complexity of the computation. This speed is a dramatic improvement for a process that used to take a full week to complete.

The process is entirely hands-free. No one has to run any calculations or reports. It's a simple selection process that everyone can do. Everything is consistent, from the data to the branding.

Bigtincan has ensured that inaccurate, out-of-date information never ends up in a presentation. Nothing goes out for marketing or use in a presentation without being fully approved. Everything must be pre-approved, so nothing is misleading.

Implementing the system quickly paid for itself as the financial advising firm went from a team of about 20 to a group of just three. Because it takes less time, fewer resources, and less money, the new process is exponentially more efficient.

Looking Ahead

Even with all these benefits, the firm is looking ahead to even more exciting implementations from Bigtincan.

Would you like to learn how your financial or legal firm can benefit from Bigtincan Automation?