Líderes em empresas e fundos de private equity podem considerar a gestão do conhecimento uma função chata e de back-office. Mas se eles estão buscando uma vantagem crítica no fornecimento e avaliação de acordos e na criação de valor por meio de investimentos - como todo mundo é - eles devem procurar a gestão do conhecimento para oferecer uma vantagem crítica. Como os compostos de complexidade nos ciclos de acordos de investimento da Private Equity, o mesmo acontece com a importância de compartilhar os melhores dados e insights disponíveis entre as equipes de investimento em uma organização.
That’s because the emergence of new datasets, methods of analysis, intelligent computing power, and digital tools and processes is having a significant impact on investing. As complexity compounds in private equity’s investment deal cycles, so too does the importance of sharing the best available data and insights across investment teams in an organization.
de fato, nossa experiência trabalhando com private equity Os clientes para criar o que chamamos de vantagem de conhecimento indica que os fundos que desenvolvem uma capacidade e eficaz de gerenciamento de conhecimento e ecossistema - e uma cultura firme voltada para o compartilhamento de conhecimento - podem obter vantagem competitiva significativa. E um fundo de riqueza de pensão ou soberano maior pode ter mais de US $ 100 milhões anualmente em impacto líquido do gerenciamento eficaz do conhecimento. Definimos impacto líquido como o aumento dos retornos de investimento alcançados por meio de uma tomada de decisão aprimorada, além de economia de custos e menos os custos de construção e implementação da infraestrutura de gerenciamento de conhecimento. Especificamente, em empresas de private equity, ele:
In a representative private equity fund of about $20 billion in AUM, such gains would translate into a net impact of $20 million to $30 million annually. And a larger pension or sovereign wealth fund could see more than $100 million annually in net impact from effective knowledge management. We define net impact as the increase in investment returns achieved through enhanced decision making plus cost savings, and minus the costs of building and implementing the knowledge management infrastructure.
How Knowledge Management Creates Knowledge Advantage
Effective knowledge management drives an organization’s productivity, enhances its quality of output, and increases its speed to market. Specifically, in private equity firms, it:
- Reduz a duplicação de esforços de pesquisa, fornecendo acesso em toda a empresa a uma pesquisa interna e de terceiros comissionada e publicações mais relevantes do setor. situação.
- Increases the efficiency of investment processes by delivering instant access to relevant information and to the most relevant internal and external experts for a particular deal or situation.
- torna o compartilhamento de conhecimento mais comum e mais transparente by both breaking down internal barriers to information while also respecting the discretion of investment professionals regarding information that must be kept confidential.
- Fosters a culture of collaboration by gathering and leveraging knowledge through dynamic teaming and cross-team participation in investment and other decisions.
Crucially, effective knowledge management is associated with clear business outcomes, value to stakeholders, and return on investment. It delivers the tangible advantage of better investment and business decisions.
Once a knowledge management ecosystem is in place, investment decision-making processes leverage both internal and external expertise and proprietary and public information. They build on past learnings and on institutional memory. And they take advantage of curated insights on current and future trends and regulations across markets and sectors to generate new investment theses.
Knowledge Management in Action
The kinds of challenges that private equity firms can address through knowledge management are illustrated through the experience of a global investment management organization that invests for a major North American pension plan.
An increase in scale of the firm’s AUM was accompanied by a shift toward investments in emerging markets. That is, the company began engaging in much more complex investments in a multivariate environment. Leadership knew that such a significant strategic shift would demand superior insight and execution. But examination of the organization’s knowledge management capabilities revealed several weaknesses:
- Ineficiências de custo atormentou a aquisição de informações. Por exemplo, pesquisas duplicadas foram encomendadas por diferentes equipes de investimento. De fato, muito poucos incentivos os incentivaram a compartilhar e colaborar. Como isso pode afetar positivamente toda a empresa e construir um ecossistema para criar vantagem de conhecimento. É um ecossistema dinâmico com três componentes interconectados: pessoas e processos, conteúdo e tecnologia.
- There was no transparency across departments on active positions and investment pipelines.
- No internal database could show which firm members had worked on which deals in the past or who operated in their external networks.
- No clear guidelines existed on which information could be shared among investment professionals. Indeed, very few incentives encouraged them to share and collaborate.
- All kinds of relevant information was siloed across legacy systems that were not easily accessible or searchable.
Such shortcomings are not uncommon among private equity firms, and we explore how the company in our example overcame theirs.
Overcoming these shortcomings requires thinking comprehensively about knowledge management, understanding how it can positively affect the entire firm, and building an ecosystem for creating knowledge advantage.
Building an Effective Knowledge Management Ecosystem in Private Equity
A knowledge management function is not a library. It is a dynamic ecosystem with three interconnected components: people and processes, content, and technology.
Essas três dimensões de um ecossistema de gestão do conhecimento estão reforçando mutuamente. Cada um possui alguns recursos universais e alguns que são exclusivos da equidade privada.
Pessoas e processos
Knowledge management teams come in all shapes and sizes, depending on the breadth and depth of knowledge capabilities that the private equity firm wishes to cultivate.
To develop an effective knowledge management ecosystem, a company must detail organizational and team structures as well as individual roles or functions, improved knowledge sharing processes for better investment decisions, and clear expectations for how investment professionals will capture, share, and reuse knowledge.
Na prática. O líder e a equipe receberam um mandato para ajudar as equipes corporativas e as equipes corporativas a colaborarem em toda a empresa. Ele também incluiu negócios de mineração e oleodutos para que a empresa pudesse "conectar os pontos" e facilitar introduções entre investimentos e outros profissionais que podem estar trabalhando em projetos semelhantes. Processos padronizados para conformidade, incluindo diretrizes para compartilhamento e higienização de informações e acesso a essas informações em toda a empresa. Ofertas e posições são mapeadas por setor e geografia. Playbook. ” O manual, que foi criado inicialmente em uma versão analógica a ser digitalizada posteriormente: In the example we cited above, the global investment management company appointed a knowledge leader to head up a newly developed knowledge management team. The leader and the team were given a mandate to help investment and corporate teams collaborate throughout the firm.
This mandate included working with investment teams to drive content curation such as the collection, navigation, and tagging of content, and to support virtual teams and forums in the sharing of knowledge across silos. It also included mining deal and research pipelines so that the company could “connect the dots” and facilitate introductions between investment and other professionals who might be working on similar projects.
The knowledge management team was validated as a true thought partner for the investment teams rather than operating merely as back-office support, and incentives and career paths were set accordingly.
Importantly, the firm also created specific, information-driven, standardized processes for compliance, including guidelines for information sharing and sanitizing, and access to such information across the firm.
Content
In private equity firms, knowledge management teams create detailed, smart-search directories of internal domain experts and their associated responsibilities as well as of external sector and topic advisors. Deals and positions are mapped by sector and geography.
Such maps capture so-called deal memory—that is, which individuals have led or executed such positions—as well as the current “owners” of the deal or position and any pertinent industry and market information.
In Practice. The global investment management organization in our example set out to create a content solution it called a “Collaboration Playbook.” The playbook, which was initially created in an analog version to be digitized at a later stage:
- Mapped every deal conducted across the fund and detailed information about its “owners”—that is, the people who led the deal, who were currently responsible for it, or who worked as part of the deal team.
- Compiled a list of the fund’s top positions and holdings across each sector and geography.
Technology
Private equity firms will derive the greatest value from a deep repository of fundwide knowledge by connecting it to a firmwide technology infrastructure. To ensure that employees can and do access the repository when they need it most, the collected information should be available on mobile as well as desktop and should be interactive.
An optimized data taxonomy and optimized metatags are required so that employees can retrieve information easily. But these features also serve as a customizable digital backbone for the data set that enables continuous improvement as new information, insights, and expertise are captured.
Blending efficient knowledge management with cutting-edge technology has been proven to be a strong tool for scanning and gaining early leads on potential investments. Scandinavia’s EQT Partners, for example, uses the machine learning of its Motherbrain artificial intelligence program to scan millions of start-ups and identify the most promising investments.
Na prática. O portal serviu como um único destino para investidores e equipes corporativas, permitindo -lhes localizar a experiência dentro e além do povo e da pesquisa da empresa e mapear posições e negócios (e a memória relevante do negócio) em todo o fundo. Our example organization developed a mobile-enabled portal for information sharing and knowledge management. The portal served as a single destination for investors and corporate teams, enabling them to locate expertise within and beyond the firm’s people and research and to map positions and deals (and the relevant deal memory) across the fund.
Getting Started in Creating Knowledge Advantage for Investors
Os fundos de investimento global atualmente adotam uma série de abordagens para incentivar o compartilhamento e a colaboração do conhecimento em suas atividades de investimento - desde a recuperação básica de documentos e gerenciamento a fóruns específicos em todo o fundo ou em toda a empresa para gerar novas idéias. Antes de realizar essa jornada, as empresas de private equity devem fazer as seguintes perguntas:
Getting people to contribute content proactively and use any knowledge management tools that are developed requires changing firmwide culture and behaviors. Before undertaking this journey, private equity firms should ask the following questions:
- Qual é o estado dos processos, sistemas e cultura de gerenciamento de conhecimento no fundo ou empresa hoje?
- Como poderíamos gerar o maior valor? Ou seja, qual conteúdo devemos coletar e compartilhar? Como o gerenciamento e o compartilhamento do conhecimento afetarão nossos diferentes grupos de investimentos? Nossos serviços principais?
- Quais ferramentas, cultura e incentivos específicos precisaremos ser bem -sucedidos?
- Como mediremos o impacto? Por exemplo, como atribuiremos o valor gerado por uma decisão de investimento bem -sucedida a um ecossistema eficaz de gestão do conhecimento?
A última pergunta é particularmente irritante, pois medir o impacto não é uma ciência exata. O cálculo variará de investimento a investimento e, de fato, de empresa para empresa. No entanto, é fundamental entender o ROI líquido alcançado pelo desenvolvimento de uma estratégia eficaz de gerenciamento de conhecimento. As empresas de ações devem ter uma estratégia clara de implementação. Eles devem trabalhar de maneira ágil e procurar alcançar cerca de 90% da implementação direcionada em aproximadamente dois a três anos. Ao mesmo tempo, fundos e empresas devem reconhecer a natureza de longo prazo desse compromisso e agir de acordo. Também é necessário deixar claro para os funcionários que o compromisso com a gestão do conhecimento não é apenas o projeto PET de um líder, equipe ou escritório em particular. Uma abordagem em fases para criar uma função de gerenciamento de conhecimento deve ser considerada. Embora comece com pequenas iniciativas - como a solução analógica inicial descrita em nosso exemplo - pode adicionar complexidade a curto prazo, ela o reduzirá a longo prazo. É uma função dinâmica diretamente relevante para algo que todos os profissionais de investimento se preocupam profundamente: criar valor através de seus investimentos e colherem as recompensas resultantes. Markus Massi
Specific measures of impact could include detailed feedback from investment teams on the contribution (and utilization) of the knowledge management ecosystem in their deal processes, utilization of new resources and tools, cost savings on external research, and changes in employee behavior.
Implementation. Private equity firms must have a clear strategy for implementation. They should work in an agile fashion and look to achieve about 90% of targeted implementation within approximately two to three years.
Quick wins that deliver clear and tangible end-user impact will be important for building momentum and getting buy-in from investment and other teams that are likely to resist these new initiatives. At the same time, funds and firms must recognize the long-term nature of this commitment and act accordingly.
Success requires, first of all, securing buy-in from senior leadership across the fund or firm as well as within specific teams. It also requires making it clear to employees that the commitment to knowledge management is not just the pet project of a particular leader, team, or office.
Next, people from across the firm or fund should participate in a working committee to ensure the development of an ecosystem suited to the organization’s specific needs. A phased approach to building out a knowledge management function should be considered. Although starting with small initiatives—such as the initial analog solution described in our example—may add complexity in the short term, it ultimately will reduce it over the long term.
Knowledge management is truly the next value frontier in private equity investing. It’s a dynamic function directly relevant to something all investment professionals care deeply about: creating value through their investments and reaping the resulting rewards.
In an environment that grows more complex and competitive all the time, knowledge management deserves to become a top-of-mind focus for funds and firms.
