Content Automation: A Competitive Necessity

Content automation has become a necessity, rather than a luxury, for most asset managers in today’s highly competitive environment. According to a survey of asset managers by the Fuse Research Network and Synthesis Technology, 95% of respondents use some kind of tool or process for automating content production. Most commonly, they use it for the creation of factsheets and pitchbooks.

The need for content automation is justifiable. Marketers need to get sales and marketing materials in the hands of salespeople, clients, and prospects as fast as possible. Now, investors, advisors, and consultants expect more frequent and timely product updates.

When implemented successfully, content automation solutions empower firms to produce fully compliant, client-ready sales and marketing content faster than their competitors. These tools reduce labor costs and relieve talented marketing professionals from the drudgery of content production. They minimize the potential for human errors that inadvertently deliver inaccurate and non-compliant information to the public. Plus, they eliminate one of the most common compliance headaches many asset managers face: keeping salespeople from stitching together their own non-compliant pitchbooks from a patchwork of outdated sales presentations.

Effective content automation solutions require two components: An in-house or commercial production tool and a reliable source of product data to populate the finished pieces. Unfortunately, data management is content automation’s Achilles heel for many firms.

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Four Common Data Problems Faced by Fund Marketers

A few common phrases we hear from investment marketers are, Our data is a bit of a mess and Our data could use a little housekeeping. In our experience, we have learned that marketers have become the de facto experts on fund data management and automation.

Fund marketers themselves are routinely chasing-down their financial data from many disparate sources, both internal and external. Then, they are trying to extract clean data for use in their customer-facing marketing materials. This process is made more challenging when there are tight time frames. Plus, it has to be done with the highest levels of accuracy and consistency in real-time.Read More

How much does it cost to automate factsheets? 🧐

In a budget-conscious financial services industry, marketing spend is a top concern.  That’s why, when we meet new firms looking to invest in automating their factsheet production, one of the first questions marketers ask is, ‘How much will factsheet automation it cost?’.  Before digging into their business requirements, our dreaded answer is: It depends. There are many factors to be considered. Firms take many approaches, and one size does NOT fit all.

Among the major dependencies affecting the cost of automating your marketing documents are:

• Complexity of your designs
• Number of templates and variations you have
• Complexity of your data
• Extent of your language requirements
• Amount of flexibility you have with requirements
• Number of documents to be produced

The complexity of your factsheets and flexibility of your firm’s operating model will ultimately determine the cost for automating them during production. To give you a better idea of what this means, let’s look at a few common scenarios. These are actual case studies of companies who have implemented factsheet automation recently with Synthesis and how much it cost them.Read More

Pitchbook Problems? 3 Ways Technology Can Help

It’s tough out there for investment management sales teams and only getting more challenging. Today, pitchbooks must be customer-centric, created or changed on a dime, on-brand, compliant and have digital output and tracking options. That’s like trying to make a delicious, vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, and sugar-free wedding cake in 10 minutes.

If that hits home, then this article is for you.

(If you didn’t find that amusing, you’ve clearly never tried to make a cake in 10 minutes.)

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