If you had to ask any investment manager or fund administrator which software they tend to use most, the answer would indubitably be Excel. This giant in Microsoft Office’s arsenal has defined the way we create and present databases, but the question we should really be asking ourselves is: is manual work the only way to make data entries in Excel?
The answer is a categorical no.
Manual Work On Excel Costs Time and Money
One of our clients is a fund administrator responsible for multiple funds. Until he came to us, he was spending two days twice a month sourcing, copying, pasting, and sorting out data for each of those funds. Considering he had four funds to take care of, that’s a whole 16 days out of each and every month wasted on manual, repetitive work that was boring for him and expensive for his firm.
To do all this work, he used Excel, and it’s easy to understand why: it helps you create multiple tables, apply calculations, and produce valuations and reports. But what most people don’t realise is that Excel can be as limiting as it can be helpful.
In fact, to us, it is not the best option that a fund specialist, who could be dedicating his time to more useful and fulfilling pursuits, was stuck behind a desk doing something so basic that a computer could do in seconds.
Data Entries in Excel Through Automation
That’s why when this client approached us, we recommended AUTOMAN, our automated statement processing software that can source, download, input, and present data from financial statements derived from multiple sources and in multiple formats automatically.
The best part is that a job that was taking this client practically half a month to complete was now being done in just one hour.
Yes, AUTOMAN gave this client 15 days and seven hours back, allowing him to focus on strategy, speaking to clients, and all the other things fund administrators need to do.
Moreover, this software has ensured that this client doesn’t need to be manually working on any formulae, or even sift through thousands of lines of data to find errors or discrepancies. That’s all done for him automatically and without any stress.
If all this sounds great, you’ll be happy to know that there’s more to come! Over the next three blog posts, we’ll be looking at just how Excel limits us when it comes to:
- Running Calculations,
- Discovering Data and Errors, and
- Running Repetitive Tasks.
So, does AUTOMAN sound like software that could be helpful to your company? Then get in touch with us to find out more on how we could help you!