What's the difference between a CRM and CRDM for Investment Bankers?

Without deal management capabilities, generic CRMs fall short of an investment banker’s needs.

‍CRMs are generally designed only for sales and don’t cover deals.
The best CRDMs can optimize processes throughout the lifecycle of a deal to increase efficiency and revenue.
CRDMs also provide business intelligence, from initial outreach to a transaction’s close.
Generic CRMs require a lot of customization while CRDMs are easier to set up and use.
Without industry compliance and security features, generic CRMs increase costs and risks.

While we usually talk about MadeMarket as a CRM, we also use the term CRDM (D is for deal) because of our platform’s deal management capabilities, which are built on top of the features users expect from a CRM. Though with MadeMarket, in contrast to other CRMs with deal management capabilities, all of those features are tailored around the unique needs of investment bankers.

CRMs are generally designed only for sales instead and don’t cover deals

A generic CRM is designed primarily for managing client relationships, sales pipelines, and marketing communications. Industries like retail, real estate, and B2B companies have long relied on CRMs to streamline interactions with customers, track sales opportunities, and boost conversion rates.

Typical features of a CRM include contact management, lead tracking, sales forecasting, and task automation, all geared toward optimizing the customer acquisition process.

After a client engagement is won, however, most CRMs are no longer useful to investment bankers because the sales process they’re designed to manage is complete.

On the other hand, customer relationship and deal management platforms (CRDMs) for capital markets and corporate finance professionals are designed to manage deal flows and the transactions that follow on a single platform.

Often focusing on a handful of related industries like venture capital, investment banking, corporate development, and private equity, CRDMs come with a variety of features built around the general needs of these types of firms.

In contrast to other CRDMs, MadeMarket is the only platform designed exclusively for investment bankers, with ready-built features that help teams manage every task throughout the lifecycle of a deal and relationship.

The best CRDMs can optimize processes throughout the lifecycle of a deal to increase efficiency and revenue.

While generic CRMs are designed to support sales and marketing processes, CRDMs are purpose-built to optimize and streamline a dealmaker’s workflows end-to-end with built-in project management and task automation tools designed for capital markets and corporate finance professionals.

For example, automated data entry tools for a CRDM are often designed around industry-specific metrics and built into advanced project management tools that understand when those data need to be collected, what they should look like, and how they can be used to create business and client value.

With MadeMarket’s purpose-built features designed around the unique needs of investment bankers, for example, individuals can update their tracking logs 12 times faster, build buyers lists 15 times faster, and send deal process emails 20 times faster.

By centralizing deal flow and deal execution, CRDMs also make information more accessible for teams and individuals, while streamlining and creating synergies between business development, transaction management, and long-term relationship management.

This in turn also makes it easier for teams to collaborate together and hold each other accountable by organizing all of their data, tasks, projects, and workflows on a platform that’s more accessible and transparent.

CRDMs also provide business intelligence, from initial outreach to a transaction’s close.

Generic CRMs are often restricted to sales-oriented insights and analytics tools. Once an engagement has been won, however, investment bankers that rely on CRMs are left in the dark.

From the start, instead of viewing the sales process in a relatively simplistic and generic way, CRDMs are built to gather data and produce insights about the more dynamic and nuanced process of business development for dealmakers.

With a better understanding of industry-specific metrics, CRDMs are also able to provide more tailored insights for capital markets and corporate finance professionals throughout the lifecycle of a deal and relationship.

With a CRDM, for example, teams can often find insights about their relationships, from prospective new clients to business targets, that take into consideration their outreach and transaction histories in ways that only an industry-driven platform can.

With MadeMarket’s Relationship IQ, for example, bankers can analyze thousands of contacts - their engagement, communication, company, and deal histories - to find the best introduction to a new deal or business target in seconds.

At the same time, CRDMs can help firms optimize operations and strategy through rich KPI data designed around dealmakers and their firms.

Paired with MadeMarket’s powerful, time-saving features, business intelligence tools like these can help firms that switch close around one additional deal per year for every five MDs.

Generic CRMs require a lot of customization while CRDMs are easier to set up and use.

Unlike a CRDM, generic CRMs are built for a wide variety of use cases and often require a large amount of customized features. This process of customization is often time-consuming, costly, and complex.

With a more industry-oriented and ready-built platform, CRDMs help firms lower the costs of transitioning to a new platform by making it easier to set them up and use.

With MadeMarket, for example, many investment bankers find they don’t even need to add custom features, because of how well our platform is ready-built around a banker’s needs.

With a more intuitive platform and tailored suite of features, CRDMs lead to higher engagement and adoption rates, boosting the ROI of a new platform in the short term and over time.

Without industry compliance and security features, generic CRMs increase costs and risks.

Generic CRMs often lack the advanced compliance and security features that are required in financial services, like encryption, auditing trails, and advanced access controls for data and documents.

On the other hand, CRDMs like MadeMarket, are built with these regulatory and advanced security requirements in mind.

By organizing deal and relationship data onto a single and more secure platform, CRDMs also minimize the risks that are created when working across multiple, disconnected platforms, with varying degrees and kinds of security features and protocols.

In building a platform designed around an industry’s unique needs, CRDMs help firms lower the overall costs and risks of security management while ensuring the protocols for their data and digital operations remain up-to-date with the latest regulatory requirements.

To keep up and get ahead, investment bankers need a CRDM that’s purpose-built around their needs.

While generic CRMs are well-suited for industries focused on simple sales and linear customer relationships, they always fall short in addressing the more dynamic and comprehensive needs of investment bankers.

In contrast to other CRDMs, MadeMarket is the only platform designed exclusively to support bankers throughout every stage in the lifecycle of a deal, from initial outreach to a transaction’s close.

In an increasingly competitive, tech-driven market environment, bankers can no longer afford to spread their data and digital operations across multiple, disconnected platforms that don’t understand their business’s needs.

Ultimately, with MadeMarket’s powerful purpose-built tools, teams can save thousands of hours per year, while helping bankers close more deals, faster – every year.