Corporate and Investment Banking Innovation Playbook

Unlock dealmaking efficiencies with the right digital capabilities

 
 
 
 
September 28, 2021. 9 MIN READ

Dealmakers are crushing it — but risk getting crushed by the volume

Dealmaking activity across corporate and investment banking continues to surge. Deal volumes worldwide reached an all-time record of $2.8 trillion globally through the first six months of 2021 — a 29% year-over-year increase — according to Refinitiv.

Deal volumes have not only accelerated but the timelines for completing transactions have also rapidly compressed for a host of reasons:

  • Corporate war chests are flush with cash, and strategic buyers are fast-tracking acquisitions and divestitures to gain scale and growth
  • Private equity funds and family offices have enormous amounts of dry powder to deploy, and direct lenders in the middle market are eager to put funds to work
  • Baby boomer business owners are actively seeking liquidity events after potential deals struck in 2020 were postponed due to pandemic-related economic uncertainty
  • Special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) funding volumes have skyrocketed
  • The potential for higher capital gains tax rates are causing some business owners to accelerate their exit timelines

Put it all together, and you get dealmaking occurring at an incredible pace. This has put immense pressure on an industry that is already strained from long-simmering operational inefficiency.

The right digital capabilities can unlock efficiencies

With the onset of COVID-19, the adoption of digital tools accelerated, dramatically changing how deals get done. This transformation was driven in part by the shift to remote work, but longer-term forces such as tax, accounting, and regulatory changes are playing a key role. Ever-changing financial regulations, increasing client complexity, tighter deadlines, and the demand for higher rates of return have altered dealmaking processes and timelines.

As a result, using technology to unlock greater efficiencies and generate new insights has gone from being a luxury to a necessity for bankers. In today’s hypercompetitive growth environment, bankers require a connected set of tools that can generate better insights and seamlessly align front-, back-, and middle-office functions.

Dealmaking is all about nurturing relationships, building trust, gaining insight, and creating value. No amount of digitalization will ever change this. That is why solutions designed to allow dealmakers to focus their time and attention on key inflection points in the deal journey can unlock considerable overlooked value. Client-centric bankers who are equipped with advanced tools to generate differentiated insights will be future-proofed, sustainable, and less vulnerable to disruptive forces that are reshaping the dealmaking environment.

Siloed, legacy systems can’t keep up with the pace of dealmaking

Transactions that typically took months to close are now being completed within a matter of weeks. Traditional legacy systems are ill-equipped to manage these fast-paced, complex transactions in the new “work from anywhere” environment. These disjointed systems harbor siloed channels of information, inhibiting bankers’ ability to find, share, and analyze the information needed to guide decision-making in a rapidly evolving landscape. Moreover, they fail to incorporate the predictive power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to uncover hidden patterns and relationships, gain crucial insights, and create a competitive edge.

Next-generation solutions must be designed for today’s banking landscape

Fortunately, technologies have emerged that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable deal teams to make better, faster, and more profitable decisions by connecting secure workflows across every client touchpoint. These next-generation platforms are built for operational agility and offer an unprecedented advantage when it comes to winning more mandates, managing deal pipelines, getting compliance approval, managing conflicts of interest, and getting deals done faster.

Discover a flexible, purpose-built platform based on industry feedback

Salesforce asked deal teams in M&A, capital raising, and corporate restructuring across the corporate and investment banking industries about the unique challenges they face today. Drawing on these conversations and our strengths as the leader in customer relationship management, Salesforce developed Corporate and Investment Banking for Financial Services Cloud. Our platform can help bankers develop a digital-first framework by leveraging in-house and third-party data to uncover new opportunities, streamline operations, and strengthen your team’s agility.

The cloud-based platform is purpose-built for the needs of corporate and investment bankers. It combines a scalable framework that is designed specifically for M&A advisory and capital-raising while providing flexibility to adapt to the nuances of your team’s workflows and target markets.

Our platform is designed according to the stringent regulatory requirements of the corporate and investment banking industry. This allows deal teams to efficiently and compliantly share knowledge and manage prospects, clients, targets, and partners across the pitch and transaction lifecycle. Bankers can source new deal opportunities with a fuller, richer understanding of clients—from their growth trajectories to their need for capital and strategic partnerships. Once the mandate is won, a 360-degree view of complex information, structures, and relationships allows bankers to predict behavior and uncover unique insights about market dynamics — all while navigating the industry’s compliance restrictions.

Salesforce’s Corporate and Investment Banking for Financial Services Cloud fuels productivity for every member of the deal team and makes it easy to build and execute a timely, efficient, and compliant service-delivery model. This allows dealmakers to focus on what they do best: generating, building, and nurturing client relationships.

Keep reading to learn more in our Corporate and Investment Banking Innovation Playbook

Find out how Salesforce’s Corporate and Investment Banking for Financial Services Cloud can empower your team and streamline every aspect of the deal-making process, from identification to pitching to execution. We explain how our purpose-built new solution can help bankers and deal teams:

  • Increase idea generation for clients, accelerate pitch preparation, win more mandates, and drive more value for clients
  • Uncover actionable insights through industry-specific predictive analytics
  • Enable smarter pipeline nurturing through an extended 360-degree view of interconnected relationships and permission-based sharing of insights and interactions
  • Reduce risk and simplify compliance processes
  • Empower productivity across the deal lifecycle
 
 
 
 

Your guide to navigating a digital-first banking landscape

Unlock the full playbook and explore how to:

  • Access next-generation client-relationship insights
  • Connect workflows to keep teams aligned and maximize productivity
  • Turn data into a true competitive advantage
 
 

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