Influencing the decision-making process

The provision of high quality and detailed data has a positive effect on the decision-making process. Taliance software empowers property professionals to influence clients, management and investors.

“For too long, our industry has run on the basis of gut feel and intuition,” believes Bob Marsh, managing director, Taliance Ltd. “But, in the current economic climate, heads of investment, fund managers and investors are challenging this casual approach. They are now saying: ‘prove it’.”

Bob accepts that this is not necessarily a question of trust. Instead, stakeholders just want hard evidence and multiple scenarios on which to base their decisions. “They want to see the calculations so that they can assess their options, and they want to see these options in very detailed an developed business plans or scenarios” said Bob. “If you are not able to give them the data they need in formats they can use that weakness will be enough to turn them away.”

Clearly, this is critical for fund managers trying to attract external investment. But interestingly, Bob believes that incomplete data can contaminate internal relationships too. “If a fund manager cannot rely on his asset management team to present fully formed proposals that demonstrate the potential of an asset, then he is going to give them very short shrift,” said Bob. “He knows that his investors are going to demand solid facts, calculations and key performance indicators regarding his fund, so there’s a negative knock-on effect.”

The Taliance suite of software – FinAsset and Global Fund – enables asset managers to easily capture accurate data about their property portfolios both at asset and consolidation levels. That data can be modelled so that the entire management structure can gauge the outcome of different scenarios and consider the most favourable options in various circumstances.

The beauty of Taliance’s centralised data system is that data modelling and reporting is both fast and efficient. “Without sophisticated tools, such as FinAsset and Global Fund, asset and fund management teams will be trying to capture and model data using spreadsheets,” said Bob. “Those teams will quickly become swamped with both the volume of data and the possible scenarios. They will be floundering in paperwork when they should be spending their time on the strategic management of their assets for maximum performance.”

As well as directly knocking performance, this ineptitude can be disastrous for a company’s reputation.

Taliance clients who have adopted FinAsset and Global Fund have seen their risk reduced, their reporting to investors improved significantly and have with good process been able to develop strategic options and plans that have created value in their funds.

Taliance Ltd