AlphaCert has worked with Investment Services Group (ISG) since 2019, supporting their subsidiaries Devon Funds and Clarity Fund Management. We sat down with ISG's Chief Financial Officer, Niall Hartigan, and Operations Manager, Suki Chow, who joined AlphaCert's Customer Solutions Manager, Vicki Purcell to discuss how they moved from complex spreadsheets to a scalable, automated platform.
Like many growing businesses, ISG's operations originally started in Excel. As the company grew, this manual system became a significant pain point. Niall and Suki explained that the team was managing 26 portfolios across six different custodians, which created immense complexity.
The operations team faced several key challenges:
Data Complexity: Data had to be gathered from multiple stakeholders, including fund administrators and custodians.
Manual Processes: The workflow was heavily reliant on complex Excel spreadsheets.
High Risk: This manual process was not only tedious and "groundhog day" , but it was also prone to human error and created significant key-person risk within the business.
Time Consumption: Staff spent their days on mundane, repetitive tasks, such as downloading reports and performing daily reconciliations, rather than on higher-value work.
The shift to AlphaCert has not only solved ISG's initial pain points but has also provided a stable, centralised data platform for future growth.
As Niall Hartigan concluded, having clean, accessible data opens up new strategic avenues. "Likewise, you now have all the data. So we're seeing that now with the QFUs and then, with performance measurement down the track. The possibilities are kind of limitless."