For years, many asset managers followed a simple assumption: deliver top performance and assets will follow. At Harborside, we believe that notion is fundamentally flawed. Performance matters—but it’s not enough. In today’s financial markets, you’re not just competing on fund performance – you’re competing on data intelligence. Every interaction with a Financial Advisor is either building or eroding your market position. Without data, you’re flying blind while competitors use sophisticated insights to grow. To truly understand and grow the enterprise value of your business, you first need to understand and have visibility into your data.
This is a challenging proposition: Sales and redemption data are scattered across custodians, intermediaries, platforms, and internal systems. In some cases, you can see flows but not the advisors behind them. Meanwhile, marketing and CRM systems often operate in isolation—making outreach without clarity on whether they are current clients, former clients, or true prospects.
So how do small and mid-size asset management companies handle data management of millions of pieces of information? Companies essentially have three choices: remain inefficient, hire a team internally, or look to a trusted third party with industry experience.
Since clearly understanding and utilizing data is critical for asset management companies to strategically grow, it is equally necessary to get all team members on the same page every day to answer basic questions:
From the C-Suite:
- Are we allocating capital wisely to grow enterprise value?
- What is the retention rate of our financial advisors and how can we extend that timeframe?
- What are our sales and marketing teams doing, how effective are they, and how well are we servicing our best relationships?
From Sales:
- What are the best cross-selling opportunities?
- Which of our best relationships are at risk?
- Who should we reach out to today?
From Marketing:
- How does engagement data influence purchase behavior?
- Is our brand awareness increasing or decreasing?
- How can we turn prospects into first time purchasers?
Without a connected data foundation, firms risk making strategic decisions based on partial truths or assumptions. Data-driven decisions outperform gut instincts by providing objective insights into customer behavior, performance trends, and market shifts. Relying on “feel” often leads to missed opportunities, inefficiencies and higher costs.
The firms that win in today’s environment start by organizing their data—linking flows, accounts, advisors, and engagement into a single, coherent view of their business. The firms that will win tomorrow not only organize their data but apply advanced data science tools and AI to extract even more value from their data – their most important asset. Only then can they target growth, protect assets, and deploy sales and marketing strategies to outperform the competition and build enterprise value.
