Investment performance is a critical differentiator for firms in the asset management industry, which is why using the ‘Canvas’ technology from LemonEdge to free-up investment managers to spend their time on decision-making, not administration, is generating so much excitement in the market.
More specifically minimising the time spent on the mechanical activities associated with managing complex scenario modelling or ‘what-if’ analysis, will maximise the time available to be spent on investment management itself.
To minimise that wasted time it is necessary to recognize that the root cause is typically due to the administration associated with setting up then maintaining investment models, very commonly using cumbersome excel workbooks in the absence of better solutions.
Where, usually, the excel modelling process involves: laboriously extracting data from core system(s), to then manually load into excel, then the manipulating of the extracted data within excel, before manually transferring the results back into core systems to execute – with all the ‘fat finger’, security, audit, control, management risks associated with that well-trodden, but problematic, approach.
Fortunately, there is now a better solution, from LemonEdge, the next generation fund accounting system designed from the ground up to overcome the inherent limitations of the ageing tradition systems, which have until now, dominated the private capital fund accounting market for the past 20+ years.
That better solution from LemonEdge is called a Canvas, which, as the name suggests, allows an investment manager to ‘paint’, i.e. create, any scenario that needs to be modelled - thus freeing up the all-important time to focus on the outcomes of examinations of different scenarios, rather than burning valuable time creating them.
The LemonEdge Canvas technology allows an investment manager to create as many instant copies of the core system as needed to model all relevant ‘what-if’ analysis scenarios, at the deal level, fund level, portfolio level, or indeed all levels as relevant. The instant copies are created without any compromise to the security or management or control of the original environment.
The key advantage of being able to create copies of the entire system is that the results of modelling out each scenario can be compared, or shared with other wider teams as necessary, including by using all the inherent functionality of the LemonEdge system within each of the modelled scenarios. A further advantage of the LemonEdge system can then be utilized to selectively promote the relevant conclusions back into the core, again as an instant process, again without the risks associated with the usual excel approach.
Finally with the Canvas technology, all of the above functionality is automatically fully audited.
