How to use data enrichment to make faster, more informed investments

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A CRM is only as powerful as the data stored in it. Automating contact data capture is now table stakes for dealmakers on teams like yours. It lets them stay focused on their relationships instead of keystrokes. Because of this, access to more data sources outside your team's information creates a more powerful CRM.

Learn how investment teams are consolidating relationship, market, and business intelligence to inform investment decisions.

The power of an enriched CRM

Platforms like Pitchbook and Crunchbase are great sources of information, but raw data, out of context, doesn't always help make decisions. You can review Company A's funding rounds and compare them to Company B's, but that single data point isn't enough to make an investment or reach out for an introduction.

Finding and using all data available to you means it needs to be accessible in context. This means being able to access details you already know about a company or person, insights your data vendors have about them, and being able to update your dealflow pipeline all at once. Teams that use an automated CRM for contact data capture are still manually spending time adding additional, third-party information.

With an enriched CRM, you can focus on decision-making rather than spending extra money on operations and time on sourcing and compiling data. Your CRM should get it for you. And present all of that data to you in a single, easy-to-read format.

Once the data is captured in one place, you can quickly rely on the complementary details to learn more about companies. You can also find clearer success signals sooner and make better investment decisions before your competitors.

Thinking about data as a product

When designing physical products for assembly, designers and engineers evaluate them based on a system's form, fit, and function (F3). The F3 of data enrichment involves identifying the form the data takes, how it helps you find a good fit, and the day-to-day function of the insights it offers.

Form

Your CRM is your organization's single source of truth. This shouldn't be limited by the fact that you depend on external data. Third-party data sets can be integrated directly with your CRM. That way, you can access data from subscription services in the same columns, rows, and fields you use to track your internal data. Seeing these datasets together means you can better understand the people and companies you’re talking to.

Unifying these data sources also means information is updated more regularly. If a team member learns new information on a call, they may be ahead of a vendor’s weekly or monthly data refresh.

Fit

For physical products, the “fit” in F3 is about how parts go together. In our case, the pieces of your CRM are already nestled in. Instead, the focus is on finding a thesis fit for your firm with enriched datasets. With automated access to market intelligence, your team can find thesis fits faster. Investors can filter contacts by more specific sets of firmographic data to build more targeted investment lists.

Being able to refine shortlists and longlists more quickly means you can source more opportunities in your thesis fit sweet spot. And more importantly, you can eliminate poor fits before you waste time exploring them.

Function

The function of enrichment is to create effective and repeatable decision-making processes, so you can be more confident in your day-to-day interactions with opportunities you want to pursue. Every stage of decision-making can be shortened without cutting corners.

Confidently prioritize, qualify, and respond to potential founders or clients in every interaction. Quickly review market momentum signals alongside notes about your team's previous interactions. With a click, add these same data points—pulled from multiple sources—into analytics dashboards to compare them against other companies you’re evaluating. Make more informed, more consistent investments.

Turning prior decisions into new data

An enriched, comprehensive CRM doesn’t stop with relationship, firmographic, and funding data. Your team’s wins, losses, and everything in between work to enhance these datasets.

You learn more as you make more decisions, and can use those learnings to inform your own custom data engine and lead scoring models. Data and insights lead to more output and insights. Your CRM becomes a single, connected system of action and information that creates a self-sustaining, upward spiral that supports finding and managing your most important deals.