What is Sevanta Dealflow?
Sevanta Dealflow is a web-based dealflow management system designed for venture capital and private equity firms. Its value proposition is two-fold:
- Efficiency: Analyze more deals with improved outcomes to achieve superior returns.
- Insight: Use dealflow analytics in support of well-grounded strategic decisions.
It is offered as a fully-managed hosted service (software-as-a-service, or SaaS) so that you don’t have to worry about any technical logistics. We focus on our job zealously so you can focus on yours.
Is Sevanta Dealflow right for me?
Sevanta Dealflow is useful for firms of all sizes and in all investment sectors considering multiple deals at one time. Firms that work on deals in teams will particularly appreciate how it will enhance collaboration.
But we don’t want to change our processes, terminology, or reports!
You don’t have to. Keep what works, and change what doesn’t.
We know that one size does not fit all. We expect every client to have proprietary requirements — so the software should bend to the client, not the other way around. While our core platform might be useful for some clients “out-of-the-box”, the majority of clients will have particular needs they want reflected in their own customized dealflow system.
If there’s something missing from our system, we’ll add it for you. And if you need help figuring out exactly what it is you need, we’ll help you. We’ve been thinking about dealflow challenges for 13 years and have worked with many clients representing a wide range of approaches and requirements.
Embarking on a custom software project sounds slow, scary, and expensive — is it?
Our core system provides the majority of the functionality most firms need, so imagine that your dealflow “house” is already built — we mostly help you decorate it. We help move your existing furniture in (all your legacy data), and you can start living in it right away while we do some light renovation work. We’ve done this many times, so we can do the work quickly, reliably, and cost-effectively.
And even if you do want some walls moved around, the project is usually quite manageable, and we handle the hard stuff for you anyway. We sometimes recommend implementing major changes gradually over time, because it’s useful to live in the house a little while so you can be absolutely sure of what you want.
Is Sevanta Dealflow a project management system? a CRM system?
Sevanta Dealflow focuses like a laser on the functionality needed to manage dealflow effectively, which does cover some project management and CRM functions. However, it is not designed to directly supplant complex systems in those areas. We’ve found that most of our clients are best served by a tightly targeted system that requires no advanced training, that streamlines your most frequent business actions, and that structures dealflow information in the same way that your brain does.
That said, we continue to evaluate third party project management, CRM, and other collaboration tools for potential integration with Sevanta Dealflow. If you have specific functionality in mind, we’d love to discuss it with you.
How much does Sevanta Dealflow cost?
Because Sevanta Dealflow is highly customized to suit your firm’s particular needs, pricing can vary. Here are some of the costs involved:
- An annual retainer that covers our expert consulting as well as technical configuration of your system.
- An annual license and hosting fee based on the number of users who need access.
- Customization fees based on our hourly rate for consulting and programming time.
Contact us at +1-888-727-9644 or dealflow [at] sevanta [dot] com for a customized quote based on your particular requirements.
In our experience, Sevanta Dealflow can boost your team’s productivity by at least 0.5 FTE, at a much lower price than adding headcount. Our pricing is also highly competitive with current software alternatives.
What is covered by the consulting retainer?
Before we get into the details of your customized system, we’ll first interview to learn how your firm works right now:
- How do you prioritize prospects and make investment decisions?
- How do you run your weekly meetings?
- What kinds of reporting will best support your relationship with your limited partners and other stakeholders?
We’ll then be in a better position to suggest best practices that we’ve implemented for other clients over the years.
The retainer also typically includes technical configuration of your system (such as custom fields and reports), migration of data from any legacy systems you might be moving from, and orientation/training sessions for your team.
Most importantly, this framework allows us to provide consistent and high-quality followup to assure that the system and processes are being successfully adopted by your team. Because of this ultimate priority, we see ourselves as a consultancy focused on achieving important end goals for our clients, as opposed to simple merchants of software.
What is covered by the license fee?
The per seat license provides access to the Sevanta Dealflow platform, including technical infrastructure such as:
- High-performance, high-reliability servers in a secure data centers
- 24×7 monitoring for security and accessibility
- Unlimited storage of deal files
- Enterprise-class data backup
These fees also enable us to provide extremely fast turnaround times on support and requests for changes. This product is not a commodity for a mass-market audience. It’s an enterprise application fulfilling a critical business function. Our level of customer service corresponds to the rigorous requirements of our industry.
These fees also fund the continued investment in the development of the industry-leading Sevanta Dealflow platform.
Who is Sevanta?
Sevanta Systems Corporation is a privately-held US-based company serving clients around the world. We’ve been helping investment funds manage their dealflow since 2005, though our staff has been focused on this problem for many years. Sevanta is not just the creator of dealflow tools, we also provide advice and support for transforming your firm’s operations. See the About page for more background.
Is Sevanta Dealflow secure?
Having come from your business, we intimately understand the sensitivity of your proprietary deal data. We treat client data with the utmost confidentiality, in terms of both our technology architecture and human training. In the chain of security protecting your information, we promise to be the strongest link.
Sevanta Dealflow uses a 256-bit, bank-grade certificate to encrypt the connection between your browser and our servers.
Sevanta Dealflow’s architecture is much more secure than a traditional web application. Unlike other hosted applications, where data for all clients are stored in a single database, Sevanta Dealflow isolates your data in a separate database from all other clients. Even your application code itself is quarantined from other clients, since each client is running its own customized version of the application. This is more work for us to administer, but should provide you with great peace of mind.
The application has been designed with numerous automated alerts for our administrators, so we are immediately aware of any suspicious activity on our systems. These alerts are reviewed immediately by actual humans, not software.
What are some technical details about your servers?
Sevanta Dealflow runs on a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP platform. Our servers are hosted in professional data centers with 24×7 physical security, power backups, and multiple redundant internet connection. Our servers are currently located in California and London, and in the future we will be expanding to Asia. For security reasons, please ask us directly if your IT folks have more specific questions.
What service level guarantees do you provide?
Our service level agreement (SLA) kicks in if you experience any worse than 99.86% uptime. If maintenance downtime is required, we will only schedule it for a weekend and will provide at least one week’s notice.
