Deloitte Trend Definition

Deal activity may be slightly challenging in the short term with concentration on smaller deal value. Overall, the primary drivers for M&A—such as adding technology capabilities, building distribution capabilities, reducing cost through scale, adding new product lines and divesting sub-scale businesses—remain intact. Newer deals will likely be driven by mergers and acquisitions of smaller investment managers that are finding it difficult to compete with larger investment managers in this demanding, highly volatile and low-margin environment. Moving forward, many firms will likely continue to turn to M&A as a way to grow. They are also likely to look to M&A as a means of strengthening their operating models through efficiency gains as well as technology and business process improvements realised through post-merger integration.

Workday Differentiators

As an integrated, cloud-based platform, Workday can help investment management firms simplify post-merger integrations and align their HR and financial management systems. This applies to firms of all sizes. For instance, a global investment management firm with $1.4 trillion in assets under management recently leveraged the Workday platform to unify its financial systems, align them with HR and integrate its data after a major acquisition.

Standardised Processes

Workday can enable investment management firms to reap several benefits from their M&A strategies by establishing a single source of truth and standardising processes:

• Reduced total cost of ownership.
• Improved controls and fewer audit
• findings and fines.
• Decreased errors and
• increased automation.
• Better transparency.
• Enhanced reporting and compliance
• around costs and recoveries.
• Rationalisation of custom and/or
• third-party solutions.
• Faster recovery of
• outstanding receivables.
• Greater cross-functional
• co-ordination between Finance
• and HR teams.
• More-informed decision-making.

Deloitte Trend Definition

Competitive pricing and profitability typically demand efficiency and the highly-regulated investment management industry does not tolerate lack of governance and controls. In a fast-paced and highly competitive industry, balancing these often-competing priorities is difficult under normal conditions, but when new disruptive technologies enter the picture, the complications grow. Nonetheless, with the advent of AI and Generative AI—and most recently quantum computing—Digital transformation in the investment management industry is likely to accelerate, even in the wake of progress made over the past several years. Despite the potential these digital advancements bring for meeting, if not exceeding, the expectations of customers and employees, they will need to be tightly linked to governance and controls modernisation in order to realise the intended benefits.

Workday Differentiators

Workday offers a fundamentally different experience from legacy, on-premises ERP, providing financial management, human capital management and operational data via a single cloud architecture connected by the same object data model, open APIs and embedded AI and ML. 

As a secure, integrated platform, Workday helps investment management firms streamline their financial and HR processes, understand what drives hiring and retention and gain greater transparency into people costs, along with the capabilities to accurately forecast compensation expenses (including bonuses). 

Overall, Workday enables firms to advance their data management and analytics maturity by giving everyone access to the same, trusted data with the necessary detail to enable rapid action. Through Workday Prism Analytics, investment management firms can further integrate their legacy thirdparty systems and leverage the power of Workday’s reporting and dashboard toolset to enable swift and confident decision-making.

Workday also gives investment management firms a way to innovate and accelerate the shift to customer-centricity while enhancing the employee experience. As the needs of their customers and employees evolve, firms can continuously improve business processes, including optimising remote and hybrid work environments, by adopting new functionality through Workday’s twice-yearly product releases. They can also extend the value of their Workday investment by developing apps in the same environment with a familiar experience, data source and security model, unlocking new value and increasing organisational agility.

Deloitte Trend Definition

Navigating organisational model changes can become easier when the organisation is aligned with a strong sense of purpose. Modernising the talent model, striking the right balance with workplace flexibility and aligning employee incentives to reflect the upskilling of talent can help to drive a firm’s purpose—ultimately creating a more agile organisation that can effectively transform itself. To this end, many firms are seeking to invest in talent modernisation by aligning intrinsic and extrinsic value throughout the investment lifecycle. This often involves obtaining new industry certifications and diversifying talent skillsets, in addition to exploring the oversight of process management.

Workday Differentiators

From investment advisors to portfolio managers, people stand at the heart of the investment management business and technology is becoming an important differentiator for recruiting and retaining talent. Workday gives HR professionals the necessary people insights, including skills, competencies and performance data, so they can respond to shifts in the talent market proactively and manage the workforce more flexibly.

Workday also helps HR professionals to build, manage and evaluate succession plans and anticipate gaps in the talent pipeline—all while providing a modern user experience expected by employees today. For instance, Workday empowers investment management firms with self-service capabilities for curating communications, creating connections, identifying opportunities for development and reskilling and engaging the workforce in multiple ways. 

From automating mundane finance and HR tasks to delivering personalised information and support, Workday helps investment management firms deliver a delightful employee experience so they can retain people with in-demand skills throughout their careers. It also provides increasing transparency around diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), including the capabilities to track and regularly report on key metrics. Moreover, with Workday, investment management firms can measure ongoing employee sentiment to understand the impact of efforts to create a desirable culture of belonging for all.

Deloitte Trend Definition

For the investment management industry, there are exciting opportunities ahead, as well as urgency to take action and reasons for caution. With intense competition for assets under management (AUM), investment management firms will need to focus on differentiating themselves, particularly in the areas of emerging technologies, talent modernisation, client experience, workplace environments, purpose and environmental, social & governance (ESG). 

There is no one way forward—navigating the future will likely require a nimble and holistic approach, along with leadership in understanding and delivering on stakeholder and marketplace demands in a disruptive and dynamic world.

Workday Differentiators

Workday embeds the latest generative AI advancements into its core, helping investment firms redefine their workplace dynamics while fostering increased productivity and amplifying human potential. It does this through:

• Data — Workday leverages huge amounts of your data within a uniform model so the data that feeds your AI use cases is always up-to-date and reliable.
• PLATFORM — Since AI and ML are built into the core Workday architecture rather than bolted on after the fact, firms can enjoy increased agility, quick time to value and demonstrated strategies to stay a step ahead—all without a separate AI and ML stack or data integration.
• TRUST — Workday takes a responsible approach to AI and ML. It transparently documents each AI and ML model, keeping people at the centre and ensuring no decision is ever fully controlled by the technologies themselves. Humans are kept in the loop throughout the process and they are always the final decision-makers.