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Managing 3i’s Referral Network

Presentation to : InterAction User Group

Alison Craven, Marketing Executive

18 March 2010

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Managing 3i’s Referral Network

3i’s Referral Network

Making Systems work for you

Recording Patronage

Summer of 2009

Benefits of the process

Where is the relationship going ?

Relationship Development Plan

Working together

Summary

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3i’s Referral Network : Who are they ?

• Companies and people who introduce deal opportunities to us

• Companies and people who we introduce deal opportunities to

• Companies and people who we give out work to in relation to deals

• Companies and people who carry out work for us which is not related to any specific deal

• Quite often the same company or person will fall into multiple categories

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Making the systems work for you

• Knowledge sharing is at the heart of it

• Rules in place to ensure engagement

• Preventing duplication of work

• Making you look joined up

• Make it easy to enter and extract information

• Automate as much as possible – synchronisation between systems

• Using system features : reminders, task lists

• Some manual analysis to bring everything together

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Recording Patronage in 3i

• Identified requirement to measure inflow/outflow of work (patronage)

• Agreed 8 categories of information, collected on a central spreadsheet

• Translated this using InterAction and piloted with one busy team for 3 months to prove the concept

• Rolled system out globally

• Rewrote a piece of our deal management system to incorporate this information, and synchronise with InterAction

• Included this in our investment procedures and deal checklist

• Can search by individual, company, deal, type of work, geography, fees paid, date, industry sector

• Corresponding Activities are dropped through into relevant InterAction records

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Summer of 2009

• Engaged 4 MBA students to look at our relationships with the Big 4

• Primary aim was to ensure we had the right relationships in place globally

• Used information held in InterAction and our Patronage system

• Carried out internal and external interviews

• Uncovered many previously unknown links

• Discovered an appetite to engage in a more formal relationship-building process

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Benefits of this process

• Decided to engage directly with one firm as a pilot

• Enthusiastically received

• Eager to share information, to discover the true extent of our relationship

• Currently formalising a process which will be rolled out to other key intermediaries

• Relationship Development Plan

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Where is the relationship going ?

• Looking at things from both sides

• Relationship Development Plan

• Formalise the process

• List of main contacts, opposite numbers

• Summaries of meetings/phonecalls/events

• Quarterly reviews

• Any figures/facts on referrals – quality, quantity, etc

• Preferences around frequency/mode/level of contact

• Making this information available to your colleagues

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Relationship Development Plan

• Relationship Purpose

• Overall goals/deliverables

– Be specific

• Timescale

– For each element

• Core values and behaviours

• Governance

– Account management

– how to escalate issues

• Joint investments

• Relationship measures

– Hard/soft measures

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Working together

• Share the Relationship Development Plan

• Element of transparency

• Changes focus to a company/company relationship

• Can be specific about your requirements

• Share intelligence

• Better forum to air thoughts when things aren’t going well

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Summary

• It’s as hard as you make it

• Need to decide how/what to measure

• Your referrers will thank you for taking an interest

• Start with one, prove the value, take it from there

• In more danger by doing nothing

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Thank you