We realize that Corporate Access is a soft-dollar activity for the most part.  (Leaving out the considerable success of Gerson Lehrman, of course).   So invoices will never be sent out looking like this.

That does not mean that banks should forget about Invoicing.  

Institutional  clients are becoming ever more rigorous in  the voting processes they follow - driven by many factors.   A compliance need to justify how they direct commissions.   More sophisticated tools for managing their voting.  A desire perhaps, in these challenging times, to more accurately and generously reward their smaller sellside providers as the bulge bracket banks see their dominance eroded.

So while Institutional Clients develop what amount to sophisticated Purchasing and Accounts Payable departments, not all sellside firms have yet responded by developing equally sophisticated Accounts Receivable procedures.  And yet for any business, improving Accounts Receivable is often the easiest and quickest path to improving the cash flow.

Specifically, banks should be generating and delivering detailed reports for each and every Client that receives any kind of Corporate Access benefit - including Conference meetings, non-deal Roadshows, Company Visits, Conference Calls, Analyst lunches, Analyst Roadshows, Field Trips.   These reports need to be complete, accurate, detailed and timely.   They should be considered as if they were an invoice.  Sample.

Complete - every type of “billable” activity needs to be included.   Imagine if a wireless company didn’t invoice for calls made in Texas, or for those made on Tuesdays.  Activity not counted and reported is revenue left on the table.

Accurate - obvious errors are simply an invitation to a Client to discard the entire report.  The more that is done by hand, by busy salespeople, for example, or by copying and pasting data between systems - the greater the room for error.

Detailed - many Clients need full details on each meeting.  Who was there, was it a 1×1 or a group, where it was, what type of meeting it was, when did it start.   They need this to let the PM attribute the correct number of votes.  Without it, they will give the minimum number, or none at all.   Reports also need to be formatted in a way as to make Client processing as easy as possible.  

Timely - if the reports are not delivered on time, they may not be counted, or votes may be applied with minimal consideration.

These times demand that valuable services that are provided to Clients are fully compensated.  One component of that it to invoice for Corporate Access services - to show how serious you are about getting paid for it.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Corporate Access Meetings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.