Customer story
Banking on a digital future: Gain.pro has accelerated Rabobank’s operations
Accelerating Rabobank’s digitization strategy
Rabobank Corporate Finance Advisory (CFA) is one of the leading investment banking teams in the Netherlands, providing strategic advisory and process execution services to public companies, private equity, governments, family-owned businesses and entrepreneurs, with a focus on sectors such as food and agriculture.
A forward-thinking organization, Rabobank CFA has a keen focus on innovation and revolutionizing the banking industry through technology.
With banking traditionally slow to adopt new technologies, the CFA team knew that to set the standard for the rest of the industry and be at the forefront of innovation, it would need to accelerate its digitization strategy
By adopting the right technologies, the Rabobank CFA team can be in the best position to keep pace with significant market developments, particularly the increased investment in privately-owned companies, rising cost pressures and scrutiny on spend since the financial crisis.
Digitization can also positively impact the employee experience by allowing the team to focus on where they add the most value.
One particular function that can be digitized is recording market insight to inform services to clients, such as new companies entering the market or organizations being targeted by investors, which can be a painstaking and time-consuming process. Traditionally, this would frequently require in-house analysts to spend significant amounts of time manually entering information into systems. Consequently, Rabobank CFA set about looking for a better solution.
Significant time-saving
Rabobank CFA explored several technologies before choosing Gain.pro, the category redefining SaaS solution offering unparalleled insight into private markets. Key considerations in selecting Gain.pro included the clear value the solution would provide and the expertise of the Gain.pro team.
The significant time-saving benefits of the platform were among those to stand out the most, with Gain.pro users able to access information on companies that would typically take 10 hours of manual work to compile.
Users are therefore able to gain a comprehensive overview of private companies within minutes.
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With knowledge gathering handled by the platform, employees can focus their efforts on completing origination, whereby investment opportunities are identified, and deal execution, encompassing the areas where they are able to add the most value. The Gain.pro platform’s capabilities were easily tested via a trial and immediately gave a sense of its reliability and relevance for its operations, with the sector-agnostic nature of the platform aligning with the Rabobank CFA team’s operations in the Netherlands.
“We came to realize that a lot of what we do in the investment banking industry could be digitized, which we hadn’t yet fully explored. We wanted to achieve greater efficiency and productivity while keeping pace with market developments. After searching the market, we were drawn to Gain.pro, and upon further exploration, we knew that this would be the future for our business,” said Paul Schram, Global Head of M&A and ECM at Rabobank.
Effective implementation
The Gain.pro team set to work on arming the in-house team at Rabobank CFA with the technology needed to stay one step ahead of the competition, making the organization among the first to utilize such a solution. Unlike top-level scraping technology, the high touch and high tech capabilities of the Gain.pro platform provides comprehensive insight into start-ups, mid-market businesses and large companies, including ownership, financial and market data.
All of these capabilities are provided via an easy-to-use and intuitive platform with up-to-date data, with Gain.pro users benefitting from the combination of technology and humaninsights provided by Gain.pro’s service.
The mix of direct feeds from legal entities to compile financials and insights from teams of local researchers and analysts means that users have access to comprehensive and regularly updated information on which they can base decisions and pursue opportunities.
Using powerful algorithms, the information provides bespoke actionable insights based on the organization’s requirements. For example, the Gain.pro platform can predict a potential stakeholder exit due to succession or the end of an investment period, which users can then explore in more detail and pursue. The information that means a new opportunity may be on the horizon can be automatically added to a user’s actionable list.
Overall, the platform essentially acts as a technology layer that enhances existing processes.
Business benefits
Since the solution’s implementation in 2018, Gain.pro users have experienced a range of tangible benefits, including:
Visibility of comparable targets or peers, omitting the time-consuming process of searching for this information via Google
Increased flexibility due to the ability to use the software on both a range of handheld devices and web browsers
Greater awareness of potential opportunities beyond the Netherlands due to data growth on the platform during the partnership
The use of Gain.pro has also played a part in improving Rabobank CFA’s employee engagement:
Engagement levels have improved from 40% in 2017 to over 70% today thanks in part due to the reduction of manual work and a corresponding increase in employee morale
With employees able to provide more value with the platform in place, employee turnover decreased substantially between 2018 and 2021
“The system ultimately gives our staff a great starting point. If we’re looking for a company that we only know by name, it gives all the details we need to get a complete picture of that organization, such as current ownership and key financials. It’s also ideal to gain oversight of an entire industry, some of which may be new to us,” added Paul.
Ongoing support
The customer service team at Gain.pro further supports adoption with training sessions for users in order to explore all of the functionalities within the platform, plus new enhancements as the product has been developed.
The responsiveness of the Gain.pro team ensures that users quickly receive any support they need to use the technology effectively, maximizing results.
“On a tactical level, the Gain.pro platform has helped us to accelerate our operations and become more competitive. With the ability to leverage data and enable staff to focus on other tasks which provide greater benefit to the business, we’ve not only improved staff retention, but have also grown our team.
The intuitiveness of the solution has helped us to rapidly accelerate our digital transformation strategy and bring us to the forefront of innovation.
The M&A investment sector isn’t particularly well known for change or innovation, but the intuitiveness of the solution has helped us to rapidly accelerate our digital transformation strategy and bring us to the forefront of innovation. The platform provides wide-reaching value that has helped to futureproof operations as our requirements have evolved,” said Paul.
