For many investment managers, automation still feels out of reach. Most teams are stuck with a mix of disconnected systems, partial workarounds, and daily manual tasks that chip away at productivity.
There’s no shortage of automation tools in the market. But applying them in investment management isn’t simple. Workflows cut across systems. Data formats vary. And every firm operates with its own unique mix of investment styles, service providers, and internal tools.
That’s why most automation initiatives either stall or only scratch the surface.
Why Automation Feels So Hard (Even When It Shouldn’t Be)
Investment teams are busy. Front and middle offices handle thousands of tasks a day, including data uploads, validations, reporting, reconciliations, and manual checks.
- There’s too much to automate. When everything feels urgent, how do you prioritize what to automate first?
- No two firms are the same. Your investment style, counterparties, data flows, and system stack are likely unique.
- “Gut checks” are still a thing. Despite all the buzz around AI, machines still lag behind humans when it comes to sanity checking portfolio moves or scanning outliers in a PDF.
- Your workflows live across multiple tools. Your workflows live across multiple tools – OMS, PMS, CRMs, spreadsheets, and portals – automating all these is nigh impossible.”
Why Most Automation Strategies Fall Flat
BPM tools, RPA bots, and low-code overlays sound good in theory, but they lead to brittle, unsustainable workflows that are expensive to maintain and don’t scale. In fact, several studies show that most automation investments fail to deliver measurable ROI. Because they’re trying to automate around the problem, not through it.
A Better Way: Bake Automation into the Platform Itself
The firms making real progress are the ones rethinking the foundation instead of layering over it.
When automation is part of the platform, not a third-party add-on, it’s no longer a separate initiative. It becomes a feature. That means:
- No more data juggling across systems
- Less need for “automation glue” like macros and middleware
- Higher confidence in data integrity
- Far faster execution and exception handling
In other words, the system does more operational work, so your team doesn’t have to.
Exception-Based Workflows: The Real Game Changer
The sweet spot between manual work and full automation is an exception-based workflow.
These workflows let software handle the routine checks, price validations, position reconciliations, NAV thresholds, and only alert humans when something’s off. So, your team spends less time watching and more time solving.
Let’s look at a quick analogy:
| Scenario | Old Way | Exception-Based |
| Data Checks | Daily tasks in Excel or manual sanity checks | Software checks in real-time and pings you if something breaks |
| Order Processing | Manual routing, approvals, and uploads | Smart workflows auto-process unless rules are breached |
| Portfolio Adjustments | Multiple systems and files for rebalancing | Centralized logic, 1-click updates, and auto-alerts |
A Real-World Snapshot
At a former investment firm, one ops analyst spent 3 hours daily on end-of-day tasks: waiting for a task to run, dragging files from inboxes, triggering macros, eyeballing reports for anomalies. It wasn’t a bad process design; it was just bad software.
That team could’ve saved hours each day with basic automation like:
- Scheduled reconciliations with alert thresholds
- Automated trade imports/exports
- Self-serve dashboards instead of reports stuck in email chains
And that time adds up, multiply it across portfolios, desks, and geographies, and you’re looking at serious operational drag.
No, Automation Won’t Replace Ops Teams (Yet)
Let’s set this straight: automation doesn’t mean eliminating your ops team.
What it does mean: reducing their repetitive, soul-sucking work so they can focus on what matters, like break resolution, exception handling, counterparty coordination, and process innovation.
What to Look for in a Truly Automated Investment Platform
When evaluating platforms, most RFPs still focus on “Do you have feature X, yes or no?” But the real difference lies in how those features work in practice.
A robust system should offer:
- Native automation of routine workflows
- Real-time exception handling
- Unified data models to avoid duplication
- Clear status dashboards for oversight
- Flexibility to customize without deep IT involvement
One of our clients saw a 50% drop in operational overhead just by switching to a platform built with exception-based workflows in mind. And they’re not alone.
Final Thought
Most investment teams already know where the inefficiencies are. The challenge is to figure out how to address them without disrupting what’s already working. That’s where exception-based automation really helps. It doesn’t require you to flip everything at once. It starts by handling the routine and the repeatable, and gradually gives your team room to focus on the things that still need their judgment.
Automation efforts need to be practical, focused, and measurable. If it doesn’t clearly reduce time, cost, or risk, it’s not moving forward. ROI is the baseline for any decision; every change has to justify itself in numbers.
You don’t need perfect systems to move forward. But you do need systems that make it easier to automate what’s ready and highlight what’s not. The firms that get this right are the ones who’ve figured out how to make the tools work with their teams, not around them.
