In today's financial services market, operations managers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace with rapidly changing market demands. Increasingly complex regulations, technology limitations, and budget pressures contribute to these challenges. Each of these factors places a significant amount of pressure on accounting and operations managers to identify and implement efficiency opportunities while continuing to maintain superior quality and service levels for both internal and external clients.

Outsourcing
Firms are continually seeking ways to reduce costs and boost profitability. Beacon partners with clients to conduct a thorough assessment of outsourcing solutions to achieve these goals. The organizations that benefit most from outsourced operations define what they want from their providers and ensure their business requirements are consistently being met. Through years of industry and consulting expertise, Beacon assists clients in designing an operating model that captures both in-house and outsourced requirements to ensure a smooth transition and long-term benefits for both parties.

Merger Integration
The industry is experiencing a tremendous boom in merger activity. These mergers create tremendous integration opportunities for banks, insurance companies, and investment managers to consolidate redundant departments and systems. Our objective is to position our clients to be able to harness these integration opportunities and realize their inherent efficiencies of scale. Our approach to integration is both tactical and strategic. We identify and pursue short-term, "quick-win" initiatives, while concurrently building a redesign strategy for the overall business that will leverage the competencies of both organizations to create an optimum model.

Hedge Fund and Private Equity Services
Beacon Consulting Group provides a variety of advisory services to hedge funds and private equity firms. Our approach ensures key operational initiatives utilize proven methodologies and leverage industry best practices.

Vendor & System Selection
A vendor and system selection process requires significant energy and dedication on the part of the key stakeholders within an organization. Beacon will assist in reducing the review process while also minimizing the stress on the daily operations. Our methodical approach to execute a thorough RFI and RFP process will reduce the selection risk and your downstream implementation and operational costs.

Our comprehensive services include the following:
• Assisting with the development of current and future operational requirements
• Prescreen candidates to determine the most “appropriate” vendors and applications for analysis
• Constructing and managing the Requests for Information (RFI) process
• Constructing and managing the formal Request for Proposal (RFP)
• Completing a customized and fully detailed vendor analysis
• Documenting a full scale implementation plan

An optional operational assessment identifies tactical and strategic redesign efforts, positions the firm to maximize capabilities of the technology, and minimizes the staff impact. Beacon's vendor independence allows us to provide an objective view and puts your firm's best interest forward.

Fund Administrator Conversions
A consequence of growth is that some alternative investment managers are discovering that they have outgrown their current fund administrator's capacity to perform daily, monthly and annual responsibilities. These deficiencies are usually exposed during the critical month-end net asset value calculation and typically have their roots in a perfect storm of complex transactions, increased volumes, and a breakdown of procedures at some point during the month. The decision to switch administrators can be daunting, especially when accounting and operations staffs are already at full capacity. A successful fund administrator conversion requires a strong commitment to detail from the investment manager as well as the new service provider. Beacon's proven conversion methodology helps to reduce the risk and disruptions of the conversion process. We centrally manage the process across all involved parties and leverage our tools and resources to create a comprehensive and achievable conversion plan that minimizes potential complications which may arise. Beacon assists in the education of your staff on the events which will transpire pre-, during and post-conversion.

Fund Administration
Beacon offers a number of advisory services to help our clients navigate business challenges:
•  Regulatory Services - Financial Reporting / Compliance
•  Expense Administration
•  Tax

Regulatory Services - Financial Reporting / Compliance
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been responsible for the most far-reaching regulatory changes in history and firms that aren't prepared to face these new challenges can be inundated with legal breaches and additional work. Keeping up-to-date with the latest regulations can be a daunting task, but Beacon provides the industry experience and knowledge to keep our clients one step ahead. A comprehensive review of compliance operations can identify gaps, inefficiencies, and risk points. Beacon helps clients create new policies and procedures, and strengthen controls around those already in place.

Beacon not only can help with compliance and regulatory challenges, but also with issues around the entire financial reporting lifecycle. In today's competitive marketplace, continually assessing the entire financial reporting process can keep your firm one step ahead of the competition.

Financial Reporting Optimization
Strategic Process Redesign focuses on assessing and improving the entire financial reporting lifecycle from start to finish. Beacon will complete a current state assessment to gain understanding of the current reporting environment. Beacon will then work with management and staff to document the entire production cycle from beginning to end to establish a concrete foundation that will drive future recommendations.

Before making changes to the process itself, Beacon challenges our clients to strengthen their pre-planning process and to focus on what can be done prior to Day 1 of the production cycle. Proper planning and preparation can cut down the amount of extra work and long hours that are needed for items that can be completed before the cycle begins. Better leveraging work performed and data collected in the fund accounting group provides another opportunity for improvement.

The primary goals of the redesign effort are shortening the length of the reporting cycle and streamlining the review process while delivering the highest levels of reporting quality to the end client. We have been able to reduce page count as much as 30% in a fund's annual report resulting in significant reductions in print costs. Beacon analyzes financial data and performs an assessment of current technology to develop recommendations for change. New workflows and technology enhancements are tailored to each client's operating environment. We have seen automation enhancements significantly streamline both the compilation and review processes. Beacon provides support and follow-up services to assist clients in maintaining momentum during the transition periods.

Beacon leverages both its in-depth knowledge of the industry and Regulation S-X to provide a content review that will not only comply from a disclosure standpoint, but will also encompass industry best practices to enhance shareholder value, while leveraging available technology to ensure optimal control and automation in the compilation and review processes.

Click here for more information about Beacon's financial reporting project experience and service offerings.

Expense Administration
Expense administrators are increasingly confronted with more complicated fund structures. Allocating expenses fairly and accurately can become an exercise fraught with manual workarounds and restatements, costing valuable resources during critical periods. Beacon has worked with investment managers and their global service providers to improve the expense administration process and mitigate risk associated with allocating and processing fund expenses. We provide a proven method to evaluate expense processes and supporting applications in order to provide viable solutions for the short and long term. Our review process analyzes the client and service provider relationship along with the allocation methodology among funds and share classes in order to identify inefficiencies and risk points. In conjunction, client invoice reviews and budgeting evaluations help our clients eliminate problems and mitigate risk with fund expenses.

Tax
Investment managers are increasingly placing significant value on tax resources who are accessible and experienced. At the same time, tax is increasingly assuming a higher profile in the investment community as new regulations and disclosures add to the risk in this area. An additional layer of complexity is added to the function as investment managers outsource this task and fund administrators aggressively compete to recruit, hire and retain qualified tax personnel.

Beacon has worked with a number of clients with the following common goals:

• Develop a scaleable tax services model that supports expected growth
• Develop an integrated model that leverages a common operating and technology platform across groups
• Identify and mitigate tax risks and enhance the value and quality of tax services provided to clients

Our disciplined approach to projects ensures that we develop solutions that identify integration opportunities among existing internal groups, consider potential outsourcing opportunities, and build the required business case for change. Our approach also ensures immediate results as tactical solutions are identified during the course of the project, a process is put in place to evaluate, prioritize, and initiate implementation.

These engagements have produced tangible and credible improvements in tax services provided to clients, resulting in improved client relationships and a more positive working environment. Our strategic solutions advance the goal of a long-term sustainable business model for tax services in this highly competitive environment.