Washington University Investment Management Company
M-Files Helps Unify Endowment's Information Strategy
Highlights
- Ease of use for operations team with enhanced searches
- Workflow automation minimizes document processing errors
- Field workers can access latest data via mobile
Use Case
Ease of Use
Compliance Management
Process Management
Workflow Automation
Industry
Financial Services
Higher Education
Country
United States
Company Introduction
Washington University Investment Management Company (WUIMC) is an investment management organization that builds and manages a perpetual investment portfolio in support of Washington University in St. Louis' critical and interlocking missions of teaching, research, and patient care for current and future generations. WUIMC manages an endowment pool valued at approximately 13.3 billion.
In 2017, WUIMC welcomed a new Chief Investment Officer who decided to change the way the firm worked—moving from a siloed model to a generalist model that unified specialized investment teams into one holistic team. While making this change helped unite the previously walled-off teams, it required a new software stack with better data management tools, including a best-of-breed document management platform.
Key Challenges Before M-Files
Under its new leadership, WUIMC began to focus on investing from a bottom-up perspective—to perform in-depth, boots-on-the-ground research. As such, their operations team needed document-driven workflows and field workers needed iOS access to documents. "In the past, users would directly work in our catch-all inbox, using tools in Outlook to manage tasks," David X. Li, Chief Technology Officer, said.
"The team made it work, but it lacked the level of oversight, consistency, reliability, and redundancy that we needed. We just had to hope that each user would manage their own individual workflow, and nothing would fall through the cracks."
David adds: "Once users fully processed a document, it would be saved into our document repository, within a legacy research management and accounting platform. It was okay for that time and the old silo model, but the document storage was bare bones and it made metadata tagging as onerous as it could be."
WUIMC replaced their legacy software suite, working to replace it with superior, financial services–focused apps. They decided that the operations team needed a dedicated platform to handle its sophisticated document management needs.
Since WUIMC no longer had siloed asset class teams within the organization, they needed quality collaboration tools with better mobile options for the investment team. In addition, WUIMC wanted a platform that automated the document-management process from document creation and management to workflow automation, external collaboration, enterprise search, security, compliance, and audit trail.
"M-Files was right in the sweet spot for us. It covered all the essential features without being bloated by attempting to be everything to everyone."
David X. Li, Chief Technology Officer
The M-Files Solution
After months spent comparing dozens of solutions, David decided to migrate WUIMC to M-Files for its cross-platform usability, flexible organization system, and robust document-driven workflows.
"There were so many options, from massive omnibus content management systems down to niche fintech-specific solutions," David said.
"It was honestly overwhelming. We focused on the features that would matter most to us: user-friendliness, reliable ingestion options, a robust workflow engine, flexible consumption options, mobile availability, and extensibility through APIs or back-end customizations," he added.
"M-Files was right in the sweet spot for us. It covered all these essential features without being bloated by attempting to be everything to everyone."
"We receive all manner of investment-related documents through there: investor letters, capital statements, due diligence reports, legal documents, capital calls, and more. All those documents flow into M-Files first, and the same workflow is used to process all of them consistently. The combination of custom views and data exports provides managers with much better oversight, as well. Managers set up their own custom views that allow them to see documents as they’re being processed and to check for exceptions."
David X. Li, Chief Technology Officer
"Being able to pull up documents we need while traveling is essential, which is why M-Files’ cross-platform availability is a huge deal. That gives users exactly the documents they need on an everyday basis, which differs from person to person."
David X. Li, Chief Technology Officer
The Results
"This is the main strength of M-Files from a consumption perspective: Since everything is metadata-driven—and the system makes metadata collection easy—we can tailor views to specific users’ needs."
David X. Li, Chief Technology Officer
Today, M-Files acts as both a digital mailroom for WUIMC as well as a centralized repository for official documents.
On the digital mailroom side, all official documents pass through M-Files, usually through the Exchange mail source integration, which brings in emails and attachments from a catch-all inbox.
"We receive all manner of investment-related documents through there: investor letters, capital statements, due diligence reports, legal documents, capital calls, and more," David said.
"All those documents flow into M-Files first, and the same workflow is used to process all of them consistently. The combination of custom views and data exports provides managers with much better oversight, as well. Managers set up their own custom views that allow them to see documents as they’re being processed and to check for exceptions."
On the repository side, custom views and advanced search functionality provide an impressive amount of flexibility, allowing users to get exactly what they need.
"This is the main strength of M-Files from a consumption perspective: Since everything is metadata-driven—and the system makes metadata collection easy—we can tailor views to specific users’ needs," David said.
These specific views can be marked for offline access on mobile devices, keeping important documents available and updated on the road. If the user prefers keeping up to date by email, it’s easy to create email notifications or periodic digests based on rules.
"Being able to pull up documents we need while traveling is essential, which is why M-Files’ cross-platform availability is a huge deal," David said, adding that many users hop between the M-Files Windows, web, iOS, and Android apps.
"That gives users exactly the documents they need on an everyday basis, which differs from person to person," he added.
Why M-Files?
M-Files is the leading platform for knowledge work automation. With the M-Files platform, knowledge workers can find information faster, work smarter, and achieve more. M-Files features an innovative metadata-driven architecture, embedded workflow engine, and advanced artificial intelligence. This enables customers to eliminate information chaos, improve process efficiency, and automate security and compliance.