The Canoe Optimized Workflow Step 4: Data Validation

This article is part four of a five-part series covering each aspect of the Canoe Optimized Workflow. The Canoe Optimized Workflow is a roadmap for any organization investing in or allocating to alternative investments to unlock new efficiencies and reimagine their operational processes by leveraging a combination of breakthrough technology and industry expertise.

Unparalleled Data Accuracy, Efficiency, and Scalability

After you extract all of the relevant data from your client reporting documents, it’s time to ensure that those data points and elements are accurate. Because of the manual nature of the data capture process, most firms have built elaborate and expensive processes to reconcile and verify the data associated with their alternative investments. These processes normally require complex maker-checker or double-blind entry workflows, which can be difficult to govern, and are prohibitively expensive for firms looking to grow. Some firms build large workbooks that function as an interim data warehouse before it’s delivered into reporting systems. These workbooks flag any potential issues or missing data, however, these systems can be unwieldy, difficult to update, and are subject to the same fat finger risks associated with manual data entry. There’s no optimal solution in the marketplace leveraging reliable, consistent, scalable, and automated technology. Until Canoe.

100% Data Accuracy is a Rule; Not a Goal

With decades of experience, our team has distilled their learnings into rules that are applied across all client implementations. With these rules in place, clients receive alerts and flags if data discrepancies or exceptions occur that do not pass business, accounting, or investment logic. This ensures that the transition from manual data entry to streamlined data automation is seamless, accurate, and reliable. 

Canoe’s Validation mosaic is constantly growing, today employing over 100 rules and layered logic. Some examples of this are below.

Business Rules

Service clients faster and validate data within the context of your entire client base.

• Get notified when high-priority clients or document types are ingested.
• Automatically reconcile entity/investment combinations with existing subscriptions or commitments. 

Accounting Rules

Verify the data with traditional accounting logic.

• Receive alerts when the Current Period Beginning Balance does not match the Prior Period Ending Balance.
• Identify discrepancies, such as the Reported Net Return not equaling the Calculated Return Net of Fees.

Investment Rules

Immediately identify investment-related discrepancies.

• Recognize missing capital calls. For example, if 10 clients have committed to Fund X, and only 9 receive a capital call notice, you would be notified. 
• Automatically verify that the capital called as a percentage of total commitment is consistent across all entities in the fund when a call notice is received. 

With 100% data accuracy, Canoe ingests, categorizes, extracts, and validates critical alternative investment reporting data points from multiple sources, proactively catching errors for correction in a fast, streamlined process.