| CUSTOMER STORY
How Clairfield supercharges their private market research with Gain
The Challenge:
Time-consuming research, limited visibility into private market companies, and the need for accurate, centralized data slowed workflows and decision-making.
Use Cases:
Market analysis
Deal sourcing
The Results:
Reduced research time, more efficient workflows, better delegation of tasks, and improved client discussions with high-quality insights.
Navigating global markets with technology
Ranked among the top firms worldwide, Clairfield International has developed a global network of top performing advisors, serving a diverse client pool of family businesses, multinational corporations and financial investors. Since its founding in 2004, the group has expanded across 30 countries globally, with 80% cross border execution. In the last 5 years, Clairfield International has closed over 750 deals worth a cumulative deal value of €33bn.
As they manage their ever-expanding team of advisors, the group has been increasingly using technology to streamline their operational workflows. In fact, they have developed a dedicated Digitalization Committee within their Board of Clairfield to facilitate these projects.
Hans Buysse, Managing Partner of Clairfield International in Belgium, has been spearheading these efforts within the office where there was an opportunity to enhance and create efficiency in the team’s private market research workflow with the use of technology.
The team was looking for a platform that provided high quality data in a centralized system that would allow them to speed up their market research without waning on quality. Not only would this reduce the amount of tedious work, but would facilitate faster, more confident decision-making. With technology in mind, Clairfield International in Belgium sought out a private market intelligence platform that would fit their specific use cases for their office.
Choosing Gain as their go-to private market intelligence
In general, it is difficult to find accurate and centralized data about certain topics and companies in the private market, but Hans Buysse says:
The ability to do all of this made Gain their choice platform for private market intelligence.
Access to comprehensive industry reports
One of the primary reasons why Clairfield in Belgium procured Gain was for the in-depthindustry reports. Previously, their team of analysts would spend hours on market research –looking into sectors, companies and private equity firms. But with Gain, they could significantly reduce the amount of time spent on this task.
Our deep dive reports compile information and insights from reputable sources as well as interviews with c-level industry executives. This is so we can provide the most relevant information and data on topics including ESG ratings, market outlook and segmentation, just to name a few.
Since leveraging Gain’s market reports, Clairfield has been able to drastically cut down the time it takes to profile an industry and they have also gained much better visibility when mapping.
Ability to discover new companies
Another way in which Clairfield leverages Gain’s industry reports is to discover companies in their focus market as well as to find similar and adjacent players in other countries. Gain uses the power of generative AI to build these lists of similar and adjacent companies so they are accurate to the search query.
Insight into private market companies
With Gain, Clairfield International in Belgium is able to quickly capture a view on the companies that interest them most.
To quickly understand target players, they consult Gain’s company profiles which capture relevant information and data, including:
Succinct business descriptions
Business model assessments
Cleaned financials
Market positioning
They often use these profiles to easily capture a view of a company’s history. Through the ownership tab, they can find the company’s platform deal history as well as any previous acquisitions and divestments.
Whenever they need to dive into the details of a company’s financials, they make use of our export function where they can download an Excel spreadsheet that allows them to analyze the company from their own specific angles.
Trust in accurate and reliable data
For Clairfield International in Belgium, a critical requirement when procuring a private market intelligence platform was that the information and data had to be accurate and reliable.
When they found Gain, there was no question that our information was the highest quality on the market. To ensure our data is always to the highest standard, we take a 6-eye approach to reviewing our work, whereby 3 investment professionals validate the information prior to it reaching the platform. We also leverage advanced technology to ensure we have the latest metrics available.
As a part of their best practices, the Clairfield team in Belgium cross checks all of their information to always deliver accurate insights for their clients. Since implementing Gain, this process has gotten easier for them as we list all our sources.
Gain’s impact on Clairfield International in Belgium
Since integrating Gain into their daily operations, Clairfield International in Belgium has seen significant improvements in their workflows.
Delegating more interesting work to their interns has had a tremendous impact on the firm as a whole. Hans Buysse notes that “the team is able to spend more time digging deeper into a number of analyses which ultimately improves our scoring in the market.”
In addition to this, they have benefited from Gain in strategic discussions with clients.
As Gain evolves with greater coverage and platform functionalities, Clairfield International in Belgium further increases their efficiency and effectiveness as a team. This means they can continue providing the highest quality service to their clients and being regarded as a top player in the industry.
