HTGF Digitalizing Deal Management with Dynamics 365 and Power Apps

The prospects for securing funding from HTGF as lead investor look promising. The team of founders impresses with an innovative AI solution, clear product-market fit (PMF) potential, and a forward-looking business model.

Each year, HTGF’s investment team reviews more than 2,000 startup pitches from across the deep tech, industrial tech, climate tech, digital tech, life sciences, and chemicals sectors. It focuses on breakthrough technologies that have the potential to scale internationally, technological excellence, and teams of founders with strong entrepreneurial ambition.

Since launching in 2005, the fund has supported over 800 startups on their journey and achieved around 200 successful exits. In Germany and throughout Europe, HTGF is recognized as one of the most active early-stage investors – a prime example of how to successfully mobilize private capital and foster close collaboration between the public sector and private industry.

High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) has digitalized its core deal and investment management process by migrating to the Dynamics 365 SaaS cloud platform. The seed investor is thus now benefiting from far faster, more efficient, and totally transparent workflows – delivering 360-degree visibility from initial capture of a tech startup lead through to the final investment decision.

“Our core processes encompass the entire investment and portfolio management lifecycle – from identifying a startup and providing ongoing support, all the way to exit. Efficient and transparent management of these long-term workflows, along with complete and legally compliant documentation, are critically important,” commented Peter Kolvenbach (Senior IT Service Manager for CRM at HTGF). The prerequisite for achieving this was consistent digitalization of the core process based on an integrated, scalable, and futureproof IT system landscape that is as cost-efficient as possible with centralized data management – a genuine single source of truth.

“Analyzing the status quo revealed that the best way to achieve this goal was with a cloud-first strategy and Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 SaaS cloud platform,” explained Jan Bernhardt (Head of IT at HTGF). Dynamics 365 offers the desired range of functions, can be flexibly adapted to individual requirements, and integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft solutions already deployed at HTGF, such as Microsoft 365, Power BI, SharePoint, and LinkedIn.

The new cloud platform for deal and decision management, built on a centralized Dataverse database, replaces an outdated proprietary system. The advantages of the platform became evident shortly after going live. From initial contact with a tech startup through to the final investment decision, HTGF’s investment team now works digitally on an intuitive web interface that speeds up processes, simplifies collaboration, and enables agile decision-making.

When the investment team identifies a promising startup through public sources, in networks, or at events, it is entered as a lead in Dynamics 365. From there, it progresses through the process steps from the deal to – ideally – a positive investment decision. The process is made even shorter because members of the investment committee can make decisions in a dedicated Power App that can also be used on mobile devices.

On the whole, this frees up more time to focus on the core activities: finding promising tech startups and supporting them from the investment decision and exit through to follow-on financing. Startups also benefit from the faster processes, gaining planning certainty earlier in case of approval. All in all, this solution creates considerable added value.

Every decision, including its audit log file, is stored immutably and in an audit-proof manner in Dynamics 365’s deal module. At the same time, all email correspondence related to a deal is comprehensively documented in Microsoft Outlook following duplicate and ID checks, along with associated documents in the SharePoint directory for each respective deal. This creates the 360-degree view needed to trace deal-related processes at any time, fulfill retention and documentation requirements, and comply with legal regulations for financial products.

At HTGF, the decision app is used not only for deal-related processes but also for organizational and personnel-related decision-making processes, which are likewise documented. Access to decisions – for example, a personnel decision – is restricted to specific end users by means of roles and permissions as needed. Successful fundraising with investors from the private sector is naturally tremendously important to HTGF as a seed investor. Planning, implementing, and monitoring corresponding activities for raising capital now also take place efficiently and transparently in Dynamics 365.

Since this ambitious digitalization project presented numerous challenges, HTGF sought a suitable IT partner and found one in ORBIS SE. The IT service provider impressed due to its broadly diversified know-how related to Dynamics 365 and process digitalization using Microsoft technologies. Thanks to the collaborative partnership between the internal team and the ORBIS consultants, who according to Peter Kolvenbach work “as one unit”, the implementation of Dynamics 365 and the Power App proceeded swiftly.

Jan Bernhardt’s summary to date is positive: “With the Dynamics 365 cloud platform and the Power Platform services, we’ve built a modern and integrated IT system landscape to digitalize, optimize, and futureproof our core processes. The benefits are tremendous, as workflows relating to deal and decision management can now be handled much more quickly and easily, and with total transparency too.”

Future enhancements will continue to build on this foundation. The new Dynamics 365 platform will be expanded one step at a time, staying as close to the Microsoft standard as possible. There are plans for an online portal that will give fund investors structured insight into the deal pipeline. On this portal, they will be able to research startups that align with their own strategic focus using a filter search and directly contact the relevant individual at HTGF.

The fund is also hard at work exploring how to further ease the burden on employees caused by routine tasks through automating work tasks using artificial intelligence (AI), as well as how to enhance work quality and promote creative and strategic tasks. The deployment of AI is also being promoted to direct venture capital even more precisely toward the breakthrough technologies of the future. And, what’s more, thanks to the digital processes, the startup mentioned at the start of this article quickly received the necessary capital to further develop its AI solution and drive its growth forward. And, so, the situation has come full circle.