“After you reach 30-40 assets, managing data and spreadsheets becomes a whole new ballgame,” explains Tom Moore, Director at Foresight Group – a leading independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager with over £2.7 billion of assets under management.

Tom Moore joined Foresight in 2014 as a Portfolio Manager focused on UK solar portfolio operations.

“We had a technical team when I joined, but I was the first person hired to look at the financial and commercial side of the portfolio. It quickly became obvious that the overlap with the technical team was critical, and we set about formalizing communication channels and resetting the objectives of the portfolio function to have a more commercial focus that was better aligned to the requirements of the funds we manage. We owned 5 sites when I joined.”

Today, Foresight’s fund management activities encompass over 140 sites now and investments in private equity and infrastructure in the UK, Southern Europe and Australia. And Tom’s role has grown in stature over that time. “I basically just kept hiring people under me until they had no option to promote me,” Tom jokes.

Foresight is expert at managing assets within efficient tax structures, which results in complications in terms of portfolio structure and reporting lines. “With 140+ assets and 350 corporate entities, it was clear a year or so ago that our continued growth would lead to a breakdown in operational efficiencies. I knew our future growth would be at risk if we couldn’t establish a dynamic and centralized process for managing all the asset requirements.”

That lead Tom on a search for technology that would automate asset and investment management processes, reduce risk, and improve productivity and efficiencies as Foresight continued to grow.

“We needed flexibility first and foremost. That is, flexibility to integrate with a lot of different data sources and flexibility to accommodate different asset classes and geographies.

“The ultimate goal was to create a scalable, repeatable process to collect, measure and report on key metrics, like: budget vs. actual production, financials and revenue forecasts, operating reports, asset management tasks and KPIs, key milestones, and risk.”

“With a growing asset and investor base, weekly and monthly reports were the biggest pains. Collecting data from the asset operators was tedious and time-consuming. We ended up throwing people at it, which is not scalable or efficient.”

Tom had very specific goals in mind in his quest for a software solution:

• Improve performance of Assets in Operation
• Reduce risk by gaining better control of data; getting team out of email and excel and into a centralized, controlled system
• Increase productivity and double capacity (goal of reaching a 1:10 people:asset ratio from a 1:4 starting point)
• Accelerate reporting speed and accuracy from weeks or months to days or hours, with high transparency and visibility for investors and executives
• Comparability of data was also very important. “We work with many different advisors, operators, technology systems, contracts, etc., and each has its own slightly different way of measuring performance. Different contracts will define different ways of calculating the performance of the sites, so it is important that management is reviewing comparable data to make the right assessments.”

Tom’s search lead him to Mercatus in Silicon Valley. “I met a Mercatus executive at an event; I hadn’t heard of them before, but I liked their approach and their DNA in renewable energy projects. They understood our business and our challenges immediately.”

Fast forward to today. Foresight has been live with Mercatus for 3 months. “We are already starting to see a difference in smoother hand-offs and processes, faster (and better) reporting, and more trust in the quality of the data.”

“Ultimately, I believe we’ll be able to show a real impact in many areas, like asset performance, more datadriven decision-making, better visibility, lower risk, and increased operational efficiencies. I’m comforted to know we have a foundation that will grow and scale with our business, regardless of what the future holds.”

As a forerunner in the digital revolution for investment in infrastructure, Tom has three pieces of advice for those seeking success in this market: