Oxford Bioscience Partners
With Intralinks®, Life-science venture capital firm Oxford Bioscience Partners reengineered its investor communication process, first supplementing and eventually replacing its manual, paper-based approach. As a result, the company slashed months of administrative time while better serving the needs of its limited partners.
THE SITUATION
During quarterly reporting season Oxford would mail reports for its four active funds to 300 limited partners (LPs) around the globe — a process that often took more than 60 days.
THE PROBLEM
Ad hoc capital calls and distribution notices resulted in high administrative costs due to the required customization of notices for each LP.
THE IMPLICATIONS
In addition to the mailing expense, reports required days of back-and-forth with the printer. Sometimes, minor edits found late in the process were held until the following quarter to keep the document on schedule. Distribution required staff to create shipping labels and match them to customized letters, hand-sort them and stuff packages.
THE SOLUTION
Oxford reviewed Intralinks Investor portalTM and came away impressed by its security and efficiency. Individual exchanges were created for the 11 partnerships included in the company’s three most recent active funds. With the use of Intralinks FileSplit, Oxford can upload documents, such as reports, K-1s, capital statements, capital calls, and distribution notices in bulk. Then, automatically divide them so individual investors see only their information. FileSplit’s mail-merge feature quickly creates and posts customized investor packages. Recipients are then automatically alerted that they are ready for review. Additionally, because Intralinks is the industry standard, many of the investors use it with their other funds. They can use one Intralinks name and password to access any of their Intralinks Investor portal for which they have permission, even non-Oxford funds.
THE RESULT
Oxford has slashed the quarterly reporting process from 60 days to 45 by printing PDFs and posting them to Intralinks. And LPs are notified via email when new reports are available. What once took an entire staff one and a half days to complete now takes one administrator only 10 minutes. Oxford realizes similar savings during the numerous capital calls and distribution notices it undertakes each year.
THE BENEFIT
Oxford used Intralinks when marketing its OBP V fund. The company posted all relevant material to its exchange and permissioned potential investors to certain documents based on their interests and likely investment level. The efficient process was well received, while the ability to know which prospect reviewed what documents—and when—helped Oxford executives gauge interest and target fundraising efforts.
