Martijn Voorhaar on LeadingMile's asset-based consulting

14 July 2021 Consultancy.eu

Amsterdam-based consultancy LeadingMile has over the past year continued its growth trajectory – expanding its team, entering a new market and adding CEPRES to its list of technology partners. Martijn Voorhaar, founder of LeadingMile, reflects on the firm’s progress, sweet spot in the landscape and plans for the future. 

“At LeadingMile, we service investors and fund managers in the alternative investment space. The heartbeat of alternative investments is fundamentally different from traditional, listed investments and this requires specialised skills and experience. It is a niche market that is too small for the large consulting firms to service adequately. So that’s where we come in. We know how data flows within and between companies and we know about their operations and IT.” 

“We help our clients achieve organisational and operational excellence through cutting-edge solutions. We combine the consultancy skills of our people with proprietary solutions. That makes a real difference for clients in this space. We call this combination asset-based consulting.”

Martijn Voorhaar, Founder, LeadingMile

What exactly do you mean by “asset-based consulting”?

“Our philosophy of asset-based consulting is an extension of our offering. We recognise that our clients will be best served not only by advice, but also by industry specific solutions that are ready to roll out and preferably work out-of-the-box. So that’s what we give them. We play an important part in connectivity across our clients’ business by setting up pre-defined solutions. We offer this in the form of data migration, data warehousing, test, and connectivity solutions.” 

“Especially in a world where the cost of custom solutions is rising, we can make a profound impact. The combination of our solutions with those of market-leading vendors is key. We always put our client’s interests first. That’s why we remain independent, also in the partnerships we have with other vendors.”

Can you tell us more about your partnership with CEPRES? What does it bring your clients?

“CEPRES is a digital investment platform for private capital markets. It provides investment data about and analytical tools for alternative investments to investors and fund managers. They do this on the level of individual assets. This is crucial. During the Covid-19 pandemic, investors and fund managers who did not have access to this data had no way of knowing how Covid-19 impacted the assets in their portfolio.” 

“Investors running their investment operations on CEPRES, on the other hand, had full transparency and were able to make accurate investment decisions.” 

“So going back to our philosophy of asset-based consulting, CEPRES brings an award-winning platform to service our clients. Where competing offers often have issues with data quality, data ownership and data flexibility, CEPRES can be the solution for clients experiencing such issues. In turn, we can connect our existing clients quicker through well-thought-out API’s and data models. Plus, we can migrate data across platforms making the step towards this SaaS solution seamless.” 

“Overall, I think clients really gain an additional option which I know many of them haven’t been able to consider before. And of course, let’s not forget that existing CEPRES clients now also gain a knowledgeable vendor with a European presence for all their integration projects and activities in LeadingMile.” 

What are your ambitions for 2021?

“We are investing in future growth. This means we have allocated additional time and resources to work on our product offerings as well as on our international expansion. We have recently set up office in London and are looking to expand our staff through targeted hiring campaigns.”

What is the most important factor for further growth?

“I think our international growth is important, not just for ourselves, but also for clients in the industry. You can sense the need for a dedicated partner in this industry and for growth of knowledge regarding technical and operational solutions. We play a pivotal part in this, as our work is to make ourselves redundant and the client self-sufficient.”

What does it take to be a good consultant, in your opinion?

“I have always noticed that the best consultants are not necessarily the ones who have done a specific task many times. It’s the people who can master new things quickly and make them understandable for others around them. Consulting is a hard job where the pressure is always on and your clients expect value for their money. This is a pressure you need to be able to handle.”