Troubleshooting digital bottlenecks: How to keep project finance workflows on track

For renewable energy investment funds, initiating digital transformation is crucial for effective capital management, efficiency, and impact creation. Operations teams spearheading this shift face an ongoing process of continuous improvement as they integrate new digital tools and processes. But what happens six months post-implementation when a new digital bottleneck emerges?

Use the following steps for troubleshooting areas of process friction following your organization’s digital transformation launch. These points are great prompts that allow you to dig deeper into the bottleneck to identify the source. Then, with the help of your colleagues, implement the right changes that relieve the bottleneck, ultimately improving your team’s operational efficiency and portfolio management results. 

Spot a friction point

You may notice a friction point based on confusion in your work, conversations with employees that point to an area for improvement, or a slowdown in one workflow. Typically, these come to the attention of fund managers and operations leaders three to six months after initially launching the new digital tools; enough time has passed for colleagues to complete the initial training and learning period, but some inefficiencies remain. 

Remember: Digital transformation is meant to make fund management easier by fitting into the daily work at your organization. If a piece of the new digital tools is getting in the way of the daily work, an adjustment is needed.

Is it repeating?

There is a clear difference between bottlenecks arising as teams learn a new system and process, then dissipate once the learning is ingrained, and bottlenecks persist. Address initial concerns during the training process to ensure each employee has the resources to utilize the digital tools appropriately. The bottlenecks that repeat over time require a more thoughtful solution. Note these bottlenecks as issues to address with curiosity and deliberate action. 

Who is involved at this point in the process?

Now that you know the friction point and see that it has repeated beyond the initial training period, it is time to find the source of the issue. Identify your organization's roles involved in this point of the fund management process. 

Often, digital bottlenecks arise where information is handed between fund management roles, like from an associate to a manager, or between the origination team and the portfolio management team. 

If your organization is large enough to have multiple teams within the same function, notice if some teams have smoothed the bottleneck while others continue to face it. This will show you if there is room for further education for teams who continue to struggle, or if there is a solution that one team has already found that another could implement. 

Map out the digital bottleneck.

Bringing the involved individuals into the change management process is always important. Work with those experiencing the bottleneck to map each step of the current process and identify where they find friction. They don’t need to have the solution, but determining where tools and processes feel clunky is a great way to understand the issues they face fully. You will be able to determine from this exercise if there is a minor detail impeding efficiency, or if there is an entire process step that is not serving the team’s needs. 

Identify double work, gaps, and dead ends

Now that you’ve mapped the steps that lead up to the friction point, it’s time to identify what can be improved. 

You may notice double work occurs because team members have trouble accessing each other’s prior work. 

There is a gap in the process that fails to connect two digital tools that live in different ecosystems, like a customer relationship manager (CRM) not syncing to project finance software. 

You may also find that a step of the process is reaching a dead end, where some work is done but left to sit, never contributing to future work regarding the same topic. 

If any of these issues sound familiar to you, they are likely the friction points that arose before embarking on your digital transformation. Take a moment to reflect on how much organizational change you were able to enact at the start of the digital transformation journey, and note that tackling just one bottleneck is doable. 

What can be added to relieve the bottleneck? 

It’s time to prescribe a solution that will relieve the bottleneck. At the point of friction, can a gap or dead end be filled to solve the problem? 

The solution could mean connecting two digital tools that are not automatically sharing data. There may be a team or a person that needs to be looped into the process at this point, or looped in sooner than they currently are. Or could something in this process be automated that is taking too much legwork? 

What can be removed to relieve the bottleneck?

Can double work be alleviated by removing something from the point of friction? 

There may be a person or a team involved in this process who no longer needs to be, thanks to digitization. It could also be the case that multiple tools in your workflow are now accomplishing the same goal. Could an older tool be removed to streamline efficiency using the newer digital tools? Think of this step like looking at a messy room and selecting which items can be decluttered so you’re left with only the neatened essentials. 

Rely on the digital transformation experts

You’ve already come to the right place to explore overcoming the roadblocks your organization faces as you continue pursuing digital transformation. For small funds and organizations, especially, acknowledging that complete digitization can be helped by industry experts is often the right move. 

At Banyan Infrastructure, we specialize in providing digital software solutions for renewable energy project financiers and advisory services that help funds meet their digitization goals. We work hand in hand with operations leaders to ensure that your organization can adopt a digital strategy seamlessly while strategically overcoming digital bottlenecks as they arise. 

Ready to learn more about Banyan Infrastructure’s digital transformation expertise? Reach out today to connect with us.