Why every fund administrator struggles with integration, and how to fix it (2026)

Most fund administrators know they're working with a fragmented tech stack. But not many realise just how much it's costing them.

Right now, you're probably moving data between platforms through batch file transfers, manual uploads, and – let's be honest – a lot of Excel. That means your teams are spending their days being the connective tissue between systems that should be talking to each other automatically.

Most investment firms are in the same boat. Research by AutoRek shows 91% of investment firms know they're too reliant on manual tasks and spreadsheets for reconciliation, despite years of investment in those core systems.

Process orchestration fixes this by sitting above your tech stack and coordinating workflows across platforms. Here's how.

The typical fund administrator's tech stack

Feel like your team spends far too much time transferring data between systems that don’t work well together? You're not alone.

“One of the pain points of every fund administrator is everybody has siloed platforms that don't talk to each other,” explains Kiran Sinharoy, Managing Director at Vistra.

Your fund accounting software, [ticketing system], and compliance systems were each bought because they were the best tool for a specific job. But over time, that’s left you with a patchwork of systems that’s been assembled over decades.

Data moves between these tools through a mix of batch transfers, point-to-point integrations, and manual hand-offs. Even large global administrators with dedicated IT teams rely on custom scripts that need reworking whenever a vendor updates their platform.

As a result, most fund administrators can’t easily answer questions such as “where is this fund in the NAV cycle right now?” or “which exception caused this delay?” The information exists somewhere across five different platforms, but there’s no single place to see it.

The result is a tech stack where data moves, but work doesn’t flow. Teams spend their days bridging systems that were never designed to talk to each other.

How Excel becomes the invisible integration layer (and why that's a problem)

Custom system integrations cost six figures and take months. APIs exist, but they require technical resources most teams don't have. Meanwhile, someone needs to get investor data from the registry into the compliance system today – not next quarter.

So teams build a spreadsheet. It gets the job done and everyone knows how to use it. Plus, it's faster than waiting for IT.

This spreadsheet problem isn't unique to fund administration either. Research from bluQube shows 40% of finance teams are still managing up to half their financial data manually – with more than a quarter (26%) admitting that the majority of their financial data is still being handled in this way.

This works... Until it doesn't. That spreadsheet becomes the critical path for month-end reporting. The person who built it leaves. A client asks a question about their fund and you're stuck explaining why it takes three days to track down the answer.

The hidden costs of relying too heavily on Excel

Excel can be a quick and affordable way of coordinating a hodgepodge of legacy systems that were never designed to work together.

But it comes with some hidden costs:

Operational costs

Staff time disappears into manual data entry and fixing version control mistakes. Email-based file sharing means nobody knows who has the latest version. And, spreadsheet processes can't be automated, so the same work gets repeated every month.

Risk and compliance costs

When you’re orchestrating everything through Excel, there’s no audit trail for data changes. Plus, manual processes increase regulatory risk, and critical changes can happen without approval. And when auditors ask to see your controls, you're pointing at spreadsheets that might well contain errors you haven't caught yet.

Client service costs

When clients ask for reports, you're stuck manually consolidating data before you can send anything. You can't provide real-time status updates either – and because you're handling data manually, errors creep in. Plus, ad-hoc requests take days, since pulling cross-system data means building yet another spreadsheet.

These hidden costs quickly add up – and can be the difference between winning premium clients and competing on price.

Why integration projects usually fail

Most fund administrators recognise the Excel problem, but their attempts to fix it tend to fall flat.

Here's why…

They focus on connecting systems, not optimising workflows

These projects improve how data flows between systems but ignore how work actually moves between teams. Moving data faster doesn't help if handoffs, approvals, and business logic all still happen manually. Teams end up falling back on Excel because it handles the workflow coordination that this kind of technical integration doesn't address.

They don't scale

Most integration projects are built for your current setup – not the systems you'll need once you've doubled your client base. The more clients you onboard, the more likely your standardised workflows are going to conflict with each client's specific systems and requirements.

They create tech debt

The hidden cost of most integration projects is how much time your IT team ends up sinking into maintaining the integrations they've built. They're needed every time a platform in your tech stack has a system update, every time a new client needs integrating into the system, and every time your business requirements change. Your IT team spends all their time keeping integrations from breaking instead of building anything that actually moves the business forward.

How Enate fixes the integration problem

Enate’s process orchestration solution sits above your existing systems and coordinates workflows across your tech stack. It plugs into your fund accounting platforms, registry systems, and reporting tools. And it integrates with data sources from custodians and market data providers, coordinating ticketing and client portal systems.

Enate doesn't connect these systems directly or replace them entirely – it orchestrates the work between them.

Orchestrate workflows, not just data

Enate manages multi-step processes across systems and handles handoffs between teams. It handles business logic and data transformation – replacing Excel's role without hard-coding everything into integrations that break.

Most importantly, it provides the kind of workflow visibility that no system integration can deliver. You can see exactly where each case stands and which systems have been updated from a single dashboard.

Kiran describes the impact of implementing orchestration at Vistra: “With Enate, our operational managers and leaders can see how to manage workload, how to manage volumes, and what the blockers are. That visibility has helped us identify where to implement full case management, because we can now see the end-to-end processes and touch points, not just the volume of tickets.”

Scales with managed service provider complexity

Enate handles client-specific workflows without requiring client-specific integration projects. You can standardise processes while accommodating variations. Resource coordination works across multiple portfolios, and new client onboarding doesn't mean rebuilding integrations from scratch.

If you're still using spreadsheets to connect your systems, there's a better way.

Book a demo to see how Enate can connect your tech stack and eliminate integration chaos consistently, confidently, and at scale.

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