Outgrowing spreadsheets, silos, and scattered documentation
fundcraft set out to redefine how alternative investment funds operate—moving away from manual spreadsheets and email-based workflows toward a fully digital platform where auditors, fund managers, and LPs collaborate on real-time, reconciled data. In this highly regulated environment, data must be accurate, accessible, and above all, trustworthy for financial reporting and audits. As a fast-growing startup, fundcraft quickly ran into the scaling pains that come with success. With more clients, more features, and more data, the lack of formal governance practices began to slow teams down and create friction across the business.
Documentation was scattered across repositories, and alignment required endless meetings. fundcraft knew it needed a more structured, scalable approach to data ownership and quality. That’s when they turned to Collate.
Dispersed documentation: Without centralized metadata, fundcraft’s data stewardship and development teams struggled to guide others on how to access and use data. Critical context was scattered across tools and teams, making discovery time-consuming, inconsistent, and dependent on informal handoffs.Meeting overload: Without a centralized source of truth, collaboration required constant check-ins—just to clarify data definitions and asset locations.Risk to reporting speed and accuracy: Real-time reporting, central to fundcraft’s value proposition, was hindered by ambiguity and uncertainty around data assets.Lack of clear ownership: With 1,700+ data assets and counting, it was unclear who was responsible for documentation, quality, and ongoing stewardship. Having no standardized way to assign data assets to owners created confusion and rework.Speed over structure: As the company scaled, so did the risk of technical debt and fragmented data practices. This threatened long-term agility and trust in data.Collate offers scalable, structured governance— without slowing down delivery
Collate became the catalyst for leveling up fundcraft’s approach to data culture. It began with ownership, classification, and documentation, and expanded to include knowledge base context, data quality tests, and KPI-aligned insights for stewardship. Collate’s managed OpenMetadata service provided an AI-powered layer for data discovery, observability, and governance designed to support both technical and non-technical users. fundcraft now had a flexible yet structured way to scale governance—without creating drag on development.
The lightweight, extensible platform connects seamlessly into their existing, complex data stack—including Aurora for transactional data storage, Amazon MQ for messaging and streaming, dbt for data transformation pipelines, and Looker Studio for dashboarding. All while giving teams a single, trusted foundation to manage thousands of data assets with confidence.
Collaborative data discovery: Collate goes beyond traditional data catalogs to give all data teams visibility into all data assets—bringing a shared inventory and understanding to product, engineering, and stewardship teams alike.Ownership and accountability at scale: The ability to assign data owners, apply consistent labels, and define categories has brought clarity and accountability across fundcraft’s growing data ecosystem.Knowledge base and glossary support: Beyond table-level documentation, integrating an internal knowledge base and business glossary into Collate provide critical context for users navigating complex datasets.Integrated data quality testing: Collate’s test suite and alerting capabilities enable teams to proactively monitor data quality, reducing the risk of issues making it into financial reports.Stewardship insights: Data stewardship teams now track documentation and testing coverage with KPI-aligned dashboards. This allows them to drive adoption and continuously improve data health.Low-friction onboarding: Collate’s intuitive UI, open source foundation, and responsive support team helped fundcraft ramp up quickly and realize value early.Greater trust in fund data with accelerated reporting, and streamlined governance
In fund administration, the speed and accuracy of data-driven reporting can be the difference between client friction and faith. With Collate, fundcraft has eliminated ambiguity, reduced technical debt, and empowered teams to move faster with greater confidence in their data.They’re now able to advance their mission of replacing outdated back-office workflows—eliminating reconciliation delays caused by scattered email threads and Excel files.
5–10% increase in developer output: By removing data discovery bottlenecks and reducing uncertainty, developers spend less time searching and more time building features.Faster reporting with fewer blockers: By improving data discoverability and reducing uncertainty, fundcraft has significantly shortened development cycle times. Deprecated or ambiguous tables that once confused teams are now clearly documented, reducing technical debt.Onboarding to productivity in three hours: Collate’s team visited fundcraft onsite, helping them ramp up quickly with hands-on support and best-practice guidance.1.7k+ governed data assets: Teams now work from a unified catalog with assigned owners, consistent labels, and connected documentation—bringing structure and clarity to a once fragmented ecosystem.Proactive data quality enforcement: Data quality tests and stewardship insights help proactively flag issues, minimize confusion, and drive long-term improvements in data hygiene. This mitigates errors in financial reports.
