Affinity Integration: Bringing relationship context into deal sourcing

Most teams already have a significant amount of context sitting in their CRM: companies tracked over time, prior conversations, internal notes, and fragmented views on opportunities that were once considered but not pursued. The challenge is being able to incorporate it effectively as part of teams’ ongoing investment work.
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Desia integrates directly with Affinity to bring this relationship context into the same environment where analysis and decision-making take place.

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Working directly on CRM data

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With Affinity connected, Desia can access relationship history, company tracking, and internal notes alongside documents, models, and external data.

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This allows teams to move from sourcing to evaluation without switching tools or manually consolidating information. A company is no longer evaluated in isolation, but in the context of previous interactions, prior discussions, and the broader pipeline.

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Every opportunity opens with the full context of what the firm knows leading to a more informed starting point, every time.

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From relationship data to actionable workflows

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Bringing CRM data into the analytical workflow enables practical applications such as:

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• Onboarding new team members: New analysts or associates can get up to speed on a company's history with the firm by surfacing all prior interactions, notes, and screenings in one view, rather than asking colleagues or searching through emails.

• Competitive and sector mapping: Using tracked companies in Affinity as a starting point to map a sector, identify white space, or compare a new target against similar companies already in the pipeline.

• Refining sourcing criteria over time: Identify patterns across past deals, including what was screened, progressed, or declined, and use that context to adjust how new opportunities are evaluated.

• Structured prospect scoring and prioritization: As with Vesper Infrastructure, we built a customised scoring workflow that applies a firm’s sourcing framework, evaluating each prospect against defined criteria using CRM data, internal documents, and external sources. This produces a structured score with rationale, turning pipeline data into a consistent, repeatable prioritization process.

• Pipeline reviews and internal reporting: Pull together a structured view of the current pipeline directly from CRM data, internal notes, and prior analyses. Teams can run consistent pipeline reviews without manually consolidating information across tools, with the full context of each opportunity, in Desia.

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Why this matters

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Most firms are sitting on years of relationship history, internal views, and pipeline activity that never makes it into how new opportunities are evaluated. It stays in the CRM, disconnected from the documents, models, and conversations where actual decisions happen.

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The data exists. What is missing is a workflow that treats relationship context as an input to analysis rather than a separate system to consult manually.

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When CRM history, internal notes, and external research are part of the same environment, teams stop reconstructing context they already have and decisions reflect what the firm knows more deliberately. As a consequence, this decision quality compounds: sourcing criteria sharpen, prior work informs new screens, and built-up knowledge stops walking out the door when people move on.

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See it in action

Discover how Desia integrates with your firm's CRM, documents, and workflows. Get in touch here to see what it looks like in your environment.