What kind of tools / apps do you wish existed in the industry?

Also a former finance guy turned dev, though I actually spent a few years in the field before making the transition to tech.

I've thought quite a bit about potential tools / products for the finance space. Initially I was focused on analytical tools. I actually built a simple SaaS app that generated LBO models. You basically input a few assumptions and you get returns and a nice little chart with a breakdown of return sources. I showed it to a few of my finance buddies, and the reaction was pretty lukewarm. They didn't really like the idea of turning their Excel spreadsheets into some blackbox in a web app. Probably explains why no one else has really made a product along these lines. Finance pros want to audit and play with the calculations, and most calcs are simple enough you don't really need a full blown modeling app to handle things. Plus Excel is a pretty amazing piece of software, so probably not smart to try and "replace" it.

I also thought about the presentation side, but again, the feedback I get is that people want control, and PowerPoint with some templates works just fine for decks. https://www.pellucid.com/</a">This company took a pretty solid crack at this problem, but from the looks of things it didn't ultimately pan out.

The areas that I think show some promise are on the reporting side, the marketing side, and the process management side. To that end, here are a few ideas I've kicked around:

• Audit tracker: An app that links source docs (e.g. financial statements, SEC filings, bank statements) to numbers in your spreadsheet and stores the source docs for easy reference. No more "where did this number come from" moments.

• Standardized financial reports: Integrates with Quickbooks or NetSuite or whatever ERP a company is using and generates PE friendly fins (e.g. include EBITDA, cash flow metrics, covenant calcs), KPIs, and budget / actual tracking. Keeps everything organized in a web / mobile interface so anyone in the firm can quickly pull up port co XYZ's fins ahead of an LP meeting or investment committee presentation.

• PE / banking CRM: Seems like most people use plain Excel spreadsheets or Salesforce, both of which aren't really fun to use. This CRM would have a dashboard with industry updates and specific inputs for financials, sector, M&A activity etc. Also a modern, non-enterprise bloated interface.

• Document management / admin stuff: There's a lot of wasted time on things like preparing boilerplate docs, getting signatures, and tracking things like option grants. There are some companies already making headway here: https://www.hellosign.com/</a">HelloSign on the docs side and https://carta.com/</a">Carta on the cap table / equity management side, but I still think there's room for other similar products tailored to the finance / PE space.

• Deal tracker: An app to manage buyer lists, working group lists, timelines, schedules, diligence status, etc.

None of these are really side projects per say, but curious what you think OP, and also for the finance pros out there, do any of these sound interesting?