DEG Investor Onboarding

From Strategy to System: How oS3 Built a Tactical, Automated Investor Onboarding Process for DEG and BDO East Africa

Client/Partner: DEG Entreprises SA Ltd, BDO East Africa, Shield Associates

Our Role(s): Platform Designer, Investor Relations Manager, Platform Engineer, AI Developer Advocate, Operational Excellence Director, Owner's Representative, Biophilic Brand Manager

To ensure transparency and build local trust for their pre-seed round, DEG Entreprises contracted BDO East Africa. BDO's role was to act as a trusted fundraising consultant and manage the entire end-to-end investor onboarding process to meet the company's fundraising targets.

While DEG and BDO had a conceptual strategy for onboarding investors, they lacked a tactical process for implementation. They were blocked by critical "how-to" questions, such as "What specific data do we capture?", "What technology do we use?", and "How do we issue share certificates?" They knew the "what" but not the "how."

How can we transform a manual, high-friction fundraising plan into a professional, automated, and auditable investor onboarding system?

We implemented a solution that blended governance, training, and automation to build a robust, tactical process from the ground up.

  • Governance (A.2.7): We researched best-in-class investor flows (like Angel List and Carta) and formalized a baseline SOP document. Shield Associates provided legal guidance to develop a comprehensive share subscription agreement and define the critical information required for the share certificate.

  • Onboarding (C.0.9): We identified and integrated all essential tools for the flow (Framer Forms, Google Sheets, PandaDoc) and created detailed explainers for each step.

  • Design (E.7.2): We designed a custom, professional share certificate that matched DEG's new brand identity and met legal requirements.

  • Training & Automation (C.9.0, A.2.7): We conducted weekly training sessions with BDO East Africa on how to operate the new system. To reduce friction, we developed custom Google Apps Script code to automate repetitive data entry and communication tasks.

  • Operations & Comms (D.8.1, H.4.5): We established a continuous improvement loop. Using the H.4.5.1 Questions playbook, we implemented a log for all investor questions, creating a pipeline for future automations and process refinements.

The outcome is a professionally managed investor pipeline. DEG's VP can now confidently direct all investors to the website, knowing the entire streamlined, end-to-end workflow is being professionally managed by ourStory.Network and BDO East Africa. This new system reduced the manual onboarding process from one week to three days or less.

We learned that many teams have a clear vision but lack a tactical roadmap. This project proved the value of oS3's continuous improvement model: get the foundational documentation right first, then use stakeholder feedback to identify which automations will provide the most valuable, iterative impact.