For nearly a century, HighGround Advisors has advanced the life-transforming work of nonprofits, and those who support them, by protecting, strengthening, and growing the assets entrusted to them. Their areas of expertise include endowment and investment management, real estate and minerals management, and charitable gift planning.
Based in Texas, HighGround administers many charitable trusts that hold oil, gas, and other mineral-based properties, creating a unique specialty focus for the organization. According to Will Francis, HighGround’s Oil and Gas Manager, HighGround oversees 2 million mineral acres, across 27 states, that generate over $90 million a year in royalty income for their clients. Because of their extensive work, Francis and his team rely on technology to ensure the efficient management of their operations.
“Our operational work falls into three categories: land, revenue, and reporting,” he notes. “For revenue tracking, we must account for revenues and assign them to the correct institution, which can require a complex set of sub-accounting, with multiple layers of ownership, and the execution of agreements, leases, and division orders to establish the correct ownership of payments. We must also provide accurate reporting to each institution, showing the allocation of income from each well and property.”
As a result, Francis was searching for a more efficient and feature-rich technology platform that specialized in mineral management to streamline these complex accounting and reporting requirements. “Most oil and gas management systems have a hard time doing what we need, as they are designed for just one institution and one owner, while we are managing properties for multiple institutions and multiple owners,” Francis says.
Accordingly, Francis conducted an industry technology review to find a more flexible system than their previous platform and selected SS&C MineralWare, an interactive software with a leading dashboard for managing minerals, royalties, and nonoperating working interests. Coupled with extensive revenue and land reporting features, MineralWare allows banks and trusts to actively manage client assets while combining the unique asset accounting functionality and managed services of SS&C Innovest.
“We looked at other systems and asked around, but we were not finding what we needed,” Francis says. “Once we saw MineralWare’s state-of-the-art, map-based system, which effortlessly retrieves ownership information and pinpoints locations through auto-populated oil and gas records on a unified screen, our decision became remarkably clear. Francis appreciates the combination of Innovest’s Managed Services integrated with MineralWare. He has streamlined the revenue process by automatically processing checks, freeing up resources for more value-added tasks.
According to Francis, one of HighGround’s key differentiators within the industry is their commitment to their core values, which include putting the client first, acting with integrity, and fostering innovation. “These values are what we bring every day, and as a result, we look for a similar approach in our partners,” he says. “SS&C aligns with our core values, and their service culture understands our complexity. They have helped us customize the platform to our unique needs, which has made them a true partner to our business.”
SS&C MineralWare offers innovative management tools for individuals, family offices, institutions, and banks throughout the oil and gas sector, specifically the mineral and royalty space. To learn more about how SS&C MineralWare can support your unique business needs, call (817) 735-8195 or email contact@mineralware.com.
