3 Organizing Principals: Fulfillment, Function & Form John Wise – Chairman & CEO In preparing for InvestCloud’s User Conference 2015, the question, “What is the most effective way to capture the nature and scope of InvestCloud’s platform?” constantly circled around in my mind. Although our approach of talking about integrated applets covers a large part of the story, I noticed there were significant pieces of the story that were not registering as clearly as they needed to. After many team discussions, we came up with three words that are able to effectively address what I felt we needed to explain. These words - fulfillment, function and form, efficiently captures the three primary elements of our platform. The feedback received at the conference reinforces my belief that these terms were able to both organize and clarify our message in a powerful and portable way. Everyone Needs Fulfillment Fulfillment is about getting your data right. It is also about the rich array of feeds and resources we aggregate to add power and leverage to the data. We believe that one of the most important features of the InvestCloud platform is that it is data-source agnostic. Being data-source agnostic allow firms to implement InvestCloud’s powerful applets incrementally. With that said, you eliminate the need to change your portfolio accounting system. The reason why InvestCloud has the ability to do so is due to the combination of our comprehensive financial data model, common interface standards, and our very responsive data repository (IDRTM). Together, they allow us to efficiently overlay any client data source to drive our applets. Now, isn’t that something to be happy about? Quoting from The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger’s song, “You can’t always get what you want.” The title of the song is for firms that use Excel to patch their data gaps while failing to realize that the data gaps are still present. Excel will work well with 30 or 90 day reporting cycles, but when you are pushing for daily numbers, the manual approach breaks. These gaps are most clearly revealed in the reconstruction of historical performance. As the song continues, “if you try sometimes, you get what you need.” With the “Time Machine” functionality of InvestCloud’s platform, the ability to allow a firm or their clients to create reports on the fly for any historical period for an account, the incentive to get these numbers right is very high. In this case, that lyric applies to firms that decide to face the problem with InvestCloud’s assistance. The Applet Function Junction Function refers to all of the functionality we add to the fulfilled data with our
financial applets. Some key things to understand about our applets are the comprehensive range they cover and how InvestCloud’s Programs Writing Programs, PWPTM toolset allows us to build new custom applets at an alarming, fast rate. Building an applet to a client’s specific functional requirements within several days enables InvestCloud to make it affordable and practical to design applets around very specific functions and work flows. InvestCloud’s applet approach has been so successful that we now have over 150 different applets that feed several thousand custom screen views. All of this is made possible because of PWPTM : The applets are built by business analysts working closely with the client in rapid prototyping cycles and this is something that would not be possible with traditional software that is hard coded. The Secret Informing our Form Form is the most visible element as it is about how our applets interface with our clients and their clients. Mentioned earlier, our 150+ applets are currently driving thousands of custom screen views. Our effective, unlimited ability to build screens not just around custom pallets and style guides, but also workflows and design aesthetics makes our platform completely unique. This again is a benefit of our PWPTM approach as well as our modular architecture. Because we have built a cloud platform that can be variously assembled much like Lego TM blocks, from a discrete number of elements, an amazingly broad range of application constructs can be built. Next week, we will pick up with InvestCloud’s Co-Founder, Michael Smith’s session addressing the “Digital Experience”. This will help to understand the range of opportunities and challenges in adopting the digital delivery of information. If you would like learn more about the InvestCloud platform, visit us at www.investcloud.com. John Wise B.Sc (Double Hons), C.Eng, (Chief Executive Officer, InvestCloud Inc.) is a serial financial services technology entrepreneur. John holds a double honors degree in Cybernetics and Computer Science, and is a Chartered Software Engineer in the UK. Since launching InvestCloud in 2010, it has grown to become the leading cloud application services firm for money managers and advisors in the U.S. John started his career in a research role for International Computers Limited, and was selected by Citibank to launch what is now Temenos. John’s first independent software company ‘Synergo Technology,’ became in 5 years the UK’s leading Agency Brokerage solution with c.40% of the market volume, and in addition was the UK market leader for Institutional Net Settlement with c.90% of the market's customers. After selling Synergo John created TCA Syntec (the first EAI company in Europe), before starting Netik EAI as an international financial messaging and integration company. Netik EAI was the second largest provider of SWIFT messaging in the world. In 2002 Netik was refocused on data
warehouse portal solutions which were adopted by leading banks, custodians and prime brokers including Citibank, UBS, PNC, SEI, Fortis, BNP, Scotia and Saudi Stock Exchange. In 2005 Netik was sold to the Bank of New York.