“Your experience when you start will be very different than a year from now and certainly over the course of your usage.” I have found myself saying this frequently to our Advent Genesis clients since we first launched the solution in 2018. Our clients now manage almost $300bn in assets on Genesis, and it’s a friendly reminder to firms that they will experience innovation over time as they advance to more modern tech solutions, rather than instant gratification on day zero.
At SS&C Advent, we have a rich history of successful products solving complicated problems for the global investment management community. This has brought us the distinct advantage of having a client base that is not only among the broadest in the industry, but we believe the most deeply engaged.
In the past, like many other companies, we built products, shipped the products, built new versions each year, and asked our customers to upgrade to take advantage of new enhancements. However, the world has changed. Our clients are not in the business of upgrades. Our industry is moving fast. And the investors our clients serve are becoming increasingly demanding. This has become clearer over the last decade, as more and more of our customers have chosen to leverage our solutions on a hosted basis rather than on their own servers.
In order for investment firms to compete, they need to align themselves with solutions that can continuously deliver value, while reducing the technology footprint that often comes with older systems. As we get ready to introduce more workflows into our Genesis Platform, we find ourselves setting different expectations with our customers, especially those that have been with us for decades.
Our customers used to judge us based on what we delivered to them at the time of sale, but we now ask them to judge based on the progress they see and the value they capture as they use our solutions over time. This is a bit of a leap of faith, but as we onboard our beta customers to our Genesis Insights solution this quarter, this is exactly what we are telling them. The new way of thinking does require a mindset shift, as much for our customers as for ourselves.
Not every firm will be ready to make this shift, but as firms are looking to assess their technology, understanding that the day zero experience is less important than in the past is key. Instead we tell our customers to evaluate Genesis on a continuous basis, and to let us prove that with this shift comes frequent improvement in their ability to understand their portfolios, implement strategy changes and readily identify exceptions. Genuine innovation reveals itself through everyday experience, whether or not it is apparent out of the box.
For more information on how SS&C Advent can support your investment management firm, call 1-800-727-0605, or email info@advent.com.
