What it takes to build an enterprise-class software company

Hint: Enterprise-class development, security, services, and compliance are critical

As a leader of several enterprise technology companies, one of the things I asked when I first joined Advisor360° was: what does it mean to be an enterprise-class software company in financial services?

It is critical when building an enterprise-class software company that you focus on building a great product and executing the service-oriented delivery capabilities while simultaneously maintaining compliance with industry regulations. This will help ensure that your company is delivering on the commitments made to your clients. Our clients see us as trusted partners to their business. You cannot build an enterprise-class software company without:

1. Enterprise-class software development: We deploy a development model and process that allows us to take new ideas and incorporate them into our software as efficiently as possible. We also built our own automation and system testing, which is critical to consistently executing updates.
2. Enterprise-class information security: We deliver a secure and private environment designed to earn the trust of our clients and help them build their businesses with confidence.
3. Enterprise-class service delivery: We provide dedicated development, support, operations, and customer success services to each client, marked by empathy and integrity and aligned to their success.
4. Enterprise-class compliance with regulations: We combine deep wealth management domain expertise and enterprise software expertise, and deliver frequent, innovative solutions configured for our clients’ businesses—all while keeping their data secure and private.

Enterprise-class software development

Enterprise-class information security

• Security by design: Implement cybersecurity best practices into the infrastructure of your product from the initial design.
• Risk-aware culture: Ensure your employees have the best possible awareness of cybersecurity threats.
• Proactive defense and monitoring: Deploy security analytics and automation technologies to establish a baseline normal behavior so that you can quickly identify and respond to suspicious behavior.
• Data center security: Host your infrastructure in state-of-the-art data centers geographically spread across the country to ensure the platform is available whenever you need it.

Enterprise-class service delivery

• Tech-assisted: Leverage technology to automate service workflows from incident origination through resolution. This creates transparency and trust through communication.
• SLA-backed responses: Ensure constant contact with clients and partners via email, text, and phone 24x7x365 to assist with business-critical activities.
• Retrospective improvement: Conduct regular reviews to assess critical incidents that may impact where and how to improve products, people, and processes to eliminate future incidents.

Enterprise-class compliance with regulations

The goal is to deliver your product at the highest level

So, what does it take to be an enterprise-class software company in the financial services industry? In addition to building a culture that focuses on the customer and is client-obsessed, it requires a set of both product-oriented and service-oriented components wrapped in business and legal processes that all come together to ensure the highest SLAs and deliver on our overall commitment to our broker-dealer clients.