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Amid ongoing margin pressure, every buy-side firm is looking for ways to reduce costs and streamline operations. Process and data automation are powerful tools for increasing operational efficiency — but entrenched processes, cost concerns, and resistance to change act as barriers.
We brought together Xceptor clients and industry thought leaders for a fireside chat to address these challenges. I was honored to be moderating the discussion with Sofia Vujatov, Head of Business Applications and Intelligent Automation at LaSalle Investment Management (LaSalle), and David Neigler, former Chief Technology Officer at Schonfeld Strategic Advisors.
Here are some of their top insights and lessons learned from successful automation initiatives.
The challenges of asset management automation
Our discussion centered around a question that everyone in attendance could identify with:
What stops an organization from redesigning the way they operate?
Very often, we hear about friction in the organization. This can be cost-related friction, even if savings ultimately outweigh the costs, or time constraints. And there's always historical friction: "This is how we've always done it."
Our discussion focused on three pillars of addressing these areas of friction:
- Getting team members comfortable with automation and empowering them to identify automation opportunities
- Understanding the potential ROI and articulating it to budget holders
- Figuring out the right way to solve the problem, whether internally or externally, build or buy
4 tips for a high-ROI process and data automation program
As we discussed these questions, Sofia and Dave shared four valuable lessons based on their experience leading transformation initiatives.
1. Start with stakeholder buy-in, but don't stop there
Aligning the organization around an automation initiative starts from the top down. "It's not just about the C-suite," Dave said. "You have to secure buy-in from operational teams as well."
Sofia emphasized the importance of addressing resistance head-on during a project to automate asset management. "People will have that 'this is the way we've always done it' mindset," she said.
"You have to integrate the human element in your process improvement efforts if you want them to succeed."
As Dave mentioned, automation can even be a powerful lever for employee retention. "You're alleviating mundane tasks," he explained. "That enhances job satisfaction."
Sofia agreed, noting that document automation has enabled LaSalle to shift FTEs to more interesting projects. "Opening documents, reading data, and keying it into Excel is not the most exciting job to have," she said.
Automating document processing workflows with a platform like Xceptor allows employees to undertake more exciting work, while speeding up processes and reducing the likelihood of error.
2. When it comes to ROI, don't overlook the qualitative benefits
The quantitative results of automation are often obvious. Sofia gave an example: "When the person who handled our daily bank account statement reconciliation left, the remaining treasury employee said that without Xceptor, we would have needed to hire another FTE just to do that job."
It's often easy to pinpoint how much money or how many people you saved. For example, Sofia asks her team to quantify the dollars lost by a potential data mistake or break, then uses that to justify costs.
But Sofia and Dave also suggested looking for the "soft" benefits of automation to bolster your ROI argument.
"Think about risk reduction and client experience," Sofia suggested. "For example, what do you gain with automated client onboarding software?"
3. Choose the right solutions
Sofia recommended tapping into your internal and external network to identify potential software solutions. Xceptor was recommended to her by the head of product at Northern Trust, and developers on her team who were familiar with our platform seconded the recommendation.
Sofia shared how her team at LaSalle uses Xceptor to power complex workflows from end to end.
David echoed Sofia's point about talking to your network to learn about their experiences with different software solutions. "Thorough due diligence is critical," he said. "You need to ensure compatibility and effectiveness".
Sofia also emphasized the importance of ensuring that the solution you choose meets your team's needs. In particular, she recommended leveraging low- and no-code platforms. "Our team actually replaced a more complicated solution with Xceptor," she said.
As the former CTO for Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Dave had plenty of advice on how to select technology that will set your firm up for long-term success.
He advocated for cloud-native software.
"You're going to see advantages in terms of implementation speed and value realization," he said, noting that there's been a massive uptick in adoption over the past decade. "Everyone in the room has some cloud software now," he said.
He also explained that it's critical to find the balance between point solutions and comprehensive platforms. While a point solution may solve the immediate problem, platforms are better equipped to solve the challenges of the future.
4. Take the approach that fits your organization's needs
Selecting your solution goes hand-in-hand with figuring out how to implement it. At LaSalle, Sofia opted for a center of excellence approach, although she noted that terms like "center of excellence" can sound daunting, especially for small firms that assume they don't have enough personnel for a CoE.
"A center of excellence doesn't have to be large or even centralized," she explained. At LaSalle, Sofia has embedded power users in different ops teams, supported by a small team that focuses on the core technology. This decentralized CoE approach may be more realistic for a smaller firm and assuage stakeholders' concerns about ownership during the buying cycle.
Ultimately, Sofia urged attendees to adopt an approach that suits their organization's size, culture, and needs.
"There's no one-size-fits-all approach to maximizing the value of configurable platforms like Xceptor," she said.
Accelerate process and data automation with Xceptor
We're excited to host more events to discuss challenges and exchange ideas this year. Each time we bring the Xceptor community together, we're reminded how lucky we are to engage with this diverse range of professionals who are working tirelessly to drive our industry forward.
Xceptor helps financial services companies manage their most complex data challenges by transforming unstructured data into trusted data that integrates easily into any and all workflows. End users can build and deploy applications to solve complex, repetitive, and error-prone workflows at scale. One global client with a user base of 4,000 has deployed over 3,000 use cases on Xceptor.
If you're interested in transforming operations efficiency through process automation and AI for financial services, reach out for a demo.
