News
We continue to grow! One of the best benchmarks of the quality of our growth is that we continue to add experienced veterans to our executive level management team. First, Don Finucane joined us as our Chief Product Officer. Don was previously the Chief Product Officer with AVIDXCHANGE, a hyper-growth payments & fintech unicorn headquartered in Charlotte. Don hit the ground running in early January and has not stopped running! While the CPO role is important in any technology company, for a platform as comprehensive as AtlasFive®, it is a critical position and we are excited to have Don in this important role. We have already experienced major benefits by having a person of his experience in that role.
On the sales side, we are thrilled to announce that well known industry veteran Phil Ierardi will be formally joining us in late April as the Senior Vice President of Sales. Many of you may know Phil from his 25 years in various roles at Fidelity Investments, most recently as the Senior Vice-President, Family Office Sales and Consulting. We are likewise thrilled to have a person of Phil’s caliber join our team as he not only knows the major players in the family office market but also understands the needs of the family office. He will be an excellent asset for both the sales and product teams.
Lastly, as we mentioned in our last newsletter, from a marketing perspective we are moving away from our “low profile/word of mouth” strategy and as a part of that move, we are pleased to announce that we are a sponsor of the Family Office FinTech Summit, hosted by Family Wealth Report on May 4-6, 2021. So if you or any of your colleagues would like to see us at that summit you can register for the summit here: https://clearviewpublishing.com/events/6th-family-office-fintech-summit-2021/
AtlasFive Update
In part because of the number of new clients that we added last year and the various ways they use AtlasFive, our product and engineering teams are doubling down on the user experience to ensure that, regardless of how clients may use the system, they have the best user experience possible. From a product enhancement perspective, we occasionally get a question about how we determine our product development priorities. The answer is very simple: we are a client-focused product development organization. The needs of our clients (current and future) are the largest factor in determining development priorities. If clients and prospects are collectively asking for a certain feature, that feature is at the top of our priority list.
One platform feature that merits attention is our fund accounting (aka partnership accounting) “module”. We have won several very competitive proposals in the last six months based upon our ability to handle complex fund accounting issues and allocation scenarios. We are fortunate that Bob Shepro (founder of Total Return, historically the leading fund accounting platform that was created in the ’90s) has been on our development team essentially since our inception and as he will tell you, the chance to re-create another fund accounting platform with the knowledge from 30 years’ experience and hundreds of clients with today’s technology and a broadened integration vision has enabled us to develop a leading-edge fund accounting solution for family offices.
Learn more about AtlasFive.
Client Success
We have continued our steady success of adding new clients by adding three new clients in Q1 of 2021 including a major family office in New Zealand which now puts us in three countries. While we are very pleased that our platform has broad international appeal, we will continue to be very selective about which non-US prospects and companies that we pursue. We have just scratched the surface of the US market and need to be focused on that market and specifically the needs of the US market before expanding in a significant way outside the US.
Speaking of understanding the needs of the US market and in connection with our focus on improving the current client experience, we will be establishing a client experience council hopefully in Q2 of 2021. While our clients are not bashful about telling us what improvements they would like to see, we believe we have reached the point where we need to formalize that process. We also believe there is a benefit to having multiple perspectives at the table when potential enhancements to the platform are being discussed and prioritized.
In closing, we hope 2021 is off to a good start for your organization. While we have been pleased with how our team, clients and prospects have worked in this virtual environment, we miss seeing our clients and prospects live. Hopefully later this year, we will be able to visit in person with you and continue to discuss how we can help you to create the Family Office of the Future for your office.
