Enabling rapid FinTech product development
OPPORTUNITY
The Center for Fiduciary Management (CFFM) had established itself as a leader in the financial industry with investment monitoring and retirement planning services through its software-as-a-service suite of tools. CFFM was able to remain at the forefront of this industry by adapting to frequent industry changes, innovations and regulatory events. As the FinTech industry began to see an increasing volume of mergers and acquisitions, CFFM embarked on a strategy to accelerate the development of new market-relevant features and tools. They understood that new features would bring new clients and new revenue streams that would increase both their potential as an acquisition target and the valuation of their company.
“27Global knows project management. They have a flexible resource pool, so they were able to scale up when we needed them to. It was like turning on a light switch—just instant availability of resources to get rolling.”
-Scott Revare, Founder and Former CEO, Center for Fiduciary Management
Solution
CFFM engaged 27Global to help execute their strategy of rapid product development. 27Global assembled a core team of software developers, local consultants, software architects and quality assurance personnel to provide ongoing support and accelerate innovation for the product. 27Global’s experience in the FinTech industry enabled the team to evolve and create new products while making efficient use of CFFM product owners’ time.
The first steps in the product evolution included a modernized user interface for the main product suite and a corresponding update of the software architecture. 27Global’s team moved the software architecture from a monolithic structure to a layered, service-oriented architecture based on microservices. These improvements allowed for the creation of new tools to expand or repackage the existing core product capabilities, including:
- RFP Director, a bid management tool that allows CFFM to efficiently assemble winning proposals for new clients and competitive bids for existing clients
- An Identity and Access Management service to improve integration with clients and third-party information providers
- A reporting service where new products leverage a common solution instead of each product implementing its own report writer
- A data analytics dashboard that provides clients with better visibility to data that impacts the performance of their financial services practice
- Tools that planners can use to evaluate stable value and target date funds which are popular in retirement plans
- A scaled-down feature set designed to attract a high volume of smaller customers
Results
CFFM increased its revenue per customer, added an entirely new segment of customers and won a new, very large customer. This substantially added to the business’ valuation as CFFM was acquired in a stock and cash deal in June 2018 by Fi360, a larger firm offering complementary services. Eighteen months later, Fi360, together with its CFFM assets, was acquired by FinTech giant Broadridge Financial Services.
CFFM’s ongoing partnership with 27Global improved their ability to rapidly develop new products and features, shortening the process to just weeks, instead of months or years. Being able to quickly react to market trends or changing regulations improved the service CFFM provided to their clients, helped the company maintain their reputation as an industry innovator, and ultimately led to a very successful exit.
“This project gave us the opportunity to go after more business than we could before, and it helped us from an acquisition standpoint for someone else to acquire us because we were well-rounded.”
-Scott Revare, Founder and Former CEO, Center for Fiduciary Management
