Expertise
Does this sound like you?
- "I have a new wealth management project to deliver, but I don't have people with the right fintech skills on my team."
- "I’ve used associates before and it was a disaster – the quality of their work was not good enough."
- "I need to know that my consultant will represent my firm’s culture and standards to the end client."
- "I need a specialist wealth management project contractor / business architect of the right calibre and background."
- "People skills are rare in the wealth management and fintech industries to manage my business sponsors and demanding stakeholders."
- "I wish I had someone who could ‘translate’ between business people and software engineers."
- "I need technical and natural language content written in compelling, perfect English."
… then you’re not alone. What you actually need is the right professional who offers you:
Certainty of cost;
Certainty of delivery risk; and
Certainty of quality.
Certainty of cost;
Certainty of delivery risk; and
Certainty of quality.
We help you to:
- Take control of your project (or your client’s project);
- Articulate all the requirements and specifications as good content
- Get certainty of cost, risk and delivery;
- De-risk the inevitable changes that crop up; and
- Rely on high standards of quality and culture.
Together, we’ll focus on:
- Understanding, in great detail, your project requirements;
- Documenting everything the way you (or your client) wants it (e.g. Agile, Slack etc.);
- Give your vision & business proposition clarity;
- Design, scope and build your fintech solution as an IT architecture in a way that works first time;
- Pivot, if required, during build so you can grab opportunities and manage change;
- Measure your risks and de-risking your delivery with smart architectural choices; and
- Achieve 100% quality and match your culture throughout.
There’s a very straightforward way to achieve this and the way forward is to debunk these three myths together and get your show on the road again:
Myth #1: My wealth management project is never going to deliver on time
That’s most likely what you fear, rather than what you actually know, about your wealth management project. Sleepless nights are caused by this serious worry: how can I get things back on track?
So to tackle this old imposter myth, we’ll first measure your project together using the relevant metrics of project management – risks, requirements, scope, deliverables and deadlines.
Once we’ve seen the real statistics for the whole project – and taken account of the already missed dates and deliverables – we can work out when the critical parts of your project (there are always two, the cash management and the integration) can be delivered.
Myth #2: My wealth management project is over-engineered
Over-engineering is always the result of confused engineers.
Why are they confused? Because they’re straightforward, STEM-type logicians who need clear requirements and testable statements from the business. It’s not too much to ask…
Everything else will flow from that. A fresh pair of eyes (and the debunked myths below) will make a material difference straight away.
Most ‘over-engineering’ is the result of poorly-documented business requirements that are not written to a sufficiently detailed level for serious engineers to use.
So, we’ll work together to revisit and document where your detailed business, technical and integration requirements are and focus on the core stuff: cash management and the integration requirements.
“Document’ here means whatever you use – waterfall or Agile. We’ve noticed that, despite its many, many other benefits, the Agile methodology is particularly prone to failure due to poorly defined / written EPICS and use cases. The good news is that these are easy to fix.
Myth #3: My wealth management project decisions are irreversible by now
Maybe they are. Most likely they’re not.
Either way, we need to look at them in private and make sure they all still stand up to scrutiny (that’s the advantage of professional, confidential outside expertise).
We’ll take the two myth-busting elements (measurement and documentation), above, and use them to go back to your key wealth management technology project decisions and assess if these are now fit for purpose, for example:
- Why did you pick this wealth management platform over the others on the shortlist?
- Would you revisit that decision and why – would you have picked the same wealth management platform again knowing what you do now?
- What can you do now as a minimum, under control and with an eye on delivery risk and cost, to get an initial release stage up and running?
- Have you always matched the wealth management technology to the wealth management proposition, and, if not, what can you decide about that right now that’ll satisfy senior stakeholders AS WELL AS allow the work already undertaken to thrive as a project?
- What are the top-three things about the wealth management technology that you know NOW that would make you do something differently?
- Can you change the bias of the project towards these in the near future and how?
There’s no cookie-cutter way to do this. Each wealth management technology project (even each stage in a wider programme of work) is unique and has its own stresses and variables.
But we’ve used calm common sense and good documentation to help over 50 former wealth management projects to get resolved one way or another before now and we have no reason to believe your wealth management technology is any different.
The end result is a quality, proven wealth management technology project outcome that satisfies you, your client, all stakeholders and makes you look good – and feel good too.