As it continues to roll out technological upgrades to support its clients, Dallas-based Apex Clearing has announced a new platform that will help it coordinate and formalize its product launches.
Taking a page from other technology companies, Apex will now announce and roll out products on its platform in annual cycles, with the first, named Apex 20a, launching in March.
“These launches were a very important thing that until this point we were just sort of doing by hook or by crook,” said William Capuzzi, Apex Clearing CEO. “There was no real process. Today we have a process for going out, listening to the demands of our customers and interacting with them, then taking their demands to our interactive development team and sequencing them as priorities over the course of the year. We also get to communicate what’s coming to our clients so people can anticipate and prepare for the releases.”
The more systematic launch cycle eases the process of registering client demands, identifying the problem at hand and then writing code to solve the problem, said Capuzzi, which allows Apex to deliveri its solutions more efficiently.
Apex 20a will include API enhancementss dedicated to fractional trading, lending solutions, account opening, ACH and bank connectivity, and documentation on its Developer Portal. Preparation for the rollout of these enhancements involved multiple weeks of development, including three planning summits over the last six months.
Capuzzi calls the upgraded Developer Portal a “storefront” for Apex where its APIs will be easily accessible for its fintech clients.
Moving through 2020, Apex will have two additional rounds of product launches: Apex 20b in July and Apex 20c in November, for a total of three in 2020.
Apex might expand its product launches to four such cycles each year, said Capuzzi.
The set schedule of announcements and launches mirrors a strategy used throughout the technology sector that allows companies to roll out new innovations in a transparent, consistent and predictable manner.
Capuzzi said that the idea for a more formalized product launch cycle was brought forward after the hire of Dustin Kirkland as Apex Clearing’s chief product officer from Google.