And then secondly, and maybe most importantly, I would like to add to that while some technology can be transformative, technology in and of itself is not a panacea. Executives should be wary of technology being looked at as a silver bullet. It essentially becomes making sure that the technology prescription that they are fitting to their business problems is being utilized and adapted by their human capital—employees, people. Be aware in the evaluation phase, that this tech decision also becomes a matter of committing human capital to using and administrating the technology prescription. So they need know the amount and expertise of their human resources to support the prescription, and are willing to make those investments. Then I think that they can feel good that they will have at least in the near term solved the balancing act of the equation and can feel good about implementing those solutions.
Hortz: What are the downsides of too much tech?
Franey: Wasted money I think would be the primary downside. I think if we consider the fact that there's going to be a more holistic strategy in place for adopting the technology, I think too much technology input into that solution also puts adoption of that overall prescription at risk. I think at risk in terms of solving whatever business problems they're trying to solve. Ultimately, the business problem trying to be solved can be lost in the mix if organizations just try to throw a whole bunch of tech at the problem.
Outside of the adoption equation and the utilization equation, integrations can become messy if there are too many disparate systems that are sort of being put into the juggling act or the overall prescription. If these systems aren't communicating with each other then there's skepticism of behalf of the users within the organization. That can also put the adoption of the solution at risk.
Hortz: How does your firm go about determining and developing the right technology solutions for your clients?
Franey: At Celera, we have our roots in engineering. We are a project-based organization. I think what we've retained in terms of our engineering-centric culture is a real benefit to clients because we're so problem solving based. We're really focused on helping our clients to generate a set of requirements. In doing so, we are helping our clients to conceptualize the business problems that they're facing, and then determining the set of requirements needed, the right sort of solutions for those requirements, offering some options, and then moving forward in terms of developing those solutions.
We're just inherently always on top of what our clients are trying to do. I point to the emergence and proliferation of interval funds as a really sort of fertile ground for solution development because that has brought its own unique, I would say, situation in terms of needing to do new and interesting things with the data that we're providing them. I would also point to the emergence of model portfolios and the managed account, the proliferation of those products also offering up their own unique data problems and therefore data solutions that will help solve them. It's really a matter of making sure we're staying in concert with our clients, understanding the problems that they're facing, and then maintaining a stance of developing solutions around them.
Hortz: How does technology help asset managers compete with larger asset management distributors?
Franey: I think technology, at least how we apply it, assists in a few ways. First, technology reduces the carrying cost of personnel. We do that in a couple ways. We're able to make managers more productive as they spend less time hunting and pecking for data and more time doing their actual jobs, engaging stakeholders, what have you. Secondly, our offering is a fully managed package, so firms don't have to commit IT resources to installing, building, maintaining any infrastructure. Everything is done and managed 100 percent over the cloud by us. That's the first one, reducing the carrying cost of personnel.
Secondly, the type of data that is provided. It fuels other technology, for example, marketing automation, which allows managers to quickly and efficiently distribute content to their client base or other stakeholders in an organized and deliberate fashion. We have dedicated resources on staff here to help them do that and to help our clients integrate those types of technologies to the data and operationalize them, which we think is a huge benefit because we know and understand the industry, the technology component of it and what they are trying to accomplish.