Build or Buy: How to Decide?

By:  John Toepfer

When looking at content automation and sales enablement solutions, firms are often confronted with a tough decision: To build or buy? Over the past 20 years in this business, I’ve participated in many of these discussions and seen the decision go both ways. Sometimes the decision is successful and other times it ends up a costly mistake. On one hand, it isn’t always less expensive nor less risky to build software solutions in-house as opposed to buying commercial solutions. I’ve seen cases where application development projects were initiated with the intent of justifying and maintaining the technology team, but unfortunately never get off the ground because they can’t be supported technically or economically. What then ends up happening, after all the internal effort and expense, is a new commercial solution is procured to replace it. On the other hand, there are times when the technological or business needs are so pertinent to the company’s value or operations, that they cannot be outsourced. In these circumstances, if the project or platform has the board of directors’ approval and the IT organization is truly committed to the budget and vision, then there’s a good case for insourcing as opposed to outsourcing. At the end of the day, the success or failure of any development effort should be measured against the same criteria. When weighing the decision to build or buy, I recommend using these six criteria:

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7 Problems With Automating Fact Sheets In PowerPoint

By John Toepfer

With the highly competitive nature of the asset management industry, maintaining a strong and positive brand image is more important now than ever. Every contact with a client, every conversation and every piece of material they see from your firm needs to be professional, timely and well produced. Even something as mundane as a poorly produced factsheet can be off-putting and give an investor pause to think about the overall quality of your operations. Yes, even in the digital age, quality design and typography in printed materials really matters.

I had the opportunity recently to speak with a long time head of marketing for a major asset manager and she spoke with passion about on the topic of brand. Among many compelling things she had to say was this: “If you look at the most successful companies in any industry, you’ll find that they share one thing in common; excellent branding.”

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Celebrating 20 Years: A Message From Synthesis CEO

By John Toepfer

Synthesis is celebrating 20 years in business this month.  For me, this is an event that calls for both reflection on the past and reaffirmation of our vision for the future.

These 20 years came and went in what feels like the blink of an eye. At a high-level, it feels like a blur of RFPs, client meetings, implementations, contract negotiations, partnerships, financial reports and company picnics. However, when you take time to look more closely, you see more than just a fog of work. You begin to see key events that really made the difference; Hiring of people who turned out to be key leaders or fantastic engineers, finding partners who understood our value proposition and helped us take it to market, and landing clients who understood bigger is not necessarily better… better is better.

An organization is only as good as the talented people they hire, especially in a business of our nature.  We’ve been extremely fortunate in that regard. Credit for our success and longevity boils down to the amazing, intelligent and hardworking team members we’ve been fortunate enough to hire, several of whom have been with us for 15 years or more. Their passion and dedication set us apart in this industry.  I’ve never known a staff to be as committed and loyal as the teams we have here at Synthesis. I am truly thankful for the people that we have, even those no longer with us, for the positive mark they’ve left on our company and with our clients. In turn, I’m also thankful for the many clients who treat us as true partners where “mutual” is the key word in our success.  I thank you all for your hard work, loyalty and service, and look forward to what we can accomplish together in the future!Read More

Pessimism or Reality? Forbes says Asset Management Marketers are “Still Taking Batting Practice”

By John Toepfer

As recent article in Forbes pointed out that asset managers are extremely late in joining the digital marketing movement. This isn’t groundbreaking news, as the industry has long been criticized for slow adoption of modern marketing practices.

The article points out:

• Financial services was one of the first industries to embrace the digital revolution, just not in marketing. The industry has focused on investing in high speed connectivity for faster trade execution, as opposed to faster and more successful marketing/sales execution. It’s time to step-up the marketing game.
• Lower Fees and higher competition is driving more creative marketing. Executives are forced to rethink the old model of reaching investors one at a time, an expensive endeavor involving lots of flights, hotels, steak dinners and conference fees. They must create models for doing this at scale.
• Asset Managers who embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning will increase efficiency. The reduction in operating expenses associated with more efficient marketing will result in decreased cost for the consumer and increased margins for the manager.  Asset Managers aren’t adopting digital marketing technologies because they loathe change. Executives who come from an investing background may not see an immediate ROI on this type of investment. Turnkey products do exist, and previously unavailable scale is now built-in.

Even though asset managers are a few steps behind other industries, many are making moves towards digitizing the sales and marketing process. We’ve seen evidence of this over the past couple of years as firms are rethinking their strategies. Firms are being forced to find ways to differentiate themselves and scale their operations in order to survive the fierce competition.

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