As we prepare for the holidays and begin planning for the New Year, I want to take a moment to reflect on 2016 – the year of AlphaCert’s first customer. This milestone year is one that will go down in history as a great success.
Though the AlphaCert platform was born just three years ago, the business has seen significant change and growth in this year alone. The establishment of a cornerstone customer has been an enormous change agent – allowing us to increase AlphaCert’s independence from its ClearPoint origins, expand our team, and establish a higher level of brand recognition and value.
We couldn’t ask for a better customer to begin this journey with. We’re extremely proud to be working with one of the most prestigious investment management companies in Australia. The working relationship that has developed between ClearPoint and our customer is just fantastic.
Their support has allowed us to further define our service in the context of their needs. It’s also meant that we could round out our own team, bringing aboard people who have already made a huge impact on the organisation. As our affiliation continues, we are building up a new AlphaCert product roadmap team – and as we sign future customers, we plan to structure parallel teams for each of our client orientations.
From a market expansion standpoint, our next major strategic step will be to build out a global business development capability, targeting the global markets. We currently leverage our strong partnership with ClearPoint. While ClearPoint can help back AlphaCert’s software engineering efforts, AlphaCert in turn can provide the tool for consulting best practices in investment operations.
When engaging with perspective customers, we’ve been delighted in the amount of interest in AlphaCert from banks, service providers, and investment managers. We’re encouraged by their interest and are in the midst of conversations about AlphaCert’s approach – a completely new way of managing enterprise investment management data. AlphaCert particularly suits an organisation that wants to leverage data as its primary asset, and we’re receiving interest from those with complex data needs for fast-moving investment strategies.
Bootstrapping a new company is not without its challenges. In the early stages, our biggest roadblock was convincing the market that the AlphaCert platform is in fact real enterprise software; that it can deliver on its promise of providing a trusted central source of truth – that’s both scalable and flexible, based on the latest cloud technology. We’ve made a lot of headway, but have plenty more opportunity for growth.
We’re humbled by the amount of support from our community and perspective customers. We’ve shared our vision, and they can see AlphaCert’s potential. The AlphaCert team is incredibly proud of our achievements this year, and – after a restful holiday season – are excited to see what continued success 2017 has in store.
We wish all our valued customers, partners and friends all the best for the Christmas break and look forward to further growth and success in 2017. Merry Christmas.