Every August the entire Seismic family descends upon one of its two major operational hubs, Boston or San Diego, for a week of presentations, workshops, and breakout sessions. We even find time to watch a baseball game or hit the horse track. The name of the event is Seismic Activity, and this year, my first, brought everyone to southern California to network, work cross-functionally, and share in the excitement of just what it means to contribute to the positive advancement of not just Seismic, but also the hundreds of firms that are its customers.
As a member of the marketing team within the financial services vertical, I don’t necessarily see, on a daily basis, how other teams are making an impact on the productivity and success of Seismic and its customers. We have individuals around the world, working within three verticals to make sure our customers are the most efficient, empowered, and agile firms in the world. This mission was readily apparent at all points during last week’s Activity, and as someone who is still very new to Seismic, it’s imperative for prospective and current customers to know the following five insights, rather truths about this company.
Five (Financial Services) Perspectives
- From Marketing to Sales to Customer Success, Seismic’s financial services vertical is comprised of individuals who don’t just understand the industry, but have actually worked within the space for leading global firms. These members of the Seismic team, as prior practitioners of asset or wealth management or business banking, are incredibly familiar with the dynamic, positive characteristics of the industry and the operational, financial, and technological challenges its firms face; and each person is intent on helping them attain greater levels of efficiency in order to continue to grow at a global scale that is both strong and sustainable.
- Seismic Activity provided me with my first comprehensive look at which financial services brands are embracing and entrusting our platform, and without a doubt the ever-expanding “logo list” is impressive and inspiring. These firms are at the forefront of the digital experience movement, realizing that in order to deliver higher value and long-term returns, they must shift away from maintaining multiple internal technology stacks and towards a scalable, standardized, and externally managed enablement platform. While the weight of responsibility on Seismic to assist firms of all sizes is anything but light, there isn’t a single team member that doesn’t believe we have the capability and talent to exceed expectations and perform at the same paramount level as our financial services customers.
- Even with a full-week’s schedule of workshops, sessions, and presentations, demanding the attention of every member of the company, Sales teams found time for calls and product demos. Whether they took place during a program break, lunch, at night, or before 6:30 a.m., you could find more than one member of Sales working with a prospective or current customer, making sure they knew we were committed to their use case and the potential solution our platform could provide. Every single financial services customer is different and inherently looking for a custom implementation of Seismic’s technology. Sales doesn’t acknowledge this with a cookie-cutter approach; they expect and welcome it with a totally tailored conversation, leveraging the attributes of the platform for which they are advocating.
- New financial services customers aren’t hastily shown the functionalities of Seismic’s product and then turned loose to harness its capabilities and execute whatever tasks necessary. Customer Success provides a personalized and meticulously thorough onboarding experience, remaining virtually embedded within a firm until all users are completely acclimated to the software and confident in their ability to leverage it for maximum productivity and value. Whether a medium-sized asset management firm needs to focus on how content automation can enable them to build compliant and consistent client presentations in a timely and uncomplicated manner or a large wealth management or commercial banking group is looking for an organized and centralized approach to storing and distributing content on a global scale, Customer Success stays steadfast in its guidance during the implementation and adoption process.
- Seismic’s organizational culture is authentically egalitarian, and its executive team is just as, if not more, enthusiastically invested in the development of all employees as it is in the product itself. Leading with humility and having a bold yet responsible vision are intrinsic to Seismic, and everyone across the organization fundamentally believes that helping our customers achieve their next level of strength is the only way for us to attain ours.
In today’s fintech world of bright and fading headline stars, Seismic is more than a company developing software, it’s a rare convergence of genuinely passionate people and an adaptable technological solution, and the powerfully positive result is for the sole benefit of those financial services firms that partner with us for the long term.