eMoney Webinars: Good afternoon. Everyone welcome to the first time. Call 2024.
eMoney Webinars: I'm gonna give a moment to join before I do some housekeeping items. and obviously, before we get started today. So I'll just give folks a moment to join before we get started.
eMoney Webinars: Oh, and just like that, we have 430 folks on the line, so I'm going to get started. That was fast. That's some record time,
eMoney Webinars: But like, I said just a moment ago. Welcome to our first town hall of 2024. We're excited to get into the agenda today. But before we do that I just have a a few items.
eMoney Webinars: To cover one if you are on VPN. If you don't mind just disconnecting. That will improve your viewing experience and also from the tech side, our ability to provide a seamless event today.
eMoney Webinars: Second, if you have questions throughout the course of the event. if content compels you, inspires you or sparks a question feel free to put that in the QA. Function
eMoney Webinars: the chat is open and we encourage engagement reactions conversation throughout the course of today's event. But if you do have a specific question that you'd like the leadership team to address, we just ask that you please put that in the QA. Function.
eMoney Webinars: Third. This is being recorded, and it will be provided in the weekly life money on Friday. So if folks are unable to attend, you know people that that can't make it today, we will share it with the slides. As part of our replay
eMoney Webinars: on Friday, and then, lastly, at the end of the event there will be a survey that pops up in your browser. I kindly ask that you take that survey. Your feedback truly, is
eMoney Webinars: very helpful as we continue to plan these throughout the course of the year. And we make modifications as needed based on your feedback. So again, your participation in those surveys are incredibly appro.
eMoney Webinars: we we greatly appreciate it.
eMoney Webinars: And with that, now that it's about 5. After 3, I'm going to quickly run through the agenda today. We are. Gonna have folks from sales. Give us a recap on the 2023 results
eMoney Webinars: as well as Eric from finance, to give us the rundown on financials. He will also cover bonus funding
eMoney Webinars: for the year.
eMoney Webinars: After that we will have Susan talk about our 2024 strategic priorities and then each of our business unit leaders. So each Cl team member will run through their specific business unit key initiatives along with the focus areas for the year which is incredibly helpful, as we all start to put in our goals in, dig over the next 2 weeks, and then, lastly, Joanne will quickly run through our 2024 goal, setting timeline along with our remaining
eMoney Webinars: 2024 performance cycle timeline for the year.
eMoney Webinars: So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Susan just to kick us off.
Susan McKenna: Thank you, Gracie. I will echo the sentiments and welcome everybody to our very first Town hall of 2024 Q. One Town Hall. and I'm going to start by throwing out a number.
Susan McKenna: The number is 97,
Susan McKenna: and if you think you know what that is or what I'm talking about. put it in the chat. Just curious.
Susan McKenna: It's not Jason Kelsey's number. We know that. So what is 97
Susan McKenna: couple good guesses wouldn't spoil Eric's thunder. So no, it is not the bonus, but
Susan McKenna: someone nailed it. It went by too fast. Arianna Leah, a couple people. It is, in fact, our current customer satisfaction rating
Susan McKenna: 97%, and it also is the highest it has ever been
Susan McKenna: which is a testament to all of you and the work that you do every day. I am incredibly proud
Susan McKenna: of the Emoni team, and I just want to say, Thank you for all of the hard work in 2023. You should all be incredibly proud
Susan McKenna: of that number. Hi, for one
Susan McKenna: very excited, very proud about what lies ahead. So before we actually move forward into 2024, and plans. There we are going to flash back
Susan McKenna: and talk a little bit about our year end results. And with that I have the extreme pleasure of introducing our new head of sales, Oscar Salusar.
Susan McKenna: Oscar joined us in the middle of December. Just a really crazy time, right before the holidays, finishing, planning, but starting, planning and his impact can already be felt across the team.
Susan McKenna: So I am going to turn it over to Oscar and ask you, please introduce yourself and let's kick it off.
Oscar Salazar: Thank you, Susan, for the introduction. I'm Oscar Salazar, and I am thrilled to have joined Imani as your new head of sales
Oscar Salazar: first is a pleasure to speak with all of you at our first Town Hall meeting of the year is my first town hole at Imani ever before diving into our sales review and some of our key initiatives for 24
Oscar Salazar: I was asked to spend couple of minutes to share a bit about myself, and
Oscar Salazar: perhaps more importantly, about my vision for the journey together here, here I need money, and I promise that I would keep it under 3 min. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna speak real fast.
Oscar Salazar: I'm based out of Milton, Georgia, in the Atlanta Metro area where my wife, Karen and I have lived for
Oscar Salazar: 30 plus years.
Oscar Salazar: We have 2 wonderful children and 3 very spoiled by grandma and Grandpa Grandkids. I bring with me, I'm afraid to say.
Oscar Salazar: 35 years of sales experience the last 2 decades in Enterprise software.
Oscar Salazar: where, where I have the privilege of leading very diverse high performing teams driving growth across various industries and throughout different areas, global internationally domestic. It's been a great journey so far. And it's been shaped by
Oscar Salazar: by a passion for understanding and aligning to customer needs
Oscar Salazar: for for a commitment to innovation in sales strategies. And I believe in the power of teamwork, and they believe in tight, organizational, cross, functional alignment.
Oscar Salazar: And those are to me key to achieve a common revenue goals. It takes a team.
Oscar Salazar: So I will continue to focus on building strong customer centric teams and and creating environments and repeatable processes where, where, where ideas can flourish, where challenges are perceived as
Oscar Salazar: as opportunities. I plan to focus on those pillars or emani as I have had in my entire career, and my approach has always been collaborative.
Oscar Salazar: so I believe that the best strategies come from
Oscar Salazar: from a blend of everyone's unique strengths and and insights, and that aligns very much in my view, with a money's culture and that has been fostered by citizens leadership and the rest of the leadership at Imani. So you know, Susan just mentioned. 97% Csap numbers.
Oscar Salazar: Imani is A is a success story.
Oscar Salazar: and that success story is clearly
Oscar Salazar: a Testament to the hard work and the UN. Yielding dedication for every single one in this in this virtual room. So I'm excited. I'm pumped. I'm excited about the opportunity to learn from each of you. I'm excited about the opportunity to work together and to push, to achieve those goals and surpass them.
Oscar Salazar: My door is always open, so let's make this another record breaking year for a money and and embrace the transformational change that lies ahead of us.
Oscar Salazar: So with that I will turn it over to Carolina, and and rich.
Oscar Salazar: Did I stay within 3 min?
Caroline Grasso: I was, gonna say, Oscar, I'm pretty impressed you did it. But you know, one thing I'll I'll even comment on to, for from Oscar's perspective, and I know Susan said it, joining the last 2 weeks of the year to any sales organization and running through the tape with us. No hesitation, no questions asked was awesome. But
Caroline Grasso: Gracie, if you wouldn't mind jumping to the next slide for me, kind of in the spirit of of flashbacks. I'm gonna go to kind of starting from January first, 2023.
Caroline Grasso: We started out the year with a really ambitious goal in mind for advisor sales
Caroline Grasso: not only to deliver on 100 for the year, but to stay above 100 for the entirety of the year.
Caroline Grasso: That's 12 months. That's 12 last days of the month.
Caroline Grasso: that is, 251 working days of grinding it out every single day, being willing to reset on the first of every month, and let me tell you, there is a lot of hustle that goes on behind the scenes to support that so when I say that we did above 100% for the year, I am beyond proud of that and beyond proud of this team for achieving that as a group. And and for the organization.
Caroline Grasso: You know, I think about how we focused on the process. We stayed true to who we were and being the best sales professionals out there that just happened to sell financial planning software. I have a million highlights that that I could go through, but a couple that stand out to me. We increased our average sales price
Caroline Grasso: by 5%.
Caroline Grasso: That's really significant. Few different contributing factors there. But for anybody that's been in sales before asking for that additional dollar is going above and beyond. So it really exciting to see
Caroline Grasso: on average, we did 500 deals a month. 500.
Caroline Grasso: That's about 25 a day. So when I talk about hustle, that's hustle and we really focused on making ourselves better. We practiced every week. We focused on perfect practice. Weekly role plays, monthly trainings, as I say, going back to the process and trying to get better and and continuous learning.
Caroline Grasso: More than half of the team did above a hundred percent themselves.
Caroline Grasso: 75% of the reps were above 85% of their quota, which is really impressive, that collectively we were able to deliver these these results. And I could go on and on and on, but thank you, and we're just really excited to to do it again in 2024. So.
Caroline Grasso: but rich before we talk about some of our fun wins. I'll let you take it on the Enterprise sale side.
Richard Grotto: Yeah. And congratulations again, Caroline and team another amazing year out of your group.
Richard Grotto: Unfortunately, on the Enterprise sales side. We ran into a whole bunch of headwinds in 2023, I think I've mentioned it before on previous town halls and sales meetings
Richard Grotto: you know the bank prices there in in first quarter mergers and acquisitions. Inflation really
Richard Grotto: put a few speed bumps in our way in in 2,023. But the team stayed resilient worked hard.
Richard Grotto: drove towards a very successful December December. Kicked butt from an Enterprise sales team. Unfortunately, you know, we were sort of behind 8 ball most of the year, but the end of the day very proud of of the team and the results that they achieved. Despite all those headwins. So you could see on on the screen there to combine a sales performance goal, 93% of our goal for 2023
Richard Grotto: again. Advisor sales, just kicking butt and and carrying all that wood, chopping the wood and carrying the water. You can see the t-shirt there behind us
Richard Grotto: from some of the enterprise wins. II did. Wanna highlight here in in fourth quarter number one United Capital led by Justin. And and the call out there, Justin did achieve his sales goal. I think he reached 116% of his goal for the year. So congratulations to Justin you may recognize the name United Capital. Goldman bought them several years ago, didn't really fit into the Goldman team.
Richard Grotto: so they spun them off, and they were bought by creative planning. Probably in the third or fourth quarter of last year.
Richard Grotto: and, as you may all know as well. Creative planning has their own proprietary financial planning system
Richard Grotto: that could lead to losing a couple of 100 advisors going on to the creative planning software luckily, Justin and a ton of support from the finest teams implementation teams product teams to capture the United Capital
Richard Grotto: business to the tune of 789,000 AR are so great when super fast deal came to fruition. And under, I wanna say, 4 weeks where typically we're looking at a 9 month. Sales cycle in enterprise. So
great job Justin and team on United Capital.
Richard Grotto: All State looks kind of small there, right? 17 k but that's a huge win as part of a renewal with one of our larger clients here. The 17 k represents an uptick in their revenue. That uptick is associated with the client portal. They're actually gonna use our client portal as a lead generation tool
Richard Grotto: across there. 14 million it's all state customers that 17 K. Is going to turn into at least a 200 k. Uptick in revenue this year
Richard Grotto: and another 100 k. At least next year. So 17 K. Last year, but a whole lot more to come there as they grow that business as they continue to use that client portal
Richard Grotto: and then the last one. Here again only only 2,400 looks kind of funny to be on an enterprise sale. But this is one of Paul's deals essentially Xy planning one of our largest clients as well, is launching a corporate ria. This is the pilot
Richard Grotto: for that corporate Ria. So this 2,400. Hopefully, we're going to add a couple of zeros to this. Assuming the pilot goes well here in first half, maybe 3 quarters of of the year again, adding a couple of zeros hopefully to that deal in third, fourth quarter, 2,024, but
Richard Grotto: super proud of the team we're gonna continue to chop would carry water in 2024, and that 58 maybe we'll put a one in front of the 58 for 158% of goal in 2024,
Caroline Grasso: Caroline back to you. Thanks and it wouldn't be working from home if you didn't have your Internet crash in the middle of the Town Hall. You're presenting it.
Caroline Grasso: But heading into it advisory sales really hard to pick from 1,500 wins in in a quarter but 2 that I'll highlight really, briefly, versus capital management sold by John Caputo. For 27 K.
Caroline Grasso: Really demonstrated persistence, nurturing really understanding, and being patient with a client around their needs and and timeline, and and staying on top of it. Also knowing when to lean on the team around you. Fpg. Was heavily involved in this deal. John also leaned on his manager, Christina, to help in executing the deal and doing whatever it took to get there
Caroline Grasso: to get it done. So thank you to all the business partners that were involved in that one, particularly and then even prime capital on the account management side owned by Eric Murphy. This is just a small representation of their 2023 growth overall, really driven by his constant alignment with their Home Office meeting with them on a monthly basis, to ensure that we understood what was going on in the their overall business.
Caroline Grasso: and looking ahead, so we could be aligned as that business partner for growth and and all of their planning needs, but really excited for those wins and the continuous growth that we'll see from those relationships.
Caroline Grasso: But I would be remiss if I didn't highlight some of our Sdr highlights, fantastic business partners of ours 12 meetings booked for enterprise, and over 500 k. Added to the pipeline and is phenomenal along with advisor sales. They were 132% to their lead target
Caroline Grasso: 102% to their meeting target and contributed to 1.6 million dollars, or by close to one revenue in. But
Caroline Grasso: one thing that'll also particularly highlight is, not only did they hand over these leads and these opportunities, they were highly qualified and closed at a 46% win rate to put that into prospect perspective that's significantly above industry average
Caroline Grasso: and their focus on, you know, not only delivering on their goal, but helping us bring it all the way to the finish line. So fantastic results to the Sdr. Team, we really can't do it without you led by Jim and Maria, and and the whole army. And I speak for Rich and I to thank every single business partner out there. It takes a village to accomplish what we accomplish.
Caroline Grasso: Finance operations. Fpg find implementation, support service. I know I'm missing somebody because I sound like an Oscar speech, but I really, genuinely mean it that we cannot do what we do without you? And we're gonna need you again in in 2024. So thank you. And we're excited to be able to share these results with you.
But I'm gonna hand it over to Eric to talk about the financials from 23.
Eric Kerble: Thanks, Caroline. So I I'm gonna spend a little bit of time talking about arr. Then I'll talk about profitability. and then, if you can stick with me, I'll share a preliminary update on our company bonuses.
Eric Kerble: We could flip to the next slide. Thank you. So from an arr perspective, the company got very close
Eric Kerble: to our target for new AR, adding almost 23 million dollars in new contracts over the year.
Eric Kerble: As Caroline described. This included a brilliant performance by the advisor sales team and those who support them.
Eric Kerble: and as rich described the the Enterprise sales team doing some rebuilding during 2023. But the December that the rich talked about and the eleventh hour deal with United Capital and the strong momentum
Eric Kerble: heading into 2024 has us all very excited
Eric Kerble: as I shared in Prior town halls early in the year churn and 2023 added a lot of pressure
Eric Kerble: against new a RR.
Eric Kerble: And while it seems to have stabilized in the second half of the year. You can see we finished about 3 million dollars unfavorable to the budget on
Eric Kerble: on churn
Eric Kerble: When when you look at total err, the combination of new AR less churn
Eric Kerble: gives us net new arr, and then keeping with new intern results.
Eric Kerble: We finished the year shy of budget by a little over 3 million dollars
Eric Kerble: we can flip to the next slide to see how the AR translates to earnings results.
Eric Kerble: So the miss in net new AR, along with the lighter than expected along lighter than expected. Custom development work
Eric Kerble: resulted in a 5 million dollars, miss on revenue
Eric Kerble: because some of the pressure was apparent early in the year.
Eric Kerble: The company was aggressive in controlling its operating expenses
Eric Kerble: this intention to spend resulted in 10 million dollars in savings and expenses.
Eric Kerble: So 5 million dollar miss on revenue more than offset with a 10 million 10 million dollars favorable miss favorable variants on expenses. creates financial results which are favorable to budget by over 5 million dollars.
Eric Kerble: So overall. this is a really good story. It looks even better when you compare the 2023 results sequentially to 2022
Eric Kerble: versus 2022. Revenue is up 7.5 million dollars. Expenses are down 8.2 million dollars
Eric Kerble: year over year. The company's profitability improved by almost 16 million dollars. So whether you're contributing to the top line through new sales
Eric Kerble: or preventing churn, or you're creating efficiencies in your area of business you are contributing to the companies
Eric Kerble: financial success. I think that's a good segue into our bonus pool funding go to the next slide. The preliminary funding percentage is 85%
Eric Kerble: it's preliminary right now, because it still needs approval from the Compensation Committee. The Compensation Committee is A is a subset of our board of directors.
Eric Kerble: and if we can flip to the next slide, I think translating the company funding to your personal bonus requires a few steps so like we did last year, I'm gonna walk through an example.
Eric Kerble: So if you have someone that has a base salary of $50,000 and a bonus opportunity of 10 and they were rated on their performance review as meeting expectations and through discussions with their manager. They just it. The manager decided on a on a 75%
Eric Kerble: attainment to the goals and competencies for for that employee. And then, then you apply to that the company funding pool of 85. So the 50,000 times 10%
Eric Kerble: comes up to 5,000 among the far right now. You take that 5,000 times the 75 attainment, and that gets you to 37 50. And then you apply the 85% to that to get to the 31 87 and 50 cents
Eric Kerble: we can flip to the next slide and just go through some remaining performance timeline events.
Eric Kerble: February twenty-seventh, through March seventh the manager, one on one's March eighth is employee. Final sign off March fifteenth performance bonus payout.
Eric Kerble: and on March 20, s
Eric Kerble: base comp increases reflected in pay effective to march first.
Eric Kerble: With that I'm going to turn it back to Susan to talk about the 2,024 strategic priorities.
Susan McKenna: Great, thank you, Eric. We can flip to the next slide here.
Susan McKenna: Now we are looking forward, although this slide should look very familiar.
Susan McKenna: because these are the exact same strategic priorities that we had last year.
Susan McKenna: you might pause and ask yourself why? Because the initiatives that we use to support these critical strategic priorities will change and they will change. Based on the progress that we made last year.
Susan McKenna: You'll hear more detail about that. As each of
Susan McKenna: the Clc. Members go through their respective business units, and you can see the nuance and how those things have changed. But when you look at something like protect and grow our core business profitably, you just heard from Eric the huge progress that we made in our profitability last year.
Susan McKenna: But you also heard about the impact of churn. So you should expect to hear and see a lot more about retention across the organization and the ways in which we support the retention of our existing clients
Susan McKenna: make mark measurable progress in our technology evolution. I always trip over that every time I say it one of these days I'll get it.
Susan McKenna: But huge kudos to Nick and Melissa and Tom and the rest of their teams for continuing to drive that
Susan McKenna: dual mandate
Susan McKenna: so so important and acknowledged by not only our board, and not only our internal folks, but our customers, who are telling us. They understand and appreciate that we are continuing to put out functionality, that they're asking for these consistent releases and our new products, while modernizing our architecture at the same time really important progress in 23 more to come on that this year as well
Susan McKenna: and lastly, live and breathe our core values. This will always be part of our strategic priorities.
Susan McKenna: Always.
Susan McKenna: Thanks to you, our engagement scores were up to our best, ever 84%. That's a 12% increase from 2021
Susan McKenna: outstanding. And while it's great news.
Susan McKenna: maintaining that high level of engagement, and even increasing and surpassing that
Susan McKenna: is really important to all of us and continues to be our goal.
Susan McKenna: Our culture is palpable. Any money?
Susan McKenna: There is no way not to feel
Susan McKenna: what it's like to be a part of this team. And our core values are really fundamental in making that happen and supporting that culture.
Susan McKenna: So
Susan McKenna: with that, I'm going to turn the mic over once again to Oscar, and he'll start our business unit cadence in how we will support these objectives.
Susan McKenna: Oscar.
Oscar Salazar: Thank you, Susan.
Oscar Salazar: Okay,
Oscar Salazar: This year
Oscar Salazar: our mission is clear and ambitious.
Oscar Salazar: Our primary focus is to deliver
Oscar Salazar: our 2024 sales objectives.
Oscar Salazar: That means 22 point 82 million dollars of error. That's our goal for this year.
Oscar Salazar: no less than that.
Oscar Salazar: and we will strive to surpass them
Oscar Salazar: this year.
Oscar Salazar: I think that we've put together a set of key initiatives that will improve our chances of doing so.
Oscar Salazar: So to achieve this. we need to refine our approach to
Oscar Salazar: both enterprise, sales, execution as well as our larger advisory sales opportunities.
Oscar Salazar: That's where most of the needle movers will likely reside. So we get to choose where to invest our resources from the get. Go right is the beginning of the year.
Oscar Salazar: and our goal here is to ensure that
Oscar Salazar: we build and review plans.
Oscar Salazar: and that those plans support our strategies and that they're sharp, that that they're effective and that they're directly aligned
Oscar Salazar: with our clients and prospects. Evolving needs
Oscar Salazar: based on those projections
Oscar Salazar: of continued evolution in our market space. The key part of our strategy this year will be devoted to developing a repeatable and scalable go to market strategy
Oscar Salazar: now this initiative, but this is about creating a blueprint to success that can be
Oscar Salazar: replicated across different markets and different sectors don't matter what.
Oscar Salazar: and that should fuel our growth and ensure that we're stay ahead of that dynamic industry, and we've lived it over the last couple of years. Yeah.
Oscar Salazar: it will focus on both protecting our core.
Oscar Salazar: while at the same time expanding our business and capturing greater share of wallet
Oscar Salazar: closely related to this got to market. Strategy is the importance of trust, functional alignment
Oscar Salazar: that has to do with the synergies between sales and other departments, from from marketing and product development to customer success and operations.
Oscar Salazar: And it is essential to our success.
Oscar Salazar: and we'll be Co working. We'll be working close closely, or more closely, I should say, than ever before with these teams to ensure that those strategies are cohesive, and and that our execution is as seamless as it can possibly be.
Oscar Salazar: Now we also need to focus on setting the stage for continued growth. Otherwise we get these cycles right where we make it one year and maybe not the audit. And every step that we take this year
Oscar Salazar: should not only be focused on delivering those numbers a 22.82 million dollars of arr quota, but also in setting us up for having a successful 2025, and that has to do with pipeline generation
Oscar Salazar: that has to do with understanding what our differentiated value is, and creating a framework around that
Oscar Salazar: right. The second thing that I think is important to realize is that
Oscar Salazar: since we get to define where we invest our resources this year. we focus on creating demand and not just servicing demand. and those are 2 very different things.
Oscar Salazar: Creating demand is purposeful. is intentional
Oscar Salazar: where servicing demand is waiting for the business to come to us in order to service it. Yeah, I mean, we'll take all the business that come our way.
Oscar Salazar: But making sure that our resources are focused
Oscar Salazar: and invest it in the best possible way means that we got to create that demand.
Oscar Salazar: and that will position us for success in 2025, and beyond
Oscar Salazar: that, then brings us to, you know, strengthening our sales of practice and rebuilding our sales, enablement practice as well.
Oscar Salazar: and every robust cells. Operation
Oscar Salazar: depends on it
Oscar Salazar: right, and it creates that framework for our day to day. Excellent! The how do we revitalize sales enablement, and how we approach that with net, new skills and a better understanding of how we align our capabilities with the not only market requirements today.
Oscar Salazar: but anticipate how those market requirements are going to evolve over the next. Say, year, 2 years, 3 years. that's what that's all about.
Oscar Salazar: And so we're gonna tackle these changes. And and I, wanna, I want us to remember our greatest strength here lies in in our unity.
Oscar Salazar: and how we share that commitment to excellence.
Oscar Salazar: So supporting each other is what's gonna get us there. and I'm super excited about that opportunity for growth here.
Oscar Salazar: With that I'm gonna turn it on to who come who's coming next?
Frank Tropiano: Alright, Frank, I turn it over to Frank.
Frank Tropiano: Hello, everybody! Hope everyone's doing well today in client services as many as you know. Our motto has always been client first.
Frank Tropiano: and with that our focus has always been on enhancing the client experience by adding value, reducing friction anywhere we can along the client journey. So while we'll have many initiatives this year that will help drive to those goals across our 4 different departments in client services. I just wanted to share some of the larger efforts we'll be focused on.
Frank Tropiano: So starting off in support we're gonna be working on expanding our chat capabilities. This is our the preferred channel by most of our users, that how they like to communicate with us.
Frank Tropiano: This year our focus will be on turning live chat on within connections in inside the app while chat has been available, as many as you know, for several years
Frank Tropiano: we weren't able to turn it on for connection simply due to the high volume of connection tickets we receive. But with all the great work the teams have done over the last few years in terms of aggregation in terms of moving to Apis, increasing our parcel. Fixed times process improvements we've made in our data support teams
Frank Tropiano: have all tremendously help reduce the number of aggregation aggregation issues and tickets we receive so that makes it possible for us now to turn on chat. And allow that channel to be available to our users. So thank you for everyone who's working the aggregation space to make that possible.
Frank Tropiano: In addition, we're gonna be able to turn on Chatbot for the first time. So in addition to the live live chat, this will be a new chat bot again, targeted to some of the most common connection related questions and this one will be the probably first one we'll tackle is linking accounts. That's our number one question. We get under connections so look forward to a new chat bot coming soon
Frank Tropiano: other areas and support. We're gonna be focused on this year are expanding our self service capabilities. This is something we rolled out in the early January 20 3 last year and the first functionality was around resetting passwords and unlocking accounts. It has been very successful.
Frank Tropiano: So this year we're going to be expanding in self service, and we're going to allow users to receive updates
Frank Tropiano: on connection tickets. So if they have an open connection ticket, they'll be able to dial in and without talking to anyone, be able to receive an update or status on that ticket? And we're hoping also to answer some basic how to questions. Also, with the phone system in a self service manner. 24 by 7.
Frank Tropiano: So great things coming this year in support in the service area, our main big focus is gonna be on delivering our next generation and next version of our getting started program. This is the coaching and training program that the new users new users go through when they first purchase the app
Frank Tropiano: it's gonna be built on a new learning management system called the Chabo. We recently just signed a contract and purchased the software so users will now be able to learn the application in a more streamlined learning journey in a self directed way at their own pace at their own time.
Frank Tropiano: It's also gonna be able to help us streamline some of our manual processes we've been doing behind the scenes. But, more importantly, it's gonna open up and enable us to train support users in a more formal way than we have in the past.
Frank Tropiano: so we'll be able to reach and train more users, which is always a great thing.
Frank Tropiano: Another item in client service would be focused on is rolling out a new service portal coming soon to our Home office contacts. They'll be able to use that in a self service manner as well to submit inquiries and questions to our client service management team and also be able to get updates in real time through that portal. So looking forward to that coming down in the next few months here
Frank Tropiano: in implementation. We've done a lot of work in 2023. A lot of collaboration research has been done between implementation sales, marketing, and finance, and since that's been completed we're not getting ready to roll out new tiered offer service offerings that are better aligned to meet the needs of our various large enterprise clients.
Frank Tropiano: These are going to be prepackaged service offerings from which our implementation and sales engineering teams will select based on the needs of the client after discovery sessions.
Frank Tropiano: So the goal here is to have these predefined tiers or collection of services that we use internally only to help streamline our various cross functional processes. Better position us to offer a common set of services that are group by client persona instead of providing one off solutions each time. So it's helping to get at that.
Frank Tropiano: That problem set.
Frank Tropiano: And last in our fourth department is relationship management. Our main focus here is going to be continuing to evolve our processes as we've been doing over the last 6 months or so to allow us to have more proactive and consistent relationships with our largest clients. Our goals, of course, are to gain client success as of the what's important to the client. Yeah, increase adoption, make sure they are getting the value out of our software and our services and also help to uncover potential sales opportunities.
Frank Tropiano: So that's what we'll be up to in client services in 24. And with that I think I'm going to hand it over to Megan.
Megan Murray: Good thanks, Frank.
Megan Murray: Hello, everyone, so we will jump right in. So I'll speak to finance first, and then we'll talk about the legal team. So for finance.
Megan Murray: the categories here on the left, similar to what I shared with everyone last year, we're gonna maintain a focus on actively managing our P. And L with the I towards ensuring our investments are aligned with profitability targets. So every year we set out for a goal. This year Eric just shared the results which were very favorable. We wanna continue on that trend. We really did an amazing job this past
Megan Murray: year, understanding our expense drivers and putting putting processes in place to drive more efficiencies there across the organization, and a lot of the work and the outcomes. From what Frank just shared a lot of the work that was done across the project organizations and other areas across the org. This year, as we go into 2,023, it will be building upon the work that was done, I would say heavily in kind of the Q. 4 timeframe, really diving deep into
Megan Murray: our revenue, understanding our book of business, understanding the drivers of our growth. So tying that back to understanding who our top 50, who our top clients, are, what are the sources of our growth, and what are the natures of those relationships that they have with eman? And what are the sources and drivers of churn? How does M. And A. And consolidation impact our top line outcomes, so there'll be a lot of work there that will help us get our arms around in a better, more transparent, consistent way.
Megan Murray: The puts and takes that are impacting our revenue and our arr numbers investments ensuring that we're ensuring there are, excuse me, ensuring our investments are aligned with our protecting growth strategy and tech modernization efforts. And this third bullet will be a newer one that we started to work on this past year in partnership with folks in Jason Novak's organization and and Nic's organization, but really starting to
Megan Murray: work towards putting into place of fin Ops mindset of finaps practice as we expand our utilization of cloud services. We really need to enhance our capability there to ensure that we have more predictable capabilities related to cost modeling. As we expand our our usage there moving down. So we think about number one. It's more focused on kind of that calendar year impact of our Pnl.
Megan Murray: but all of that feeds into our multi-year plan. So building on that understanding the drivers of growth really ensuring, we're on track to hit our multi-year plan goals. We've talked about the objective of hitting 40% market share and doing so in a profitable way. So as we look out across the industry and our landscape and our product roadmap and our clients and our customers. We need to keep our finger on the pulse, manage the risks and opportunities that present
Megan Murray: themselves. Every day. We need to look across the org and make sure we're set up for success, and that all of us and our teams have what we need to execute effectively. We need to provide actionable insights and analytics to to demonstrate that we're tracking and demonstrate where we might be at risk to hitting our goals and again, continuing that theme of roi and ensuring that our investments are aligning with a multi-year plan
goal as well as kind of that short term calendar year goals.
Megan Murray: When I think about the functions within the finance team, there's still work to do as we continue to evolve some of the newer capabilities across our team. We did a lot of work this year with the Enterprise. Pmo. Sonia Melissa did a lot of great work, but there's still more to do as we look to evolve that team and the impact they have. And Eric and Sonia Melissa are working towards that data and analytics off to a great start. But the team has been actively working with
Michelle and John, thinking, through what's the charter for Day 2. So we'll be partnering with Jason Novak and John, as we think about that procurement.
Megan Murray: similar great work done to get the procurement practice up and running. But we know that we want to continue to evolve the strategies there and the impact. And then automation kind of that revenue Ops mindset. We've done a lot of great work to enable and increase the throughput and optimize the customer experience from the very first time they engage with you money during that sales cycle. So we really want to continue to focus on removing that friction and streamlining, our ability to improve throughput there
Megan Murray: and then leading and growing the team. So development plans, engagement in person collaborations. So all of this continues to be top of mind for us, and we'll think very purposefully as we continue to evolve kind of this new way of working.
Megan Murray: Okay, legal.
Megan Murray: So as we look at the work the legal team has underway proactive management of our commercial contracts in partnership with cross-functional teams, Oscar talked a lot about this. This is a team sport, but there's a lot of lot of work that we can do here, as we think about. I'd say, kind of applying a strategic lens towards contract management with our commercial relationships. So the legal team
Megan Murray: has an expertise to apply here to help us think more about how we can drive value creation in our relationships with our clients. There's opportunity for us to continue to be more proactive, as contracts are kind of sitting in that red line stage back and forth as we're going through the sales cycle and helping that top of mind and helping us understand what the barriers are, and and putting more proactive measures in place
Megan Murray: and the renewal strategy. So I know as we continue to evolve our enterprise, strategic account management practices. Renewal is a big piece of this. We have a lot of very complex relationships with our large clients and getting after that with a long lead time is really important. So we can put the right strategy in place to optimize those renewals.
Megan Murray: privacy and risk management. You'll hear a little bit more about this from Jason Novak. There's still work to be done there. We've talked about this. It's still incredibly important for us and Adam and the team in partnership with Jason. We continue to stay focused on this specific area around our data agreements. Let's ensure we have the right framework in place. Let's close any gaps
Megan Murray: and let's continue to partner with the INFOSEC team and fidelity to evolve our overarching kind of privacy policy framework across the organization and similar to the finance team, the high performing team. So let's focus on development plans. And let's continue to focus on engagement in person and virtual as needed.
And with that I am turning it over to Jason.
Jason Novak: Thank you, everyone II feel like, Frank and Megan have taken some of my bullet points, so I we'll won't go through all of them again. But one of the things I've been, you know, reaching for a while is, you know, kind of 3 main pillars in in the technology space. Right? One, we wanna make sure we're delivering scalable stable applications, whether it's salesforce or production applications or internal systems. Things like that.
Jason Novak: The other is securing our data and our customer data. Right? We wanna provide not only stable but scalable platforms, but secure platforms. And then, lastly, is supporting our internal and external customers. So as I go through. And you know.
Jason Novak: look at, you know, focus areas that that's always kind of my, you know, 3 pillars from a It perspective. So I've broken it out into. You know the 5 primary verticals within my organization. First off, we have our enterprise and internal systems. We're gonna continue to gather on, deliver our internal client technical and process needs. So Rachel and John's team working with various business units.
Jason Novak: you know, gathering requirements, gathering technical needs. I mentioned some of you know Frank mentioned some of the work he's done right. So we're gonna deliver the Serve self service portal for Cm. Csm home Office contacts. In a, in addition to that, we have the implementation, which is gonna you know, be a be a pretty big lift there. But you know, we're, gonna you know, work with various be used to, you know, improve any technology processes.
Jason Novak: And then talked about fin Ops. Right? So we're doing some preliminary work on you know, sas space platforms and over utilization under utilization. You know, sas sprawl, shadow it. Things like that. So to kind of get a further handle on what sas space apps are out there, and how can we bright size those applications and either retire or expand.
Jason Novak: Next, you know, we'll focus in the production operation space, key goal. Here is, maintain operational excellence of existing ema application environment while supporting our cloud monetization efforts. So for years to come, we're gonna be operating in a hybrid model. So that means we need to support stuff both on Prem as well as new efforts in the cloud lining with a product. And
Jason Novak: you know, our engineering and architecture teams key areas. That is a lot of maintenance and keeping the lights on as well as enhancing various technology stacks. So we have our simple 2022 migration and upgrades. I think one of the big ones here is Mvp. Of Eks, which is elastic Kubernetes service which kinda will be a a basis for our our development teams to to deploy to running out in aws.
Jason Novak: And then, lastly, we have to. We have to play this balance of maintaining environment that still resides on Prem. But you know, you know, can can meet our aws needs. And balancing out like our internal storage and compute versus, you know, on prem versus cloud
Jason Novak: moving down, we we talked about an information security perspective. I think it's simple, right protect our data and our customers. Data both on Prem and in the cloud.
Jason Novak: we have
Jason Novak: over 5 trillion dollars. I would say. I think it's 5.3 trillion dollars of of aum assets under management, aggregated data. We have millions and millions and millions of account numbers. We have millions and millions of social security numbers as well as usernames and passwords.
Jason Novak: So the sole purpose there is to make sure that data doesn't get leaked doesn't get breached. And you know we have a lot of operational things that we do to, you know, to, you know.
Jason Novak: to ensure. And you know, putting controls to to prevent that from happening. Standard maintenance, and, like firewall firewall upgrades you know, again going back to the aws theme and cloud theme monetization transit gateway, which lets us communicate efficiently, effectively out to aws from our on-premise environments.
Jason Novak: And then, I wanted to touch base on this one a little expanding our bug bounding program. So we actually believe it or not, we offer rewards for registered hackers to King to check out credentials to one of our our testing environments and then try to break the system.
Jason Novak: And we called our bug bounty program in a sense that you know, if they find flaws in our platform we'll give them a reward. So we want to expand. It's been one of the most beneficial programs that we've implemented. We actually, we, we've, you know, identified a lot of issues which our normal penetration testing hasn't discovered. And it's just been a great program. So we wanna increase our bounty pool and continue to do the ongoing remediation effort, remediation efforts with our development teams
Jason Novak: moving down the stack. We have 4 pops and telecom. We're kinda grouping those 2 together. And this really is about redundancy extending our network and reducing fris friction. So without getting 2 technicals. We have some redundant work that's gonna go into place to to make our environments even more redundant, or add an additional layer of redundancy. Again direct connects to aws. Fall into here. Making sure we have the most efficient
Jason Novak: path and pipeline from our on premise. Data centers out to our cloud environments. And then one of the big ones here is our migration of our fmri vdi infrastructure from Chenai to us. So we actually have a pretty decent size infrastructure running in a gene environment over at Fmri.
Jason Novak: And it's coming of age. It's been there since we deployed. We've maintained it. Kept, you know, kept it up to date. But we wanna we wanna kind of modernize that stack and and bring it back
Jason Novak: on, you know back to the Us. And just yeah, make things more efficient there and then. Lastly, automation of new hire and transfer processes. Some, some, you know, service. Now work there and then. Lastly, like
Jason Novak: Megan mentioned. You know, trm, right, technology risk management. That's our acronym for that and privacy. So we're gonna continue to identify and manage risk and then enhance right size. Our privacy efforts.
Jason Novak: you know, right off the bat we have. You know, we need to meet as a internal risk group on a quarterly basis. We also have our arc meeting with Fidelity next week. So you know, we have those 2 2 events taking place. We always have our sock to work. That's ongoing. Right? So sock 2, type 2 is year round testing. In addition to that we are fortunate to have fidelity come in first half of the year to conduct kind of we're calling it the the plumbing.
Jason Novak: And you know, piping up the Aws environment. So we're going to be undergoing a fidelity audit.
Jason Novak: Mega mentioned the the privacy work. Right? We're we're getting through the backlog of Pia's. We're trying to make it streamlined and efficient implementing risk based approach to that right? So so you know, when do we need a pia, when don't we? Is it a matter of re, you know, amount of records, things like that?
Jason Novak: And then, you know, lastly, we're gonna have our ongoing customer due diligence and third party oversight. These are day to day stuff that teams
Jason Novak: work on it and streamline. I do wanna
Jason Novak: just put this out here last year the team. I'm gonna call it 800. It was 799. But the team. the the technology risk teams addressed 800 customer security. Due diligence requests
Jason Novak: it within the year. It was the largest we ever done, and this ranges from things like you know. Hey? Send me your stock to report to full blown on site audits from Bank of America, from Wells, Fargo, from Pnc. Now, Jp. Morgan Chase with you know their acquisition. So you know that that is a huge lift you know, ongoing work there. So with that, I believe I'm sending it over to Matt.
Jason Novak: Thank you all.
Matt Schulte: Thanks, Jason. I'll try to be quick here, so we can stay on track time. Wise since Fpg operates and supports across so many business units with the company. Many of our initiatives are aligned very
Matt Schulte: well with other business unit goals and initiatives that you'll see here this afternoon. I'll start at the top fpg is obviously actively engaged in supporting our product evolution. As we continue to support the dual mandate that has been talked about here in town halls before. We will continue to knock off
Matt Schulte: roadmap items. What's even better is when those enhancements also close a competitive gap. That we have. And and we did that in 23, for example, in the Monte Carlo Space when we added Monte Carlo.
Matt Schulte: solvers! And when we created the enhancements to be able to allow advisors to to display and talk to individual Monte Carlo trials. You know, these are incredibly impactful enhancements because they help advisers with the story telling that so important to their engagements. With advisors, and we expect there's going to be more opportunities, obviously, in 24
Matt Schulte: to close any additional gaps. And the added benefit is that when we address some of these items, there's a direct relationship with the increased loyalty scores that we all have seen here in the last couple of years. So my team loves being, you know, involved in supporting our product and technology teams here.
Matt Schulte: When we can so directly impact the experience of our users. A another item I'll mention here another one of the bullets mentioned under under product evolution is that as we move into 24 and we continue to build out an assessment on how and where we might apply things like AI and machine learning to our suite of capabilities.
Matt Schulte: that will allow us to, you know, automate certain activities and really save our users. Meaningful time. And this is gonna create opportunities for Fpg to collaborate across the company to develop some content and thought leadership pieces. For this space as a market leader. We will, you know, continue to be looked to
Matt Schulte: for what our vision is in this space. As it continues to evolve. So it's important for us to stay focused and and deliver here.
Matt Schulte: as we look at.
Matt Schulte: You know the sales and marketing support that we do.
Matt Schulte: We're gonna continue to do what what we have been doing. We're gonna work with Oscar to build upon the already deep engagements. That we have with both the advisor and Enterprise sales teams looking to cement and formalize
Matt Schulte: a bit more. You know those relationships. That we're already so proud of. Similarly, with with marketing, our focus is gonna be to continue to partner on. You know the value, added content creation? Like the candid conversations, ebooks that we used in some of our
Matt Schulte: lead generation efforts over 23. Additionally, you know, we we're gonna continue to be heavily involved in the creation and delivery of, you know, a host of different demand campaigns across the board. So whether you're talking about named accounts, whether you're talking about partner specific campaigns. To the content around our broad based. Continuing Ed program.
Matt Schulte: much of that content is is built and delivered by folks across the Fbg team. And we're gonna continue to do that.
Matt Schulte: So when we look at
Matt Schulte: the client adoption front.
Matt Schulte: Our practice management team has been and is gonna continue to be, deeply involved in the cross functional work. Around better understanding our client base as experts on the industry
Matt Schulte: on Emani.
Matt Schulte: And you know how our enterprises can best use E money. You know, they're gonna be central to the discovery conversations that are needed with both clients and prospects. And they're gonna work with teams in sales and product and relationship management as as we continue to evolve our our company wide and targeted. Approach to these clients. With our evolving product strategy. And additionally, as we
Matt Schulte: as a company, better understand the buying decisions, the strategies and success criteria of our clients.
Matt Schulte: We, an Fpg are gonna be better positioned to build and deliver, you know, targeted adoption campaigns and the specific playbooks that our practice management teams, you know, we've delivered those in accelerate engagements, and we have opportunities to deliver similar work in the enterprise space.
Matt Schulte: and we'll do that
Matt Schulte: as we as we look to the final one there, financial wellness.
Matt Schulte: we, you know, we hope to continue to create kind of awareness and education, both internally and externally. Around wellness. You know whether you're talking about the heart of advice, blog, whether you're talking about our internal employee workshops, media and press opportunities. And the summit.
Matt Schulte: we're gonna continue to talk to that intersection of financial planning and financial wellness that we kind of exist within.
Matt Schulte: And when it, you know, when it comes to our efforts internally.
Matt Schulte: we we want to hear from you guys. So whether we're talking about new or different topics for those education, workshops and sessions, or whether you have other ideas on how we, as the in house planners, can help you all with, you know the financial issues and decisions you're you're dealing with day in and day out. We'd love to hear from you on, on how we can do that even better.
Matt Schulte: And another item I wanted to to talk to was the bullet here on professional advancement. We an Fpg. Will continue to support and enhance our. You know, our educational offerings that target our current advisor market as well as those for next gen professionals. We.
Matt Schulte: We continue to utilize that continuing Ed program I mentioned earlier to drive and deliver audiences back to e-money services and products.
Matt Schulte: While hopefully giving a a little bit of boost to the brand as well. But additionally, when when looking at the next gen professionals, the university program that we've created you know, and the corresponding certification program have all been received so well. And in 23 we grew that to 140 university relationships that we're supporting
Matt Schulte: at various levels. So in 24, we're gonna be more focused on improving the experience of those going through those programs. Not necessarily in growing the number. You know. Unfortunately, it's a little bit more of a manual process than we would like. So we're gonna be refining the experiences to to improve what people are realizing. And so, you know, we we believe there's a real competitive advantage here for e-money. And what a better place to have it, you know.
Matt Schulte: working with the advisors of the future, and having a competitive advantage in that space, I'll just share one anecdote before I end here. We had somebody on the team who was attending a conference and was sitting on a panel with somebody from Moneyguide pro and right capital
Matt Schulte: talking about what they can provide to program directors and students who are going through some of these programs
Matt Schulte: and halfway through
Matt Schulte: they stopped asking E money any any any questions, and just started pummeling these other 2 with, when are you gonna be able to deliver what e-money can deliver? When are you gonna be able to offer what they can? So it was. It was a unique panel experience, because we were able to kinda gloat and sit back. But you know it, it's something we hope to continue to build on that advantage going forward. So
Matt Schulte: that is it for me? I'll hand it off to Rachel on the marketing side.
Rachel Eccles: Yeah, thanks, Matt.
Rachel Eccles: So in marketing our main focus for 2024 really, not fundamentally different than what we have always been focused on. And that's really about amplifying our brand, so ensuring everyone in our addressable market knows the money and has a positive brand perception. So we can continue to grow our market leadership position
Rachel Eccles: and driving demand for our solutions, all with the objective of helping sales. Build pipeline and take down revenue goals. So our key initiatives for 2024 are no different. And you'll see, we really have 4 here that we're focused on as a team in partnership with all our business partners across the organization. So I'll take you through just high level these 4.
Rachel Eccles: The first one's about elevating the brand and enhancing our product story. So couple of key initiatives here that we'll be focused on in the first half of the year. As you all are probably aware, we rolled out a new corporate website and a new visual brand in the second half of last year. And since then we've been optimizing that site and so really digging into metrics and understanding how we can continue to make updates to the site so that we're bringing in more of the right visitors
Rachel Eccles: who can consume the right content that they need to be closer to a decision. And then funnel that demand over to sales to to take down revenue. We're also really focused on making sure that we're amplifying the great product story that we have to tell this year. And that's through our thought leadership themes and disseminating those out into the market doing more speaking opportunities, at events, where we're telling the story of our product vision, why, we're developing what we're developing and how it's going to enhance our clients experiences with our platform.
the first one coming up at T. 3, which is just in about a week.
Rachel Eccles: And then finally really focusing on making sure that we are executing flawlessly around our go to market strategies and you'll see the client portal redesign here as a big one everyone across the org has been focused on this.
Rachel Eccles: But we're not only making sure that our clients are aware and excited about the enhancements that we're doing to our portal, but that they're going to have a seamless experience when we roll those designs out and they can move from their current interface to it to a new, more valuable interface. So a lot of work behind the scenes to make that happen in partnership with with the rest of work.
Rachel Eccles: the second initiatives about driving client retention and growth definitely a theme that continues to come up throughout the session today.
Rachel Eccles: Probably you know I could argue. This is maybe even bigger focus for us in 2024 than ever before. Really, taking a look at pricing and packaging strategies, making sure that our clients have an exceptional experience, and that they have a mechanism to grow their relationship with e-money when they're ready to do so, so identifying those
clients who are ready to continue to grow and driving that demand to sales, but also making sure that our advised individual advisers and our Home office execs that our largest enterprises have a really flawless experience adopting our platform and finding value from it.
Rachel Eccles: Thirdly, hitting demand and revenue goals arguably everything we do in marketing ends up leading back to this objective.
Rachel Eccles: you know, driving of the leads that we do to the advisor sales team every month and making sure that we are maniacally focused on hitting those goals, not only from a volume perspective, but carefully inspecting leads and making sure that we're improving the quality and the conversion rates of those leads so that our Scr. Team has what they need to book meetings, and our sales team has what they need to close those business.
Rachel Eccles: Then, working really, really closely in partnership with enterprise sales to drive more targeted campaigns for those accounts that we know we have the best chance of closing in 2024. Whether that's deeper segmentation or more personalized messaging.
Rachel Eccles: you know, presentation decks campaigns even to the extent of doing personalized vip hosted events across the Us. Invite only to our to our most impactful prospects and clients. So all tactics that will continue to refine in 2024 and do more of
Rachel Eccles: and then finally, fostering our cross team collaboration efforts. So this is really about not only transparency and alignment, as you see here, but process improvement. And we can't do what we do without the right people, process and technology in place, and the partnerships that that we forge across across the company with all of the other be used here. So this year it's really about taking a look at the processes that are in place, refining them, identifying gaps.
Rachel Eccles: documenting processes, and making sure that we have the right mechanisms for knowledge, sharing across the team and then improving the technology platforms that we use every day to do what we do. Making sure that they're effective and efficient for us. Taking a deeper look at our martic stack. Are there efforts to consolidate tech? Is there efforts to upgrade tech? So a lot of work here.
Rachel Eccles: And then some of the call outs that you'll see on here are looking at our go to market process and working really closely with our business partners across the org to make sure that we have really well defined approaches to how we take products to market and the stages that a product goes through throughout that process.
Rachel Eccles: So a lot of work behind the scenes. A lot of partnership effort here, working closely with with everyone on this call and your teams to make this happen in 2024. So
Rachel Eccles: with that I will pass it over to Joanne in Px.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): Thanks, Rachel.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): Alright. So for us, we're gonna start with the employee engagement and retention. As many of you know. We're in the performance management cycle. Closing out 2023. So we've gone through performance. Calibration. One to really just thank all the leaders on this call for your partnership throughout this process. It was probably one of the smoothest running performance calibrations that we've had to date.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): So I really appreciate your support and partnership there. As does my team. We will look to focus on succession planning. So really working with the CLT. And their directs to understand their leaders, and who, on their leadership team, is ready for the next role.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): What does that next role look like? And is there additional trainings or resources they need to get there.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and we're looking to involve evolve. Our instructor led training to increase part participation. We've heard some several folks that they're. They're little lengthy at most of the time. They're about 4 h. So we're gonna look at those materials to see if there's a way that we can like shrink it down to about 2 h without losing the integrity of those programs. So we'll be working and focusing on that.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): The Eec is at work with their events. Calendar so they are on their way. So you'll see some of those announcements coming out, and life any money, and we'll have it on the intranet.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): I do want to just do a shout out to our charitable giving campaign that ran a campaign at the end of the year. With a very aspirational goal of to reach to reach 30,000 dollar target of employees, participating in charitable giving. And I'm happy to report that it was reached. So thank you to everybody that's on this call that participated. We ended with $30,627.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): That was doing it to over 118 causes, which is almost an 18 increase from our our numbers in 20 23. So amazing results there
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and then we will be doing a poll survey with engagement. On in response to engagement, survey their full survey that we did in 2022 in May, which will kind of pull out those things that we were doing well to ensure that we still are, as Susan mentioned, as well as those things where some of our business use been working on to see if we've made any progress there.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): Next is total rewards. After we get through our final calibrations, comp calibrations are coming up in the next couple of weeks to close out 20 23 we will be doing a full benefit review, which means we look at every benefit that we offer our suite of benefits.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): benchmark against competitors, look at our providers, and pricing, and all that, to determine what our next steps are, or if there's any needs to restructure, or any changes that are necessary, so that work will kick off, more than likely in March.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): We are very focused on a wellness series. Hope everybody got their fit kits and are using them. But there'll be more programs like that that we'll put out throughout the year.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): As well as job description project that we're going to put in place where we're going to begin to look at all job descriptions that are 2 years or older. And work with leaders just to ensure that they're still relevant, and we're not missing anything. Is we all continue to evolve. And we're asked to do things differently when just make sure that our job. Descriptions are really reflective of what the work that's being done.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): So that will happen.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): We're going to continue to foster an inclusive and diverse workplace. We're going to launch Dei learning for all employees. In the upcoming months. There are, though, prior to that there's some learning journeys that are out there and dig. So please take advantage of some of those that we have put together.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): We will continue to focus on a diversity of candidates for any open roles that we're currently recruiting for
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and we'll continue to just identify different trainings, such as the real talk series. Which, if you hadn't had a chance to participate. We'll have quite a few more of those in 2024. Really take the time we've gotten really great feedback for those that have participated. Coming soon. Pam. Just put the chat activating inclusion. Thanks, Pam and then we will continue to monitor our Dei progress as well
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and then dig optimization. We're continuing to look at our onboarding platform for our new hires. I'm happy to say that we just launched a series of videos that walk through how to navigate adp
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): lifeity money
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): starting to build out your goals, or throughout the year. If there's something you just want to remember, and you want to make sure it's there. Maybe it's something you did during the year that you want to make sure you capture in your review. It's your own personal note. Section which is a really great enhancement, so that features out there as well.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): And then compliance, everybody's favorite subject. We will continue to stay. Care with all labor laws and regulations per state they change regularly frequently, and not during any not like with any kind of timeline, so they can happen in any moment. So we're continually staying up to date as we partner with our legal team, Adam and the legal team to assist us with some of that
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and to ensure that our policies and practices align as well with legal requirements.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): And with that I think I will turn it over to Tom
Thomas Sullivan: right like a Joanne. So lot of great work in 2,023 be remiss if I didn't thank all of the people that helped us, I believe, transform the way that we delivered software here. Do you money?
Thomas Sullivan: I think not only in the way that we delivered software. But the way that we collaborated and partnered across all of the groups, I think, was amazing. So I think collectively, our strengths and working together is going to allow us to find creative ways to get more value to our customers faster.
Thomas Sullivan: And so no shock here. As Susan mentioned, our strategy remains unchanged to continue to protect and grow our core while we modernize our tech and liver core values.
Thomas Sullivan: Obviously the product strategy has to be aligned to that. So we are going to continue to try to build on the positive momentum gained in 2,023. We are going to stay the course
Thomas Sullivan: and we're gonna focus on the areas that matter, so that we can get more value to our clients. And so we we call these initiatives, the the 3 Ds.
Thomas Sullivan: There's this constant discovery, development and delivery. As the executive team knows, I like to talk in threes, it's easier to remember, so I'll say it again. The 3D's. However, you want to think about it, discover, develop, and deliver. And so it's very important here. That we take the upfront time to really understand what the market is telling us, and we have a phenomenal group of people here that do tremendous research for us to get us the data that we need
Thomas Sullivan: to make the right decisions in terms of where we want to invest our time and energy so that we can be making sure that we're aligned with what our customers need to not only help us protect and grow our business, but also to allow them to protect and grow their business as well. So in the discovery phase it's continuous. We continue to explore and test and validate our hypotheses.
Thomas Sullivan: to determine where we should invest our time and resources, and we do that in a number of ways to gather the information that we need. We do it via market research. So a lot of folks are familiar with the work that Linda and Alex and their teams did to really uncover the
Thomas Sullivan: the value tied to our client portal, and you saw us adjust rapidly to that by saying, Hey, this is an area that we need to dive deeper into. Is this an area that we need to invest in. But we take that high level information. Then we go to Kara's group and we go, hey, let's test out some concepts before we write any code to talk to actual users of our software to solicit that feedback, to say, Hey, this is a problem worth solving.
Thomas Sullivan: We also do that via a number of different steering groups. All of our group product managers actually meet with their representative clients and users to bounce ideas off of them, to make sure that we are focusing on the things that matter. Most of their business.
Thomas Sullivan: but probably, most importantly, is getting out on the road and speaking to clients. This is where the validation actually happens. And this is an area where, in partnership with sales and relationship management, Fpg.
Thomas Sullivan: we spent a lot of time last year getting out and talking to our clients, sharing our roadmap and having them share their roadmap as well, and one of the things that was
Thomas Sullivan: a real positive development for us
Thomas Sullivan: was that our strategy and their strategies couldn't be more perfectly aligned.
Thomas Sullivan: And so we take that information. We validate that information. And then we've gotta go back. And we've gotta develop a strategic roadmap. And as you all know, we need to develop a roadmap that supports the dual mandate.
Thomas Sullivan: We need to make investments in the areas that matter, most of our customers.
Thomas Sullivan: but equally important. We need to spend the time and the resources to modernize the tech that will enable us in the future to deliver more value to our clients. And so we'll continue to be organized around 4 Values streams. You'll hear me talk about this all year. In the coming weeks our product team will be walking you through the roadmap. But
Thomas Sullivan: it's worth reminding people. The focus areas is to continue to provide a best in class advisor planning experience. We are the best in financial planning
Thomas Sullivan: to continue to deliver the best client experience via our portal to support a client-led and divisor led experience.
Thomas Sullivan: Aggregation is obviously core to any client portal. The research states that one of the most important things in any client portal is the ability for a client to see all of their assets. We have a world class aggregation, capability that we are looking forward to bring to market in many different ways.
Thomas Sullivan: and we also recognize that many of our enterprise. Clients want to use us differently. And so we will continue to invest in the areas of Apis and components to allow our clients to create their own unique and digital client experiences.
Thomas Sullivan: And then, finally. it's really about speed to value right? How quickly can we respond to what the market is telling us
Thomas Sullivan: market leaders need to be agile. They need to be able to take information in quickly, organize around that information and make sure that if there's a perceived gap to Match Point. We fill it. If we see there's a new opportunity that we can be the market quicker than the competitors.
Thomas Sullivan: And so we've done a lot of really good work in and around the creating a methodology. We'll call it the E money agile. We kind of moved away from safe. We learned a lot of stuff during the safe as a framework.
Thomas Sullivan: But I think collectively, our product team, our development team, our program management team
Thomas Sullivan: really did a lot of homework to try to identify what are ways that we can be more efficient so that we can get more value to customers quicker.
Thomas Sullivan: And so having this agile mindset and ability to look at problems differently, identifying ways to solve those problems in a way that may not be linear but really focusing on, on? How do we deliver fast, predictable, and consistent value to help us protect and grow our business? And we may leave some bounds in that area. So
Thomas Sullivan: really, not a lot's changed. I know a lot of people are probably upset that we're not pivoting and changing our product strategy, but unfortunately gonna have to loop with this one. We feel it's a winning recipe here. We're doing what all market leaders do. We're staying close to our clients both internally and externally.
Thomas Sullivan: We're gonna be data driven. And we're gonna make sure that we're set up to when we see an opportunity to deliver in an expedient fashion. And so with that I am gonna turn it over to my partner and Crane on prime Mister Delissi
Thomas Sullivan: and Nick, I left you 9 min.
Nick DiLisi: Thanks, Tom.
Nick DiLisi: I won't need 9 min. I don't know if I ever went last. And it it's interesting perspective going last. But I wrote down on Susan said, on Slide 12, right. We all know that
Nick DiLisi: 3 main strategic priorities, right, which is protect and grow the core profitably. Make measurable improvements in our technology. Modernization.
Nick DiLisi: And you know, live our core values. And and what I would say is just watching everybody go before me right? It's
Nick DiLisi: it's great to see all the bits and pieces. And I feel like from a technology standpoint, it's really about
Nick DiLisi: execution. They would say that from all the different business units, and Oscar started us off with how it's a team sport. But it really comes down to when we laid out a roadmap in 2023.
Nick DiLisi: It was a multi year plan, and it wasn't like we were done. We we still have more work to do. We did a lot in 2023. There's a recording that was done in December with product and technology
Nick DiLisi: that went for more than 2 h. It was like 2 and a half hours of all the achievements of the teams. It's a great recording that we should share.
Nick DiLisi: I'll send it so we can share it in life. Any money.
Nick DiLisi: But it's more of this, more of the same. But it's the rest of the roadmap is what I would say in the Multi Year Plan. So from plan planning modernization, right? We still have a lot that needs to get done right, we're releasing our new reports architecture to production? Are we focused on free areas, facts.
Nick DiLisi: reports, and presentations? And the simulation right? Calculations in the SIM engine. One of the things is client portal. We I call it refacing to modernization. Right? We're having a refacing work that's being done that has right now, I call tentative for a minute. March fifth
Nick DiLisi: release to the world, right to our independent advisors. But making sure enterprises. There's a lot of work not just
Nick DiLisi: doing the client portal. But it's great to see. I call it the similar topics in areas of focus. Because I think when we focus
Nick DiLisi: we achieve great things, unified presentation and fax more in reports and decision center and obviously client-side components is another area that we're focused on.
Nick DiLisi: In 2024, with many of the enterprises right? Either taking our Apis that exist or saying, Hey, we don't have a a big budget. So if you have components that we can include into our
Nick DiLisi: client experience. Right? We'll take your components. So we're going to get the first suite of those client-side components out. This year
Nick DiLisi: in terms of Ag call it more of the same from a modernization standpoint. Right? We in 2023 did bulk file processing. It's get it into production. Get some workload in that production right? Megan hinted at the whole fin ops
Nick DiLisi: stuff. So we're like, we're not rushing it all into production, because that would just be
Nick DiLisi: not responsible on our part. Right? We're, how do we start to get workloads into production? So bulk file processing will start to see the later day in production in the cloud, in 2,024 greater automation from our gatherers.
Nick DiLisi: and rolling out our Api, one
Nick DiLisi: to our to our partners there. A lot of work has been done on the aggregation side to update those Apis right? And
Nick DiLisi: I'll say, reduce core and maintenance. We have a lot of
Nick DiLisi: old stuff one of the areas we're trying to. I call an area focus. Here is the Octa migration. Last year we did phase one which was to get the independent Ema users over onto Octa. We still have work with Sso. And all partners, and Apis over to Octa. That'll be
Nick DiLisi: the majority of the work happening in 2024 and then migrate our vault storage. Earlier this morning we had a conversation about this of how we get the vault. Out of sequel database
Nick DiLisi: that
Nick DiLisi: could be big issues. Over to s 3 storage and into the cloud. People development again. He not only performance calibration that has happened in goals for 2024,
Nick DiLisi: but talent and career development focusing on those areas. That we have been working very hard with the Px
Nick DiLisi: folks and Mallory on that area. To lay lay that out. So it's it's
Nick DiLisi: in a way it's nice to see Joanne have that in hers. It's it's in mine.
Nick DiLisi: It was one of my things. So they all are related here, and then I would call the last one operational excellence that Tom alluded to. Emoni, agile or
Nick DiLisi: right. How do we start to think about these things? I call it on a score card. Right? How do we start showing month to month? Improvement? Right? The empirical numbers, because.
Nick DiLisi: like we all have the gut and things are better. But let's show the numbers right when you can quote things like a 97 C. Stack, score and look at the numbers right? I want to be able to show in the numbers how we have improved.
Nick DiLisi: And we have improved. And we have a ton of data. That Kristen and those folks Scott have right? It's putting it and getting it into a scorecard that we can start to
Nick DiLisi: share and socialize more on a monthly quarterly basis, and
Nick DiLisi: lot of work has been done. Towards the end of last year, that is, starting with the readouts around what I call throughput
Nick DiLisi: process that Melissa and all have started. We're.
Nick DiLisi: you know, we all love the book. I mean, product and technology fill a stupid rule. You know.
Nick DiLisi: how do we start to think about throughput and things that we're doing and like? Question, why are we still doing that? Do we need to do that. Is there a better way to do that?
Nick DiLisi: I think that's everything, for, like, how do we be? You know, have more agility with our teams and resources, and when things happen because they will happen, we have a roadmap. We're sticking to the roadmap, but as sales starts to
Nick DiLisi: I'll call it morph, the roadmap a little bit right? How do we get the right people and the right teams with the right skills?
Nick DiLisi: Onto those and and think differently about getting that done. So that's technology. We're
Nick DiLisi: we're in the I call it the trenches. It's where the game is. One in the trenches.
Nick DiLisi: We don't have any. I don't have any like
Nick DiLisi: 3D things like that. I'll try and think of a tush push type of thing for Philadelphia people. But but that's technology.
Nick DiLisi: I think that we go into goal setting
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): oops me again. Yeah. Goal setting open up on the sixteenth. You should. Everyone should have received an email on Tuesday, just to remind everyone. Please take a moment to read it. It also provides you resources if you just how to set goals, what you should be considering. So there's a lot of resources that you could also use there. But for all employees for all of us. It's January sixteenth to the twenty-sixth.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): If you're having any challenges with with goal setting or have any questions, your Px business partners can also help with that you can email us at the Px mailbox, and we can get back to you.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): And then managers have from January twenty-ninth to February ninth, to provide feedback on those calls. And then they could be submitted and approved. Final approval is on February 9 for managers.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and then june third to the fourteenth is midyear and I'm not gonna go down any further, because I don't think anybody wants to know about June, November, and December of next of this year. So let's let's just stay with the first half of the year. So next big thing is June third to the fourteenth employee, midyear check in and June seventeenth, through 28 manager approval for mid years.
Joanne Del Signore (she/her): and with that I think I turn it back to Gracie.
eMoney Webinars: That's correct.
eMoney Webinars: So I know we are at 4, 30, and there were 5 questions asked, one of which Frank
eMoney Webinars: addressed. So thank you, Frank?
eMoney Webinars: I think for the sake of of timing we'll probably end the session today. But please rest assured that the 4 individuals that have open
eMoney Webinars: questions, we will address them, whether it be a one on one basis or in our QA. Summary. When we put out the Town Hall replay in this Fridays. Likely money? Your questions will
eMoney Webinars: get answered. But again, I think for the sake of timing we'll we'll wrap today. It's been, you know, 90 full minutes of content, so I don't want to keep folks any longer than
eMoney Webinars: than we need to. But,
eMoney Webinars: again, if you have any additional questions. Feedback for us, please.
eMoney Webinars: Take the survey that will populate in your browser at when once I end the webinar today. But if there's any other if anyone else wants to add anything from the Clt perspective, please feel free. But I think we'll we'll end today's session.
eMoney Webinars: in just a few minutes. Few moments. Sorry.
eMoney Webinars: Okay.
eMoney Webinars: well, thank everyone.
Susan McKenna: Susan, just saying, Thank you. Everyone
Megan Murray: think so. Thanks. Everyone.