Effective case management is integral to success in financial services and wealth management, and no organisation is more aware of this than Netwealth, a top-200 ASX listed investment technology and administration company. That is why, in 2020, Netwealth turned to a proven, highly-configurable and easy-to-integrate case management system built on the Appian AI-Powered Process Platform.
Established in 1999 and headquartered in Melbourne, Netwealth provides a digital platform and administration solution that enables financial advisers and intermediaries plus end investors to help manage their super and investment portfolios, using a range of online features and access to a suite of domestic and international investment options.
Ageing case management system no longer fit for purpose
Netwealth’s incumbent case management system had served the business well for 10 years, but by 2020, the fast-growing business had outstripped its capabilities.
“We had already identified that to better serve our advisers and investors, and maintain our market-leading service, we needed to provide our staff with an enhanced system that would increase our efficiency and our ability to serve our clients,”,” explained Bernard Woolf, Product Owner, Netwealth. “
Rigorous evaluation prompts selection of a digital process management system built on the Appian AI-Powered Process Platform
With the existing system reaching end of life, Netwealth scanned the market and built an internal prototype against which to compare vendor systems and platforms. The business established its selection criteria as:
- Provides scalability and stability, ease of integration with other systems and can be configured and maintained by technical business users.
- Allows creation of customised workflows (recognising that teams work differently and business rules and regulatory requirements change over time).
- Contributes to strategic initiatives (including customer empowerment and operational efficiency).
- Has the capability to embrace and leverage current and future technologies.
- Leads to the full decommissioning of Netwealth’s incumbent system.
Following a rigorous evaluation process, the business decided a case management system built on the Appian Platform was the best fit for its needs.
“We chose Appian for a number of reasons,” said Woolf. “First, its digital process management is based on modern and highly configurable technologies, like being cloud-based, which aligns with our long-term technology strategy.
“Second, Appian’s architecture made the system easy to integrate with systems such as SharePoint, PowerBI and Zendesk.
“Third, the Appian Platform is proven and used by other financial services organisations in Australia and beyond.”
“Appian Accelerate” service enhances skills development
Appian’s project team engaged closely with Netwealth to identify ways its digital process management system could be tailored to meet the wealth management business’s needs. Through a series of sprints, extensive testing and migration processes, Netwealth went live with its application, known as Netflow, on the Appian Platform towards the end of 2021.
Netwealth initially decided to manage enhancements to Netflow with Appian partners, but after experiencing the power and potential of its new application, opted to establish an internal development team to build on the implementation team’s work using Appian Accelerate – a service designed to help Appian clients maximise the value of their investments – to transfer knowledge and skill development of the system to its internal team. That exercise saw all three Netwealth developers achieve Appian Associate Developer accreditation and work towards Senior Developer status.
Influencing product development through the Appian customer success team
Woolf described the Appian customer success team as providing “invaluable advice and knowledge” within Netwealth.
In addition, the Appian customer service team has introduced Netwealth to Appian’s United States-based product managers, enabling the wealth management business to make direct representations around product enhancements that would positively impact Netflow.
“They’ve also illustrated to our team and our wider business how Appian can solve business problems and provide efficiencies,” said Woolf.
Customising workflows to the needs of individual teams
With its new case management system in place, Netwealth has moved from a single workflow type that did not recognise the different needs of individual administration teams, to over 30 workflow types that enable individual teams to work more efficiently.
The business has improved the efficiency of service to clients thanks to straight-through processing and seamless access to information those clients may need.
Netwealth has also exposed workflow to end users to increase transparency, and to allow those users to self-serve more.
“This increased transparency also flows to internal stakeholders, as they have real-time access to the current workloads of our administration teams,” said Woolf. “This enables them to make informed decisions and reduce the number of internal queries, which results in more time for our administration teams to service clients.”
In addition, being able to fully decommission its incumbent on-premise case management system has enabled Netwealth to reduce its licensing costs and redeploy servers to other projects.
Continual enhancements on the Appian Platform
Netwealth is now working to enhance the existing Netflow application, and has identified a number of opportunities to create new applications. These will either supplement the existing application, be completely new, or designed to move existing processes on the organisation’s in-house platform to the Appian AI-Powered Platform.
Forrester Technology & Innovation APAC 2023
