At SS&C Advent, a company whose technology has been powering investment businesses around the world for decades, providing stability, security, and consistency in our mission-critical products and services has always been our front-and-center priority. At the same time, we recognize that in order to keep pace with the changing world, we have to think about more than just the technology that underpins our solutions.
In our product development work, we consciously try to foster and build on a few core values in our teams and people, so that we can ultimately deliver the best experiences and solutions for our clients. First and foremost among these values is curiosity. In an industry like ours, it’s easy to get stuck in a place of feeling that investment businesses have been run in much the same way for decades, so why change something that isn't broken? That is why it's incumbent on us to be curious, and to value and encourage curiosity on our teams – acknowledging that there's always something new to learn, and making sure we are open to trying new ideas. That is the cornerstone of our product development culture: a growth mindset in which people feel safe to express new ideas, test out theories, and learn from failures.
We also place a high value on respect. It's often tempting to want to build everything shiny and new, but in reality, we work on products and services that in many cases have been built over decades, and some of our most complex products today are the culmination of years of mistakes fixed, lessons learned, rigorous daily usage across many firms, and organic evolution. If you’ve ever heard of the Netscape story – a cautionary tale that stems from a belief that writing from scratch always leads to better results – it’s one that we take to heart, and as a result, we base our development strategy on rewriting some, but not all, of our legacy.
In Advent product development, we value diverse skillsets across the firm, whether it's the deep domain understanding of our clients’ businesses and challenges, or a natural proficiency in the latest cutting-edge technologies. When we combine those skillsets to solve problems together, that is when we are strongest.
In the end, delivering value for our clients is our number-one focus. That means being able to put ourselves in the client’s shoes, see things from their perspective, understand what matters to them, and putting that ahead of what matters to us. We come to work every day wanting to do something that will impress and delight our clients, and above all solve their problems and make their lives easier. When we can foster a strong culture of service and a growth mindset in our people, we can achieve almost anything. And it shows in the quality and performance of the solutions we produce.
