Phil Dias is the Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of Tier1 Financial Solutions. In our latest blog, Phil answers five questions about operational excellence and the evolution of Tier1.
What organizational changes have you seen across Tier1’s company culture in recent years?
PD: There’s been significant growth at Tier1 over the past couple of years. We’ve expanded our client base as well as our staff in New York, London, Toronto, and our new office in the budding tech city of Sudbury, Ontario.
As the company has quickly grown, we’ve adjusted our approach to applying more formal processes to our internal collaboration. Our meetings used to be informal and impromptu, but now we’re initiating scheduled, efficient and progress-driven meetings in remote locations with staff members in different cities. This necessitated more formalized internal discussions, additional documentation and proper dissemination of information across the company.
Our company culture has organically grown to have a thirst for constant innovation while paying close attention to the integrity of the products. The ability to keep up with the technology needs of the ever-evolving market and its regulatory landscape is a requirement that is much less forgiving. Implementing organizational processes has resulted in quicker, more informed decisions, smoother collaboration, and increased innovation.
What has Tier1 done to ensure that its brand image reflects changes that are taking place in the industry?
PD: We recently released our new brand due to the company’s evolution and the changing environment of the buy side and sell side. While we were founded with a strong pedigree of capital markets knowledge and technology experience, our thought leadership position allowed us to bring awareness to structural shifts and technology adoption trends among end-users and brought our communities together to facilitate conversation leading to innovation that will help the majority.
We’ve done a great job in recent years reaching out to our local communities in Canada, the US, and the UK about important areas where Tier1 can assist or provide guidance.
What type of innovation and ingenuity is Tier1 providing the industry?
PD: Our solutions are purpose-built, providing a level of sophistication not many can offer in our markets. The tools Tier1 provides not only give our buy- and sell-side clients an excellent head start, but they also enable clients to create product extensions to incorporate their unique strengths.
What users are looking for in a technology vendor is a trusted, strategic partner that not only provides guidance on what tools are suitable to their needs, but also the flexibility to be able to plug in those tools. The key is providing an adaptable solution that is able to evolve as quickly as the market landscape is changing.
How have your clients achieved greater success with the solutions Tier1 has provided?
PD: We’ve developed a great, collaborative client community, all with the goal to achieve optimal solutions to the challenges they face. What we’ve found is that it’s in the clients’ best interest to choose the data and product providers that they want to work with and it’s then our job to offer the flexible and interoperable platform for them to utilize. The best fintech ideas are developed through inter-organizational communication so that solution providers such as Tier1 can ultimately implement the tools that clients want, instead of us just serving them what we think they need.
Clients with the widest application of Tier1 solutions across multiple lines of business are in the best position to leverage all areas of the business and achieve the greatest efficiency and success.
What have been some of the biggest challenges in growing the Tier1 brand to what it is today?
PD: As Tier1 has grown, one of the hardest things is making sure that we continue to provide the highest level of service and responsiveness to each client inquiry. We listen carefully to every request and although all of them are valuable, we have to prioritize our roadmap based on what provides value to the entire client base. Our end goal is to always maintain the personal touch that will lead to growth among not only our client base but our internal team as well.