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Advent SoftwareAdvent Portfolio Exchange (APX)Best Client Reporting SolutionQ: Who are the top executives of the company?A: Pete Hess, CEO and president; James Cox, executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO); Todd Gottula, executive vice president and chief technology officer (CTO); and Doug Yokoyama, senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO).Q: Where is your company’s main headquarters?A: 600 Townsend St., Fifth floor, San Francisco, CA 94103.Q: What is the mission of your company?A: Advent’s core mission of helping our clients focus on their unique strategies and deliver exceptional investor service has never wavered. With unparalleled precision and ahead-of-the-curve solutions, we’ve helped our clients — from established global institutions to small start-up practices — to grow their business and thrive. From portfolio management, reporting, and accounting to research management, trading and order management, and compliance, Advent technology helps firms minimize risk, work together seamlessly, and discover new opportunities in a constantly evolving world. Together with our clients, we are shaping the future of investment management.Q: As of today, how many customers does the company have?A: Advent has more than 4,300 clients in more than 50 countries.Q: How does your company help with post-trade and compliance challenges?A: Advent Software provides solutions to support pre-/post-trade activities and compliance rules across all market segments. Clients experience enhanced transparency with greater visibility on positions, better-reconciled trades, and timeliness in terms of the post-trade process, which minimizes trade breaks and alleviates manual processes, improving levels of client services.Our comprehensive solution for compliance and portfolio monitoring allows clients to easily and accurately automate trading and portfolio policies. Our extensive sample rules, comprehensive rule coverage, convenient workflow, and seamless integration with trading mean the firm can manage the compliance workflow and safeguard the client commitments.Q: What were your company’s major achievements in 2013?A: The major achievements were as follows:• 2013 marked 30 years of delivering innovative investment solutions to the industry.• Black Diamond delivered key rebalancing enhancements, data mining capabilities, and deepened integrations with multiple customer relationship management (CRM) providers and custodians.• Global expansion — new clients and expanded operations in China, Canada, and Brazil.• Brought two product releases to the market across our suite of solutions.Q: What are your top goals for 2014?A: Top goals are as follows:• Continue to validate and grow our Advent Direct solutions.• Continue to roll out Advent Direct Investor Management to our client base.• Increase client satisfaction by continuing to design solutions globally from the start — making them easier to deploy, adopt and use — and by creating highly scalable solutions to grow as our clients grow.★BI-SAMBest Performance Measurement and Attribution SystemQ: Who are the top executives of the company?A: Alexandre Harkous, co-founder and CEO of BI-SAM; Christophe Volard, co-founder and managing director; Xavier Chaudé, co-founder and chief technology officer; William Haney, chief operating officer, enterprise software; Paul Mattison, chief financial officer and chief administrative officer; Jim Trotter, CIPM, managing director, performance and reporting services.Q: Where is your company’s main headquarters?A: Paris, France.Q: What is the mission of your company?A: BI-SAM is the leading provider for software and services to the global asset management industry. Many of the world’s largest asset managers have selected its unique combination of best products and qualified expertise to reduce their operational risks and costs, and to enhance their differentiation strategy while maintaining high levels of security, controls and processes.Q: As of today, how many customers does the company have?A: As of July 2014, BI-SAM has more than 45 clients.Q: How does your company help with post-trade challenges?A: We provide solutions and services to asset managers to manage their data, measure performance and risk analytics, and deliver reporting both internally and externally. We help them reduce their operational risks and costs, and help them gain and retain their investors.Q: What were your company’s major achievements in 2013?A: In 2013, BI-SAM grew its client base by more than 20 percent globally. We added new clients throughout Europe and North America that chose BI-SAM to support their local and global operating models.To support this business growth and maintain its market-leading position, BI-SAM strengthened its bench of talented professionals over the course of 2013 by recruiting 40 new employees. We made new hires at all seniority levels, in all areas (R&D, sales and marketing, account management, professional services) and in all regions. BI-SAM also expanded its global presence with the opening of companies in Geneva and Singapore.As well as expanding its size and reach in 2013, BI-SAM reinforced its commitment to significant investment in its professional staff and working practices, to ensure that all clients receive excellent service at all times. As part of this commitment, BI-SAM is actively supporting staff to achieve CIPM and CFA certification, further enhancing the level of expertise and quality of support available to its clients.Q: What are your top goals for 2014?A: Our top goals for 2014 include enhanced account management practices in order to continue providing superior products and services to our customers, as well as organizational changes to drive further growth strategy, and the launch of added-value services to provide benefits to more clients. 2014 has already seen a lot of our objectives reached and we will continue to work toward those goals.★• Announcement of the new Advent Direct cloud-based platform.08 • Rollout of Advent Direct Community to enhance client experience, provide transparency, and enable collaboration. Since its launch in September 2013 over 9,000 members have joined the Community. Additionally, the APX 14.1 release in May 2014 integrated suggestions that were sourced from clients on Community, such as enhancements to sync cost basis from custodians, along with initial coverage for the 2014 legislative requirements — the No. 1 request of the Advent Direct Community.See photos starting on page 38See photos starting on page 38AWARDS SUPPLEMENT 2014 | FTF NEWS MAGAZINE