In previous blogs, we have talked about why we at @Kurtosys have chosen WordPress as our “content manager” for housing our suite of widgets, tools, APIs and data/content engines. WordPress is a flexible and user-friendly container for our clients to use as an end-to-end digital solution. We believe it’s a knock-out blow for all financial services firms, large and small, who are battling with the costs and hassles of working with proprietary CMS systems to manage their web presence efficiently – and with ease.
We love WordPress because of its functional breadth and the fact that our clients can easily use it on a day-to-day basis. We want our clients to be as self-sufficient as possible, only relying on us for the things they struggle with internally, like design, hosting, technology upgrades, version management and plumbing of data and content sources. WordPress is quite simply the most versatile offering for this. Their “open source” approach means the product gets better and richer every day. From a personal perspective, I’m delighted that our strategic “bet” on WordPress is paying off with many firms concluding that our stack meets all their needs.
So, what has Kurtosys done with WordPress to make it so suitable to our client base?
The answer lies in the complex mix of needs that asset and wealth managers require if they are to have a modern, progressive digital footprint. These needs are diverse and cover security, compliance, design flexibility, multiple content sources, and the ability to integrate with CRM and marketing automation.
Here’s how we have synthesized 10 essential customer requirements and incorporated them in our WordPress stack:
- “Bank Grade” Infrastructure: An all encompassing security and scalable infrastructure approach is essential in financial services. We have added and embedded many software and hardware features “around” WordPress to achieve this. This includes disaster recovery, failover, application and server monitoring, DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service), Two Factor Authentication, Akamai distributed CDN, daily site backups, and change logging (to satisfy WORM regulation).
- Modularized Page Templates: We have developed an extensive library of out-of-the-box page templates that can be used as a starting point for standard layouts of vital content sections such as news, products, team, insights, event pages and blogs. We also help our clients build these templates from scratch and ensure they are built in such a way that end users can manage content easily.
- Document/Literature Plugin: Managing documents and publications for fund managers is a non-trivial task. It’s a “many-to-many” problem where ranges, strategies, products, funds, and classes have to be mapped to a whole range of documents including prospectuses, annual/semi-annual reports, KiiDs, factsheets and sales aids to name a few. We have developed a meta-data based document plugin that makes the tagging of documents and the embedding of literature and document sections across your website a simple process.
- Fund Tools Plugin: We have developed a range of products and fund tools to integrate directly into investment managers’ sites. These are driven through our state of the art Unified Data Model technology and are designed to be extremely responsive in terms of rendering speed across all geographies. Our range continues to grow, but we have widgets that provide Fund Explorers, Fund Performance Widgets, Comparison tools and Profile tools.
- “Secure Area” Plugin: We have a range of secure access plugins that cater to varying requirements. For example, in the wealth management and administration segment we provide a strong form of authentication – which includes the option of mobile/text/voice as a two-factor authentication mechanism. We also allow for softer forms of authentication for gated content or regulatory bound content. Our plugins accommodate comprehensive needs for configuring features such as password strength and form, browser fingerprinting, challenge questions and registration/reset password automated workflow.
- CRM/MA integration: We have standardised Plugins for all major CRMs and MA systems, including Salesforce, Eloqua, Pardot, Marketo and more.
- Single Sign On: Using the SAML protocol, we are able to facilitate secure single sign-on through our WordPress portals into other secure applications in a seamless and elegant manner. This allows our clients to manage one identity source as well as newly emerging Identity platforms such as Okta.
- News and Video Feeds: We have a range of industry specific and standard RSS plugins including curated, tagged content from TrustNet and CityWire as well as video player plug-ins from all major providers.
- Publication Workflow: Publication of content in financial services firms generally requires role or individual name approval. This is not just for compliance, but is the standard within marketing departments to ensure appropriate workflows are in place and release of content is controlled. Within our WordPress stack for asset managers, we have developed a number of workflows that can be easily tweaked and adjusted to meet specific organizational nuances or simply be used out the box to institute more standard working practices.
- Multilingual Front End: Asset managers, even small boutiques, sell cross border. It’s an industry trait and we feel it is important that “satellite” offices can manage content on their own areas of the website or with some shared content on separate websites. We are able to configure WordPress so different content users in different geographies can work in the language of their choice. It’s a minor point in the grand scheme of things but again, extremely useful in “federating” content management across your organisation and giving ownership to your local marketing teams.
So, we hope you can see where our excitement and perhaps where some of our vision lies. We want to make a one-stop shop of digital platforms for all asset managers and investment firms. WordPress has proven to be an integral component of our shop.
