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By Chris Whitside

A bold new statement of FundSERV's vision is setting the stage for business planning for the future. FundSERV aims to make the Canadian investment fund industry the world leader in automated processing of investment funds. Such a lofty ambition might be considered bluster if it weren't for the fact that it resulted from a mature and disciplined strategic planning process. FundSERV's management team hammered out a high-level plan for 2004-2005 after reviewing industry strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — information gleaned from every department over the year. The board of directors approved the plan in June, and the goals are now being incorporated into plans at the division and department levels.

Alan Hutton, president of FundSERV, says, "Business planning is not just a perfunctory step we take once a year; it's now part of an ongoing process. At every level, while serving our customers day to day, we are keeping our collective head up — thinking broadly and long term. The creation of a dedicated business development division illustrates our commitment to this broad-reaching management perspective and to the maturity of our strategic planning process."

The first step in the process involves lots of research into the marketplace and issues affecting FundSERV's customers. As well as a general scan of trends in the investment fund industry, FundSERV's planning team noted that its customers are confronted by some important challenges. Among other things, they're facing slower growth, escalating costs due to security and business continuity issues, rapid technology changes, industry consolidation, changing distribution and product mixes and regulatory oversight.

To respond to these challenges, FundSERV's new plan features four strategic imperatives. Carol De Veau, FundSERV vice president of business development, comments on each of these new imperatives.

Deepen customer relationships

"Our customers' business requirements are becoming more complex. In the first 10 years, FundSERV covered all the bases in terms of basic network communication and transaction processes. Now, however, we're seeing that one size does not necessarily fit all. Different types of customers and products have different requirements. To better understand those unique needs, we are creating a customer relations team with dedicated resources assigned to key customer groups. This team will be charged with upgrading our contact management and research so we can tailor our services for each customer segment."

Leverage the strength of our network, knowledge and relationships

"This is all about economy of scale. FundSERV needs to increase usage of the network to improve the return on investment for our customers. Once again this comes back to knowing our customers' needs better and making the network more flexible to meet those needs. That means we must be more creative about how we leverage the existing network and take advantage of the connectivity to deliver more services to the same customer base. FundSERV is more than just a system that moves files from point to point. It is also a network of people with invaluable knowledge to share. To leverage this knowledge further we will need to reach broader user groups to develop additional value-added services."

Develop world-class infrastructure

"We have identified 11 characteristics of world-class operations and will immediately be investing in those areas most important to our customers, such as business continuity. Some of the other areas to address include employee training, process and project management and customer relationship management (CRM) systems and processes. All of this is to ensure our success in the future through customer satisfaction, operational excellence and talent retention."

Achieve global-level performance standards

"It's not enough for FundSERV to be the best in Canada. We need to know how we're performing in comparison to similar operations around the world. We don't think we're behind our global peers. In fact, we suspect we may be leading in many areas. But it's critical that we know for sure by doing the research and by establishing benchmarks against similar entities for standards management, automation, best practices, business models and so on. Our goal is to ensure FundSERV meets or exceeds those benchmarks that are important to our Canadian customers."

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