AIM Software is building out its North American operations with a view to replicating the success of its European business. The company has recruited a number of senior executives to further its drive into North America and continues to invest in R&D and engage with its user community to develop enterprise data management applications.
To increase momentum in the US and Canada, AIM has hired Sanjay Vatsa as head of Americas. He joined the company in New York a couple of months ago, having previously held leadership positions at Citibank, BlackRock and Merrill Lynch. In his role at AIM, Vatsa will focus on expanding the company’s footprint in North America and ensuring success for the region’s user community. He is joined in the New York office by Jose Manso as sales director, and Jared Geer as sales executive. AIM’s senior product specialist, Adrian Englisch, has relocated from headquarters in Vienna to New York as director of professional services.
We caught up with Vatsa and Gayatri Raman, CEO at AIM Software, to discuss the company’s approach to North American markets and its broader global development. Vatsa says: “I joined AIM because of its value proposition. AIM provides business applications in the reference data space that promote straight-through processing and reduced total cost of ownership, and have configurable business rules enabling flexibility to meet the varying needs of our customers. AIM solutions can be implemented with minimal change to the out-of-the-box functionality. This productised approach to data management has found favour in Europe and is gaining traction in North America.”
Talking about the context of the company’s growth plans for North America, Raman explains: “We are owned by US private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS). The premise for WCAS’ investment in 2015 was to replicate AIM’s success in Europe in North America. AIM’s focus on business applications for the buy-side, backed up by a leadership team with expertise in Europe and North America, is helping AIM accelerate its growth in North America.”
Having built a team of 10 product, services and sales specialists in New York, and with plans to add more staff, AIM intends to improve its understanding of the client community and deepen its credibility. The company has six clients in North America – two wealth managers, one custodian, two asset managers in the US and one in Canada – and a total of about 100 worldwide, including both direct users of its GAIN enterprise data management platform and indirect users accessing the company’s solutions through partners.
Raman says the company’s success is based on its productised, modular business applications focused on the buy-side, and continual engagement with its user community on product direction. Her goal is to make AIM the market leader in data management for buy-side firms across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. This, she says, demands focus on innovation and investment in R&D. AIM invests 30% of revenue in R&D.
Looking forward, the company is working on proof of concepts to discover new technologies that could benefit its approach. Raman explains: “We want to partner with or integrate solutions from vendors with innovative technologies that don’t have the balance sheet to claim the market.” Some of these technologies could power new applications AIM is planning to bring to market in the second quarter of this year, adding to existing applications including reference data management, portfolio pricing and analytics, corporate actions data and legal entity data management.
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