Steven, can you give us a brief overview of your career path leading up to your current position as CEO of Kinective?
I started my career as an engineer at Motorola, where I had the opportunity to work on mobile device infrastructure and eventually moved into location services. This was completely new in the market at the time, so a lot of my work involved traveling around the world educating people about this new technology. Eventually, I left Motorola and joined several co-founders to launch ShortTrack, a provider of integration and middleware services for the title industry.
A few years later, I joined MRI Software’s property technology area and focused on international business as part of the executive team. He then joined InsightSoftware and was responsible for many of his M&A transactions. Most recently, I was the President of Zego, the largest provider of rental and HOA payments for the real estate market. I started as Chief Product and Technology Officer, but when Global Payments acquired me, I was asked to become President.
Currently, my new role is CEO of Kinective. It’s been an exciting few months as we consolidated our legacy businesses and began charting the course for an even more exciting phase for the company.
You have experience in product management. How do you approach product innovation and ensure a high return on investment for product development?
I’ve spent a lot of time on the product side of the business. One of the biggest challenges facing companies is to pursue bold, innovative strategies without meeting real needs, and to pursue bold, innovative strategies that are pragmatic but fall far behind innovation. It’s about finding a balance between not leaning too far. It really is a balancing act!
I also strongly believe in customer advisory boards. This allows you to be very close to the market and get constructive feedback on your strategy. When you combine this with an equation that considers the amount invested, the risks involved, the upside potential, and the needs of the market, you get a very powerful combination.
Mergers and acquisitions play a key role in the creation of Kinective. Can you tell us more about your experience driving M&A strategies and achieving successful integrations?
One of the keys to a successful M&A strategy is understanding the company’s direction and having a good understanding of its market space. This identifies things that are high value and easy to build (solutions?) as well as things that are high value but difficult to build or take a long time to market (these tend to be great acquisitions). will help you. .
Be careful not to get so focused on great technology that you forget to determine how it fits into the rest of your product ecosystem. I want to be able to tell a post-merger story that is meaningful to everyone, but my litmus test is sales. Because if they can’t understand the story, the client won’t understand the story either. A truly integrated acquisition requires everyone in the business to understand the story.
Kinective is known for providing a comprehensive technology ecosystem for banking. Can you explain how this ecosystem benefits financial institutions and their customers?
Every element of Kinective enables financial institutions (FIs) in some way, and much of that is achieved through connectivity (the inspiration behind our brand). We connect the technology elements that financial institutions want to use both in the branch and in the digital world. We are connected to over 40 core banking systems and over 80 fintech solution providers, so we have a comprehensive view of the market. We also stock almost every relevant hardware on the market, so we can cover all your bases.
International market development is listed as one of your areas of expertise. How do you approach expansion into new markets while maintaining a strong foothold in existing markets?
I have always enjoyed growing businesses into international markets. It’s exciting, it gives your business real pride, and the market tends to take your business more seriously. It’s exciting and challenging at the same time. Entering a market without a presence requires patience and persistence, and getting your first few customer success stories can be a daunting task.
This is ultimately where my M&A experience comes into play, and these two often go hand in hand in my long-term strategy. If you can establish a presence through acquisition, it will be easier to grow internationally. There is no doubt that it will speed up the whole process and that market knowledge and local awareness will be incorporated along with the acquisition. Successful implementation of this strategy must be based on thoughtful strategic alignment and well-executed post-merger integration planning.
We have successfully guided M&A projects from planning to integration. How can you align the acquired company’s product strategy with your own, while maintaining innovation and customer satisfaction?
A robust roadmap process is key. Especially for new acquisitions, you may need to deconstruct your existing roadmap to determine how they work together and how the combination will benefit your customers. At a company like Kinective, all of our constituent components have been so well-received by our customer base that much of our roadmap and communications revolve around changing what our customers love most about us and explaining the secrets of our success. The emphasis is on making sure you don’t break anything. past. Additionally, we offer a unified suite of products in a way that they understand.
In a rapidly evolving technology environment, how will Kinective’s approach to technology analysis, applications, and overall strategic planning work to give you an edge in the banking technology space?
Having a solid foundation from which to make important decisions is paramount. We pay attention to the following:
- Fact set about our customer base, broad market and wallet share by solution
- Market dynamics and trends. What is your biggest focus and need?
- What are your competitors doing?
- What new technologies are actually emerging beyond our “four walls”?
This ends up being a great conversation between product and technology leaders to balance the best possible technology with market conditions and competitor efforts. This is then evaluated with a customer advisory board that helps validate ideas and possibilities.
Steven, can you explain how we integrate principles into Kinective’s operations to achieve improved outcomes and maintain a competitive advantage within our industry?
A healthy organization is one with a unique identity, core principles, and a vision for the future. Attempting to integrate these three presents unique challenges. However, I was pleased to discover that there are many basic principles that all three companies have in common. They were all very focused on customer outcomes, customer support and really being easy to do business with. When we interviewed customers from each company, they shared similar stories and experiences. It was great to see how many people really love these businesses.
Knowing that this customer-centric value is shared by all three companies made this integration a powerful one. Because we all care deeply about the same things, and we want to make sure that continues to be the case.
What trends and developments do you foresee in the banking technology industry in the future, and how is Kinective positioning itself to adapt to these changes?
Financial institutions are actively exploring digital transformation. We conduct annual market research and this has been one of our top focuses for over 300 banks and credit unions. Naturally, therefore, more and more fintechs and technological solutions are entering the market to solve these challenges. Financial institutions will be able to better serve their customers, but the real question is: How will all these new solutions work with the many core banking systems? Kinective enables that ecosystem and helps financial institutions build the platform they want to build. We connect the dots and enable them to do exactly what they want with the technology they want to use. I think that’s exciting for our partners.
Finally, can you share any notable accomplishments or milestones that you are particularly proud of during your tenure as CEO of Kinective?
One of the first things I wanted to accomplish was to integrate the management team leading Kinective. We were able to form that team in his July. The team is comprised of existing executives from the traditional component businesses that formed Kinective and with deep expertise in the market and our products, as well as several individuals from other industries with prior experience. It consists of Extensive experience with enterprise software. I have full confidence in this leadership team, and they have already achieved incredible results at Kinective.