Over the summer, I have enjoyed connecting with several of my SS&C Advent colleagues for a unique blog series profiling the employees behind Geneva®, our portfolio and investor accounting solution for Alternatives. These wide-ranging conversations spotlight the different vantage points and perspectives of employees who support and make Geneva the award-winning platform that it is today. For the first conversation, I spoke with Ernesto De Sieno, Senior Hedge Fund Accountant in our Advent Outsourcing Services business and David Peck, one of our Strategic Relationship Managers.
Here’s a softball question, what is your role within SS&C Advent?
Ernesto: My role is to provide accounting and product leadership on a global level to the Advent Outsourcing Services (AOS) team. As the subject matter expert on staff, I ensure that the quality of my team’s work is within Six Sigma1 framework. This is a great opportunity and I enjoy teaching my colleagues and sharing my knowledge with clients to better support their business needs.
David: As a Strategic Relationship Manager, I work with Geneva’s largest and most complex clients to ensure they are deriving the most benefit from our solutions, to ensure Geneva continues to address their evolving needs, and our clients are aware of all the ways that SS&C Advent and the broader SS&C family of products and services can add value to their respective operations.
Prior to coming to SS&C Advent, what was your experience, how did you end up working to support Geneva?
Ernesto: Prior to joining Advent, I held several senior positions at various Fund Administrators, which has been tremendous in developing my career here. My more than 20 years of alternative asset accounting experience benefits our clients and gives them confidences in my team’s ability to support complex accounting and operational issues.
David: After 15+ years in client-facing roles within banking and financial services, I transitioned that knowledge to advising clients within financial technology.
When you think about your day-to-day work, what do you focus on?
Ernesto: On a daily basis, my focus is to ensure that the accounting output that we are sending out to our clients are timely and accurate. This is imperative to our clients business and why they work with SS&C Advent. For our clients, there is an enormous benefit to gain from my team’s experience working within Geneva and helping to support similar clients.
David: The success of our clients is my number one goal. To achieve this, my core focus is managing our overall relationship with my clients. This ranges from overseeing our response to clients’ needs, requests, and escalations, to interacting with clients on the contractual and financial component of their Advent relationship, as well as engaging with clients on how to leverage new and exciting solutions that add more value to their business. On a daily basis, I interact with various internal teams including Support, Renewals, Solutions Consulting, Professional Services, Product Development, Marketing, and Senior Management to develop a cohesive and high quality experience for clients.
This has been great. To close out our conversation, can you speak to why you like working at SS&C Advent, and perhaps what your greatest work achievement has been?
Ernesto: I really enjoy the work I do at SS&C Advent. Our teams are comprised of global top-notch talent that are ready to serve our clients in the most professional manner. To date, my greatest achievement has been the restructuring of a statistical arbitrage client’s workflow to include a more automated OTE reconciliation, and reduced our processing time and error rate.
David: Overall, the best part of working for Advent is the positive team approach with a consistent client-first mentality. Most of my colleagues have been at Advent for many years and I am constantly learning from their deep-seated knowledge of Geneva, as well as from their experience supporting best in class solutions and services. Personally, one of my greatest work achievements here came from a comment from one of my largest and most complex clients. This client shared with SS&C Advent senior management that my level of engagement and responsiveness helped to meaningfully enhance our business relationship.
Thank you, Ernesto and David.
Stay tuned for more conversations on how the Geneva team views their impact towards clients and the products and services that they create, the culture at SS&C Advent, and how their day-to-day focus drives much of our roadmap and award-winning platform.
Source:
1. What is Six Sigma? ASQ. (2021 September 22). Retrieved from: https://asq.org/quality-resources/six-sigma
