SmartSessions: The Power of Partnership – Driving Growth Together

We're diving deep into the power of partnerships – not just customers – and how these strategic alliances are supercharging SmartSearch's growth and innovation.

Join Ollie as he speaks with Julie Green, our Director of Partner & Channel Strategy.

Julie talks about:

• Why building deep, collaborative partnerships is fundamental to our strategy.
• The unique value SmartSearch brings to our partners.
• How partnerships, like our recent collaborations with Daon and LSEG, help us stay ahead of the curve and deliver unparalleled solutions.
• The mutual benefits that drive success for both SmartSearch and our valued partners.
  
  

Discover how these powerful alliances are shaping the future of compliance and helping businesses fight financial crime more effectively. You won't want to miss this!

Transcript

SmartSessions: The Power of Partnerships

Oliver Telfor: Hi, welcome to SmartSessions, a Podcast by SmartSearch, talking all things AML regulations and all the things that sort of affect us and our clients. Today we're going to be talking about partnerships. I'm joined today by Julie, if you should introduce yourself and get into the show. Yeah.

Julie Green: I'm Julie Green, and I'm Director of Partner and Channel Strategy.

Oliver Telfor: Perfect. So let's start with partnerships. So in my head, and solving in SmartSearch's head, partnerships is more than just another customer or more than just a business working with another business. But from your background, can you tell us just a bit how you arrived here and sort of what that means for us at SmartSearch with partnerships as well?

Julie Green: Yeah, so historically I've always worked in partnerships, and that's what I've loved, you know, in previous roles coming into SmartSearch. I've done quite a number of roles within the organization. So customer success looked after that division and also operations. And as you can imagine, we've scaled quickly. Yeah. So that's been very hands-on, lots of change, lots of transformation, but it is been fantastic to be a part of that journey. And obviously with Customer success, it's looking after our 7,000 clients. Whether that be small, one man band, IFAs right through to large multinational organizations. So what I'm looking to do going forward is actually specifically focus on our partnerships. So this is an area that I'm really invested in, you know, there's lots of potential. We've got some fantastic partners that we work with already, and really, us as a business and as the ELT, we recognize that they are so important for us going forward. And I think it's great that now I'm going to be given the opportunity to focus on them, and what we can do in that area. So it's, it's very exciting.

Oliver Telfor: So in terms of benefits and tangible benefits that partners can bring us and we can, we can bring partners, what, what does that look like?

Julie Green: Yeah, so if you think about, a customer as you, as you referred to earlier, more like a transaction. Yeah. So they're using our platform to do their KYC, Know Your Customer, and Know Your Business checks. With a partner, it's actually looking at, one of our key behaviors is collaboration. So you are collaborating with businesses that you'll think you'll have a great synergy with, that you'll work really well together. And actually it's what I've found to be successful in the past is it's not a one-off transaction. You know, your services are paired together. So they're very complimentary, whether that's as a reseller and they're integrating your products and services into their solution. Whether it might be a case management system, so maybe a legal case management system, and they want to be able to do a lot of the checks that we can offer. It's those two business coming together with those complimentary services and actually producing something, you know, that we can then go out to the market and offer with. So when we're talking about partnerships in that sense, it's not just a one-off transaction, it's bringing the two organizations together, and that's where we'll really make partnerships successful. So it's bringing the marketing departments of the two organizations together, aligning on the roadmap, aligning on the strategy. Yeah. What are each business's objectives and how can we make it a success? 'Cause we both want to be successful in this, and ultimately we want to provide the support that our customers need. So if they want to consume our services through a certain way, then we're facilitating that and making that happen.

Oliver Telfor: I mean, our business happens to be quite complex, whether it's regardless of the industry or the offer or the product we serve. So even if it was a, even if it was a basic, you know, transaction, you still want that partnership and that relationship. But from our perspective, because we go so deep into businesses and because the amount of regulations and the amount of changes, why is it kind of beneficial for our partners from their perspective to have someone like SmartSearch that knows what those regulations are, what they're going through. As you said, we've got 7,000 plus clients who we can relate to from an offering, from SmartSearch to a partner. What does that look like and what sort of security does that give them knowing that they're working with a company that can sort of walk them through these regulations and make sure that they're in a safe pair of hands effectively?

Julie Green: Yeah. So I'd say that obviously SmartSearch is a market leader from what we can offer. So that's the first appeal to lots of companies that want to work with us going forward. They, they know that they're working with, with a market leader. And I suppose our ethos is, we are always with our platform is to bring together the best of breed data providers. So we're always continually evaluating the market to see what data partners we should work with. So one example of that is in terms of our document verification provider. We've got a current solution, but we've actually gone out to market to see what's out there at the moment, what are the leading providers, especially with all AI and anti-spoofing, you know, making sure that we're continually at the forefront and actually giving our clients options. So it might be multiple providers for one solution. Yeah. As well as working with best of breed data providers. I think a fantastic benefit with SmartSearch as well is it's all under one platform. So you can perform, Know Your Customer checks, Know Your Business checks for the UK and internationally, all from that one platform, all from that one API. And getting all those best of breed data partners together in one place, yeah, is just a fantastic appeal for, for partners to want to work with. That's the platform side of things, but then on the other side, it's all about the people as well. Yeah. Do you know, it's all about what we can offer, how we want to work together. We don't just want to deliver it and then leave it. It's all about, and that's where we've been successful in the past is building up those partnership relationships and really making it a, a joint thing that you're working on together.

Oliver Telfor: Because I mean, you've, you know, you've been at SmartSearch for, for a while, for a good chunk of your, chunk of your career. We've also got Collette has been here as well. I think from a, from a partnership perspective, seeing sort of a stability on a leadership team and seeing that bedded in sort of then beds through the rest of the business. But, you know, we touched on tech, we touched about that human element. But on a, I guess a basic one-to-one front, why is it good for a partner to call up and know that the person they're talking to and have that relationship, and how do we sort of build that into our sort of partnership strategy here at SmartSearch?

Julie Green: Yeah. It's all about relationship these days. You know, there's lots of providers out there, there's lots of technology. It's about working together and having, it's all about trust, really. Do they have the trust? And that's where in the past being successful with partnerships, they're, they're selling your products and services, so they've got to believe that they've got your trust, you know, they've got your support that, that you're not just going to leave them to get on with it. Yeah. And I think that's a massive thing. I think another area as well, which, we're able to do is bring partners and our, and our clients as well actually into where do we want the products and the platform to go. So we've got a very customer, a customer centric, sorry, or partnership approach. Yeah. Do you know, actually what should we be developing next? What should we be building? It's not just us here at SmartSearch that's determining all of that. We're actually going out to those, those individuals, those companies, those partners that are key for us being successful and saying, where do you want it to go? Where should it be? Be developing in the future? And just back to your earlier point about the regulatory compliance, always making sure that we're at the, at the head of the regulations. Yeah. You know, always assessing the market, seeing what's changing, how do we need to adapt and evolve. And the same way with our customers and partners challenges, what are the new challenges that are coming to life? Yeah. And how can our solution help help to fix that? And ultimately it's, it's providing value.

Oliver Telfor: Perfect. I mean, covered a lot there. That's sort really good. But in, in your sort of like, sort of new role in terms of transitioning into your new role, what does the future of our, our partnership strategy look like? And what is the new role essentially going to bring to us at SmartSearch, but also our partners as well?

Julie Green: Yeah. So to start with, the strategy is, protecting the core. So looking after those existing partnership relationships that we've got, do, you know, introducing them? We've got a new partnership director, Kerry Cleary as well, that's joined the team. We've, we've, we've actually elevated partnerships into its own department within SmartSearch now. Yeah. And really that's really important to, to ensure that it gets the priority and focus that we need. So yeah, I think bringing everyone together, we're going to focus on our, existing partnership relationships going forward. And then what we're going to do is look at our strategy in terms of a number of areas. So first of all might be integrations. So which of the case management CRM systems that we need to get integrated with. And that'll be often based on clients and where, where, what they're using and what they prioritize. So we've got ones with, Alto Zulo, we've got ones within Intelliflow. So actually building out our products and services in existing ones, but looking for new ones in the market that we want to go, resellers. And that might be actually resellers into industries that we're not heavily prominent in at the moment. So it's a, a new market for us. So it's expanding our market reach, you know, they might already have the client base and we can work together there. And then referrals. We've got a lot of companies that want to refer organizations into us 'cause we're a trusted provider. And they know that we'll, we'll give our first class service really.

Oliver Telfor: Perfect. I mean, that's, that's great. It sounds like lots of, lots of bright stuff for partnerships and those going forward. Just the sort of the last, last one for me, and I guess it's more of a, of a bigger picture for companies we work with and potential new ones. You know, in the, in the world of business, merges and acquisitions happen all, all the time. Sometimes we have one client that works with us already, that merged with another, and sometimes the business sort merges together. Why is it good for businesses to know that, you know, irrespective of their sort of trajectory and what they want to do to, by partnering with SmartSearch, we can help them with that transition and make sure that even if they do merge once or twice over, they're going to have a partner that can sort of stay with them and make sure they're compliant through this, despite the change within their world.

Julie Green: Yeah. Yeah. I think we can be the partner that they grow with. We've got, Triple Private Equity that came in last year. Obviously they're providing a lot of the fuel, a lot of the investment to be able to, to enable us to grow really. So we've got lots of ambitious plans, lots of exciting plans. So I think and organization see that, you know, we can deal with a small, really small organizations, but we've got lots of big clients that that are multinational that we're working with now. And we just want to keep growing and on that trajectory really, really, so we can mirror what our clients are hoping to achieve and make sure that we, we stay aligned and it's where we want to go. But yeah, it's a very exciting future ahead. We've got...

Oliver Telfor: Very exciting. Okay. Well, thank you today. That was really good. If you want to know more about partnerships or any of the industries we work in, or any of the AML solutions that we can provide you, or potentially one of your new clients as well, just head smartsearch.com and you can find all that information there. And then stay tuned for the next SmartSearch and I'll see you later. Thank you. Thanks.