Manchester-based Assetz Capital is one of the UK’s leading business lenders, providing property-secured financing since 2013, helping UK SMEs, property developers and house-builders access Real World Lending. With cutting-edge technology and their own property expertise, Assetz help SMEs, property developers, and housebuilders purchase, build, mortgage, or refurbish their properties.
With interest rates rising dramatically, Assetz wanted to shift from peer-to-peer lending to institutional lending for construction projects. In 2022, Freeman Clarke Principal Andy Goundry was brought in as fractional CTO to provide technology leadership, helping to define the technology platform needed to support this new business focus.
Andy also quickly found other ways of helping Assetz with the transition. He shored up the business’s cyber security; in addition, he improved communication between teams, so that the tech strategy supported the business goals, and the business team had a better grasp of technical issues.
To facilitate communication between the teams, Andy hosted workshops, both online and face-to-face. The goal of each meeting was to focus specifically on customer needs and building a product to meet them. The idea was to give stakeholders a clear understanding of the business needs, and then to find the technical solution.
After more than thirty workshops, Andy was able to create a product capability document and workflow to clearly map the goals and responsibilities of each team.
To move toward its goals, Assetz changed its approach from ‘build’ to a more flexible ‘buy or build’ depending upon the need. Andy also coached a leaner tech team through the RFI and RFP process and how the gap-analyze ‘the stuff on the shelf against the requirement.’
In this way, Andy both facilitated an atmosphere of trust, whilst creating an internal sense of ownership of the technical solution.
Based on these changes, Assetz is efficiently now working towards new products and services matched to its business goals. And Andy takes pride in Assetz’s new mindset, with tech and business teams seeing each other as partners and communication flowing more freely: ‘Now it’s “Ask first,”’ he says, ‘and you’ll get a solution that matters.’
Plain English board-level briefings focused on technology strategies to deliver competitive advantage and business success.
You can unsubscribe at any time.
Call us on 0203 020 1864 with any questions.
Graeme Freeman
Co-Founder and Director
Plain English board-level briefings focused on technology strategies to deliver competitive advantage and business success.
You can unsubscribe at any time.
Call us on 0203 020 1864 with any questions.