We are better able to focus on delivering the right compliance outcomes rather than running a software development organisation. We have moved from a position where we were largely consumers of the product to one where we have a genuine partnership with Star, influencing the product roadmap and working collaboratively on enhancement that benefit us, Star and their other clients. This is an enjoyable partnership working with great people at Star.
There are significant operational and financial advantages to the operating model as we avoid the substantial investment that would be required to build and maintain an equivalent in house platform, including recruiting and retaining specialist software engineers, product managers, infrastructure specialists and cyber security experts. We also avoid the ongoing costs of hosting, server maintenance, resilience, disaster recovery, security patching, technical upgrades and some platform support.
While there are naturally areas where we must ensure the platform aligns with our own internal security, architecture and governance requirements, the overall model delivers significant economies of scale an reduces operational risk and the long term cost of ownership. In addition, the move to the new micro services model will drastically lessen the burden on us whilst increasing stability.
We are using the Compliance Control Room module, Gifts & Entertainment, Business Procedures to handle our Outside Business Interests and Close Personal Relationships (pending transfer to the new architecture and OBA module) and Personal Account Dealing, plus we have a Snowflake instance to help to handle historic reporting data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The primary trade off of using a third party platform is that we are one of many customers. While Star Compliance is highly collaborative and responsive, its product roadmap must balance the needs and priorities of its entire client base. As a result, enhancement that would deliver significant value for us may not always align with sider customer demand or Star's immediate development priorities. This can sometimes affect the timing of new functionality.
As one of Star's larger and more complex clients, our implementation is perhaps different from others. That complexity brings considerable business capability but can make troubleshooting and diagnostics more challenging. Issues are not always directly comparable with those experienced by other clients, meaning investigation can require a deeper understanding of our specific configuration and operating model.
In addition, whilst the platform provides a high degree of configurability, there are naturally some constraints associated with working within a shared product. Certain design decisions or architectural changes need to be considered in the context of the wider platform rather than solely our requirements. In addition the read across between the modules is planned to be strengthened over the coming iterations once the architectural changes are made.
These are, however, the typical trade offs of adopting a mature enterprise solution. In most cases, the benefits of leveraging a specialist provider, including continuous investment, resilience, specialist expertise and reduced operational overhead, significantly outweigh the limitation, particularly where there is a strong collaborative partnership and clear governance over priorities.
From an onboarding perspective it is really important that the product is understood prior to implementation as a number of problems that we have encountered along our journey have come from our own prioritising speed over quality of implementation which has meant that we are now going through a process of re-evaluating unused capability and adjusting our processes to make better use of the products.
We are using the Compliance Control Room module, Gifts & Entertainment, Business Procedures to handle our Outside Business Interests and Close Personal Relationships (pending transfer to the new architecture and OBA module) and Personal Account Dealing, plus we have a Snowflake instance to help to handle historic reporting data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
