What do you think of when you think of Tesla? You probably don’t really distinguish between the product and the brand. In a sense, each Tesla car is the company philosophy realised in a material object.
Not to get all superfan here, so let’s put aside the hype. Elon Musk may have put a roadster into space (a move which, depending on your tastes, was visionary or gimmicky) but let’s focus on the purity of Tesla’s pursuit of excellence. A single product, that meets a critical need, done better than anyone.
It’s a lesson for any company driven by innovation. And it’s one that fundamentally informs the way Commspace works.
Commspace is a technology company. We create an elegant tool for financial advisory businesses. We do that by producing advanced, yet user friendly software.
Technology that’s simple and easy to use but that is also powerful and flexible enough to adapt to your specific business needs.
As a technology company, we thrive on solving complex problems. But here’s the thing – it’s relatively easy to make a powerful, complex system that looks and feels complex. It’s much harder to develop a powerful, complex solution that’s intuitive and clear.
Creating delight
If there’s one maxim that drives Commspace it’s ‘simplicity and ease of use’.
Why simplicity? As a technology company, one can always be tempted to throw in as many clever bits of code as you can come up with in a brainstorming session.
However, true delight arises when your tools just work. When your technology elegantly and efficiently solves the problem it was designed to solve.
Real solutions for real problems
We work tirelessly analysing the real world needs of IFAs. We carefully assess their challenges, we consult about long-term goals and we think carefully about the tools needed to pursue those opportunities.
That work doesn’t just enable us to know which tools to build. It helps us decide which tools not to build. Just about every day, one of our technical wizards comes up with an ingenious integration they want to add to the Commspace system. It’s not easy turning those bright ideas down, but we very often do.
There’s an old saying by Mark Twain: “I apologize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one”. This also rings true in software engineering. The easiest way to give people what they need is to just give them everything. But that’s a recipe for a cluttered, complex, frustrating experience. It’s also a recipe for buggy, inefficient software.
It’s not about us
The form of our technology follows its function.
We’re motivated by solving hard problems and creating real customer satisfaction is the hardest problem of all.
You can’t build purpose-driven technology if you don’t know what the purpose is. That’s why we don’t purely build tech for some imaginary audience. We build solutions for financial advisors. We don’t build a complex toolkit to solve every problem in the world. We think about what IFAs want to achieve and we work out how to give them the tools they need to achieve it.
It’s what makes our simplicity powerful. We aim to create tools that provide you with everything you need and nothing you don’t need.
Tech that helps you help others
We’ve discovered that South African financial advisors are extremely enthusiastic about exploring new technology. Of course, IFAs want digital tools which will make their day-to-day work life more pleasant and efficient. But they also want technology that will enhance the service they are able to provide to their clients.
That also means IFAs want to focus on mastering their field and building relationships with their clients. Not wasting time grappling with complex interfaces or glitchy software.
And that’s precisely the challenge we think about at Commspace all the time. Technology that’s simple and easy to use but that is also powerful and flexible enough to adapt to your specific business needs.
