Goal Group’s Vicky Dean discusses the company’s transformation in recent years and plans for its next phase of growth in 2021
Goal Group has been established for over 30 years and is a market leader in securities class actions recoveries and withholding tax reclaims. With global coverage and a local presence, we use proprietary market-driven software to facilitate and automate our services.
Back in the 90s, Goal took the decision to remove the manual, laborious process associated with filing claims and develop our own software. Using a variety of IT specialists and programmers, our flagship reclaim software, Global Tax Reclamation Solution (GTRS), was born. Three decades later, GTRS is still going strong, but will soon be the last of our applications to be replaced with an exciting, modern, innovative cloud-based solution, to be launched in 2021.
In recent years, Goal has undergone a phenomenal transformation into the digital age, moving away from burdensome, complex, on-premise, legacy infrastructure and technologies to cloud-based, streamlined, efficient, secure applications. In this article, we will explore how the team at Goal has revolutionised the services provided to our global client base.
A change is coming
Goal previously had an internal IT team in place, but it became apparent that we were continually struggling to both maintain and improve our operations. The cost and time involved in building a new skill set in-house led to us exploring the option of outsourcing to a third-party specialist equipped with the skills and know-how to streamline our IT operations and pave the way for a complete modernisation of the infrastructure that underpins our core services.
In 2014, we chose to partner with UK-based BJSS, a world-class business technology consultancy, following an internal review of the applications, infrastructure and internal management. As our managed service provider, they have helped us to enable our company’s long-term digital transformation, resilience, and growth.
The first area to be addressed was the legacy nature of our infrastructure that we felt was constraining our ability to enhance client experiences, overhaul processes, shorten our sales cycle and mitigate business risk more effectively. Transforming our infrastructure and service management would help us to deliver optimal performance in a multitude of areas, not least business continuity, regulatory compliance and business growth. This, in turn, would strengthen our competitiveness in today’s market and demonstrate our commitment to our existing clients and prospective clients, across the globe.
The road to revolution
BJSS commenced by taking on Goal’s IT service management, using the BJSS Enterprise Agile approach, starting with a minimum viable service concept which began by resolving minor service issues in the early phases. They then moved on to continuously improve the service over three phases, enhancing our applications, back-up and storage policies and rationalising our systems.
From this basis, it was time to move on with modernising all services. This would prove to be fundamental to our digital transformation, ability to compete in the fintech space, and ultimate growth.
One of the key building blocks of our wider digital transformation programme was migrating all of our applications and data away from the legacy on-premise systems and onto the cloud. This cloud migration generated several benefits, including:
- Improved efficiency and agility: By operating entirely in the cloud, user experiences have improved, and staff can now securely access the company’s applications and data remotely
- Significant cost savings: By decommissioning the legacy estate, we have saved a considerable amount of money in running and time costs. BJSS also continually works with us to manage and optimise cloud services and fees
- Enhanced disaster recovery: Crucially, the cloud migration helped to reduce our disaster recovery time from six weeks to just one day, which proved critical during the pandemic. It has also removed the vulnerability associated with having on-premise systems
In addition to migrating to the cloud, Goal initiated the development of a piece of cloud-native software, known as ADRoit. This new proprietary computer software has been the catalyst for our growth in recent years.
Servicing the Depositary banks and DTCC participants, ADRoit is the platform we provide enabling elections to be made on programs related to American depositary receipts (ADRs). Within one year, ADRoit captured 7 percent of the US ADR market. Then, six months later, thanks to its modern, seamless, efficient, cloud-based architecture, our market share grew to over 25 percent.
Countering COVID-19 and moving forward
Thanks to the forward-thinking and planning of Goal and BJSS and a successful transfer of the working environment into the cloud, we were able to quickly and effectively transition into a complete remote working model at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a critical business continuity requirement that has ensured the continuing success of our company even during the unprecedented disruption.
Not only have we been able to provide business as usual, without any issues or degradation in service level, we have also continued to brainstorm on other projects and initiatives that will take us even further forward. This includes further updates and improvements to our current systems as well as the complete redevelopment of the final part of our suite of products.
GTRS, launched in 1993, is a market-leading, automated withholding tax reclaim solution for the financial services community. It facilitates and automates the withholding tax reclaim process, and is currently a server-based software installed using the traditional licence and maintenance model.
Next year, this will be transformed into another modern, cloud-based application that will continue to assist with calculation of rates and completion of forms, but with enhancements and new features. Our team has been working hard to ensure we capture all core elements of the current offering, but the brand-new concept and design will provide an even higher level of functionality, while being modern, simple and seamless.
Along with the finalisation of the GTRS project, we are also in the process of redeveloping the client portal, which again, will provide another enhanced user experience to keep us competitive and current and attuned to modern client needs.
Straight-through processing (STP) from our applications to the portal will provide our clients with real-time data and extensive reporting capabilities, segregated by client, allowing them to monitor their claims closely. We pride ourselves on being a personable organisation that leverages automated solutions so we are able to dedicate more of our time to building relationships and listening to our clients, which we consider to be an integral part of continuing to build our business.
Summary of success
Streamlining and modernising our operations has enabled us to significantly improve both our client and employee user experience. This was a key enabler for the company to take on new markets and launch further expansions and enhancements to our current service offerings.
Through the partnership with BJSS, we have been able to:
- Streamline and modernise all infrastructure and applications
- Migrate all applications and data to the cloud
- Develop, maintain and improve new cloud-based software such as GTRS and ADRoit, which has enabled us to exponentially grow our market share, in less than three years
- Develop an IT architecture that allows all employees to securely access all applications, services and data over the internet – regardless of location — to ensure business continuity. This has proven invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic
This radical transformation has seen Goal evolve from an up and coming organisation that was constrained by our legacy infrastructure, to a leading fintech that is thriving in the digital age and set for a new phase of growth in 2021. Due to our success and the scale of the work we have put into this transformation, Goal and BJSS was shortlisted as a finalist at the Computing Cloud Excellence Awards 2020 in the category of ‘Best Cloud Project’.
