NexJ Systems Inc.

November 25, 2013 by Regan Reid

Company: NexJ Systems Inc.

Toronto, Ont.

PROFIT 500 Rank: 16

Five-year growth percentage: 2,712

Chief Executive Officer: William M. Tatham

Cloud-based software provider NexJ Systems provides software for the insurance, financial services and health care industries that allows companies to combine information from multiple systems to create a singular, comprehensive view of the customer. “Knowing your customers is the key to being able to influence a customer and maximize the value of the customer relationship,” says William M. Tatham, CEO of NexJ systems. “Your needs for insurance as a customer will vary as life events occur. So the better you know your customer, the better position you are in to be able to offer them the right product at the right time through the right channel.”

NexJ’s key offering for the insurance industry is its Integrated Agent Desktop. To demonstrate how the product works, Tatham gives the example of how one of its largest insurance customers, American Family Insurance, has used it (though based in Canada, roughly 75% of NexJ’s business typically comes from the United States). When a client would call American Family to purchase an insurance product, the broker was expected to go through some 15 different desktop solutions in order to quote the customer and explain the insurance offerings completely, says Tatham. “When the NexJ Integrated Desktop went in, by the time we were done, that same agent handling that request would deal with one system (ours), the front-end desktop, and it would manage the integration of all of the necessary information across those other 15 systems.” The product, therefore, allows brokers and agents to serve a customer much more efficiently.

In 2012, NexJ was listed as the number one fastest-growing company in Canada. Tatham says the biggest reason for this considerable growth is that the company simply has an excellent product. “Every agent in financial services and insurance really has pretty simple goals, which we would summarize as: save time, make more money. If you can show how you do that, then you get enthusiastic adoption and increasing sales. Meeting our customers’ needs and objectives is the key to driving that growth.” NexJ has seen its greatest market penetration within the wealth management sphere—Wells Fargo Advisors and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney are both NexJ clients—but Tatham says the company is focused on growing in the insurance market. “Insurance is probably the single biggest opportunity…in terms of life insurance, multi-line and property casualty insurance, and the integrated agent desktops there. We see a lot of growth there,” he says. In all of its markets, he says, NexJ is working on what it calls the “multi-channel experience,” which Tatham explains as a system that makes any interaction with the customer, on any channel, immediately available to every other representative that would interact with the customer. This ensures that “there’s a consistent customer experience across all channels,” says Tatham.

Though Tatham is excited to roll out new products and expand the company’s reach in all of its markets, rapid growth is not without its challenges. “When growth takes off like a rocket ship, number one, you’ve got your hands full to manage that growth. You’ve got to continuously adapt and change, define your processes, hire and develop more people, and keep everyone focused and be efficient. The second challenge is you have to keep that growth going. Depending on how strong your base is, it’s not unexpected to see a little bit of volatility in that growth.” Still, Tatham would agree that these are exciting challenges to face.

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This story was originally published by Canadian Insurance Top Broker.