Active Stewardship Engagement
Engagement service that allows institutional investors to support good governance, alignment with best practices, and improved returns at corporations.
Summary
Based on feedback sessions with some of our largest clients, it became clear that their stewardship teams, those responsible for proxy voting and engagement, were relatively small and resource constrained, particularly given the increasing expectations from their clients and management for their team to expand the engagement programs of their firms. To help clients with this problem we introduced a new service-based engagement product that allows many clients to sign onto, and financially support, the engagement program led by Glass Lewis' stewardship team, enabling a relatively low-cost method for clients to quickly scale their engagement programs. We first tested a small pilot of this engagement service with one of our smaller customer segments, and following the success of that pilot, we brought the offering to market for all clients.
Project Date
Started: May 2021
MVP Launch: Oct 2021
Latest Iteration Launch: Jan 2024
Customer/User
Institutional Investors (Stewardship Teams)
Problems to Solve / Jobs to be Done
As a member of a small stewardship team that is responsible for public company engagement, I need to increase the engagement activities of my firm without increasing the size of the stewardship team.
Link to Product Web Page
Product Discovery
Discovery Summary
The key problem to solve for our clients was first identified by some of our internal research analysts based on phone calls and meetings with key clients. The sentiment from clients was that engaging with public companies in their portfolio was time consuming, required significant expertise, and could be intimidating without appropriate research and preparation. This client feedback was funneled to the product team and based on the frequency that this issue came up, and the significance with which clients spoke about it, I decided to conduct customer interviews with key clients to better understand their problems and needs.
Once I gained better understanding of our customer’s problems, I put together a “product one-pager”, a template that I created to guide and structure the ideation process so that all stakeholders could share understanding about the idea, the customer problems, our goals, business value, and early-stage potential solutions. I reviewed the one-pager with key stakeholders including management, client services, sales, and research, and conducted some solutioning discussions with research and IT, while also investigating the competitive landscape and existing solutions in this space.
I then gathered additional feedback from clients based on some of the potential solutions we identified, some of which focused on potential software solutions to automate manual processes, others focused on training and educational resources, and others tapped into expert-led service-based support. After several customer interviews it became evident that, while there were some software-based product opportunities to help with operational tasks, the most critical customer needs required a service-based offering led by subject matter experts. Considering Glass Lewis’ 8+ years of experience engaging with publicly traded companies, I felt there was a strong product-market fit for a service-based offering led by the members of our research team, who had significant experience engaging with public companies. After executive review and approval, we started to formulate the structure and details of this product offering.
Discovery Gallery
Product Delivery & Success
Delivery Summary
Based on our discovery I believed that a low-cost, no-software MVP would be possible for this new product offering. Specifically, and based on conversations with several subject matter experts from our research teams, it appeared both feasible and valuable to leverage some of the existing engagement efforts and documentation from our research teams to provide clients with insights and data regarding our engagement with public companies. Given that our research teams were already logging these engagement efforts into a database, I was able to write some SQL queries to extract, analyze, and build sample data deliverables for clients to review. Moreover, we were able to establish those analysts with the most engagement experience as the business leads for this product, and worked together to create service frameworks, product details, and engagement methodologies that would showcase our engagement expertise.
While preparing some sample engagement data files and product details I also coordinated with our legal team to understand what was possible to sell and deliver, and what contractual changes and order forms would be necessary to meet the goals of our new product. As we moved closer to launch, I also documented our product launch strategy and tasks, and coordinated with marketing, sales, client services, and research to prepare all necessary materials, pricing, website updates, order forms, user guides, FAQ’s, etc.
Delivery Gallery
Measurement & Success
Brought a new engagement product to market (from 0 to 1)
Signed 3 key early-stage adopters in Y1
Increased revenue by 80% in Y2, 100% in Y3