Report Feedback Statement
Tool/service that allows public companies to respond to Glass Lewis research and analysis, delivered directly to institutional investors.
Summary
The research produced by Glass Lewis covers the performance of publicly traded companies, and the success or failures of the board and management in terms of meeting best practices and appropriately delivering long-term shareholder value. This research is consumed by many institutional investors, shareholder of those public companies, and is used to making shareholder voting decisions at shareholder meetings.
Publicly traded companies have a great interest in reviewing the research produced by Glass Lewis and, as we identified, both the public companies and institutional investors were keen to review a response from the public company as relates to the Glass Lewis research. To bring both sides together, through the introduction of a new product, we built a new feature to allow our research team to attach public company responses (the "report feedback statement") to Glass Lewis research, and to automatically notify all clients of the inclusion of this public company response. This provides public companies with a mechanism to respond directly to Glass Lewis research reports, and to feel confident that the feedback is making it to their underlying shareholders.
Project Date
Started: Late 2018
MVP Launch: Mar 2019
Latest Iteration Launch: Mar 2020
Customer/User
Publicly Traded Companies (Investor Relations Teams)
Problems to Solve / Jobs to be Done
As a member of the investor relations team at a publicly traded company I want to be able to directly respond to Glass Lewis research when an unfavorable analysis is distributed to my shareholders so that I can prevent shareholder opposition to proposals at our annual shareholder meeting.
Link to Product Web Page
Product Discovery
Discovery Summary
The genesis of this product initiated from multiple problems that needed to be solved. The first was the perception from public companies that Glass Lewis did not provide public companies with enough recourse if they felt that the Glass Lewis’ research about their company was inaccurate or missing additional details. The second problem to solve was the increasing regulatory scrutiny surrounding this same issue, as the SEC considered regulation that would require proxy advisors like Glass Lewis to give public company’s a way to review and provide feedback on their research.
I discussed these concerns with several public companies through customer interviews and identified that the primary need was for the public companies’ feedback to make it through to their underlying shareholders. I discussed several potential solutions to this problem with a lead developer and key research staff that would be responsible for reviewing and handling any feedback from public companies. After reviewing existing systems, processes, and team capacities, we ultimately decided on an MVP that would primarily rely on manual efforts from research and would be limited to a smaller pilot program rather than a full global launch. There would not be any technology investment in the product until we proved the value and potential of the product.
At this stage I also brought our legal, marketing, sales, and operations teams into the loop to identify any major concerns or issues to address before building out the solution. The most critical review and discussion here was from the legal and compliance team who had extensive experience with the potential regulatory changes from the SEC, the legal requirements of documenting or sharing issuer feedback, etc. Through several workshops we identified what we could and could not do with this product.
Discovery Gallery
Product Delivery & Success
Delivery Summary
With the decision made that we would pursue a limited, pilot program in Y1, I worked with the relevant stakeholders to decide upon the appropriate client segment for that pilot program. The S&P 500 was determined to be our best starting point for several reasons – these companies had the most resources and thus the most bandwidth to provide feedback, they were the most common clients to express a desire to provide feedback, their participation would gather the most public attention and marketing reach, and the segment size was manageable based on our existing resources.
Next, I worked with the technology, operations, and research teams to define a preferred process for our internal teams to support this new offering. Working with stakeholders I created a user story map for both the public company (client) and our internal stakeholders (research and operations). This provided a clear visual of the various steps and needs throughout the process, both internally and for clients.
Working with our operations team to understand their existing tools and processes, it became clear that our existing Salesforce platform would be a good short-term solution to manage the new workflow of this Report Feedback Statement pilot program, whereby public companies would need to be notified about the new program, given the opportunity to sign up, notified of the publication of our report, provided with a copy of the report and instructions for providing feedback, a way to send that feedback, and finally a notification once their feedback was attached and the report republished.
I leveraged existing Salesforce admin training programs and resources to upskill as necessary to help build a new, customized solution for our operations team. I built out a custom set of cases, views, client types, email templates, and alerts to streamline the process for the MVP. I also worked with the operations team to produce internal training materials, and with marketing and sales to create the necessary documentation and user guides for clients that subscribed to the Report Feedback Statement.
In later iterations of this product, after it was successfully proved out in Y1 and with access to development resources, we were able to build a more elegant solution directly into our proprietary research application.
Delivery Gallery
Measurement & Success
Drove 10-15% price increases in Proxy Paper sales to corporates, resulting in corporate revenue growth of >20% in Y1
From 0 to 121 Report Feedback submissions in Y1, increasing by 106% over the following 3 years