Simplifying regulatory compliance. From spreadsheet chaos to streamlined evidence management.
Seedrs / Republic · Six minute read
Summary
At Seedrs, a complex regulatory compliance challenge emerged about how to handel marketing materials and their corrosponding evidence. This current process wasn't working at scale and was very labor intensive. By developing a custom evidence handling app, the team transformed a time-consuming, spreadsheet-based process into a streamlined digital solution.
The app dramatically reduced report preparation for the FCA from 10 hours to just one hour, created a single source of truth for statements and evidence, and enabled quick, searchable access. This innovation not only improved operational efficiency but also provided a scalable product and allowed fundraising Founders to market their campaign quicker.
Overview
Seedrs is an equity crowdfunding company, intending to democratise early-stage investing for everyone.
In simple terms, giving everyone (not just the folk that know or are in the right circles), the potential to make a bit of cash from giving small companies some money.
Seedrs was acquired by US firm Republic in 2022 for $100m.
Key takeaways
- 'Zero to one' product designed, tested, launched and delivering impact.
- One source of truth for statements and evidence required by the FCA.
- 7 hours saved, now less than an hour to get a report ready for the FCA.
- App removes the need for spreadsheets and speeds up the fundraising process.
- A scalable product which is more dynamic in how data and information is used.
The problem
A fundraising campaign needs promotion to inform customers they can invest in the business. This is typically done through various channels like videos, emails, social posts, and events, focusing on why investing is exciting.
Seedrs reviews all promotional content to ensure FCA compliance. Statements, such as “We turned over £5m last year”, require evidence, which can be in various formats (images, webpages, spreadsheets, PDFs) and shared through different channels. This information was previously collated in spreadsheets for each campaign.
If the FCA requested evidence, this could take up to 10 hours due to collate the information as nothing was able to be searched correctly.
The goals
There was an opportunity to create an app that could:
- Reduce the time taken to respond to FCA requests.
- Streamline the conversation between Founders and Seedrs staff, when collecting evidence on statements.
- Have evidence connected to a statement.
- Be able to search across statements and evidence.
- Have a single source of truth for any statement that is to be put in front of customers.
My role
- I worked with product manager to narrow down the scope of the work and provide options that we could pursue.
- Working with the product manager and engineering manager to then snsure that what was being proposed was possible and achievable.
- Conducted lightweight research with Seedrs compliance team and Seedrs staff who work with the people submitting promotional material for review, as well as collating the evidence for those statements.
- Demo concepts to engineering and the design team for feedback and their thoughts.
- QA’d and feedback the work carried out by the engineers.
The process
Understand the problem
- I spoke with the compliance team to better understand their challenges in finding evidence when FCA requests came in.
- Rewatching calls between Founders and Seedrs staff was super helpful to understand about their ways of working, as well as what the most common themes were.
- Looking over Seedrs staff shoulders when they processed statements, requested evidence, and managed the process. This involved breaking down each statement into individual cells in a spreadsheet and linking the relevant evidence to each one.
Competitor analysis
Rather than building our own app, I looked into commercial off-the-shelf tools. I estimated that it would be cheaper and implementation would be straightforward.
I booked four companies to do demos for myself, the compliance lead, the product manager and the engineering manager.
There were many reasons that an off-the-shelf tool wouldn’t have worked for this initiative:
- Data integrity - We wouldn’t be able to export the data if the company were to go bust. Data needs to be stored for a number of years due to FCA requirements.
- Ease of use - Embedding a tool would require the Founder to sign in again, which we knew they wouldn’t do.
- Functionality restrictions - These tools were only able to handle work or pdf documents, whereas we needed images and videos as well.
- Costs - Turns out it was cheaper to build and maintain our own over the course of several years.
Assumptions
- Moving away from a spreadsheet to an app with search functionality, would speed up the time it takes to reply to FCA requests.
- Handling the conversation between Founder and Seedrs staff in the app, rather than across email or instant message, would streamline the process.
- Having the Founder upload the evidence against statements would allow the compliance team to respond faster to FCA requests.
- With the Founder uploading evidence to an app, it would speed up their time in getting material approved for promotion, as one piece of evidence could be used many times.
- Allowing evidence to be stored by ourselves would decrease our reliance on third-party tools and risk data going missing.
Working with the PM, engineering manager and compliance lead, we pulled our thoughts and concerns together in a quick workshop that helped bring us all onto the same page.
Research, design, test and deliver
Understanding that an off-the-shelf tool wasn’t the correct route for us, I documented the previous ways in which information moves between different apps and how it should then do it, while involving the engineering team.
The apps involved in the process and what the process could look like.
What happens when the FCA requests information? Who does what when? The easiest way to visualise this was through a service blueprint.
Service blueprint covering the FCAs request, how the Compliance team works, sometimes involving Seedrs Staff. Highlighting the pain points and areas where there are opportunities.
While getting feedback from engineering around data flows, I started sketching out concepts and how Seedrs staff would do their daily tasks.
Initial sketches and thoughts on information architecture. Also, how colour could help staff understand the status of statements within material provided by the founder.
After some iterations, testing of prototypes and working with engineering, the video below is a sample of what was created and deployed.
A quick demo of the app. Seeing feedback on a statement, looking at the evidence provided. Once the evidence is suitable, this gets added to the statement through the evidence hub.
Outcome
Even though there was hope for using an off-the-shelf tool, that turned out not to be possible. However, the compliance team, the team working with the founders and the founders themselves saw an improvement. These are as follows:
7 hours saved - 1 hour to get a report ready for the FCA.
Created an app to remove the need for spreadsheets and speed up Founders and Staff ways off working.
One source of truth - All statements and evidence living in one place.
A scalable app - More parts of the campaign journey can be added in along the way depending on the needs of the business.
Not long after releasing this app, chatGPT started to become more mainstream. I demoed this to the PM who hadn’t heard of it, this was soon introduced into the app, but this was after I had left.
Challenges
When starting from a spreadsheet, the aim is not to solve everything in the first release. Prioritising the high-value outcomes to go after and ensuring stakeholders were on board was vital.
Getting the stakeholders together to discuss concepts was tricky, but doing this async with Loom and documenting decisions helped ensure everyone saw the same ideas and could communicate their thoughts.
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