As Aiviq continues to scale its operations and expand its client base, the role of Professional Services has become increasingly critical to our success. We sat down with David Tevendale, our Head of Professional Services who joined us this year, to discuss his journey to Aiviq, his vision for the department, and how our client-centric approach is setting new industry standards.
With over 15 years of experience in fintech professional services across companies like Itiviti, Calypso Technology, Adenza and NASDAQ, David brings a wealth of expertise to Aiviq's growing team.
David, welcome to Aiviq! Can you start by telling us about your background and what ultimately drew you to join our Professional Services team this year?
"I've spent over 15 years in fintech professional services, starting at Itiviti where I built their EMEA professional services offering from inception in 2016. After that, I moved through larger organisations like Calypso Technology and NASDAQ, which gave me exposure to different scales and approaches to professional services delivery.
What really drew me to Aiviq was two things. First, the opportunity to return to a smaller, more agile organisation where I could shape the professional services offering again - there's something uniquely exciting about joining at a stage where you can truly architect the professional services function from the ground up.
Second, as I learned more about the company, I discovered that Aiviq's product offering was even stronger than I had expected. You don't often find a solution that so clearly addresses a genuine market gap. Here was a company not just building another fintech product, but actually solving problems that the industry has been crying out for solutions to. That combination - the ability to take a critical function to the next level, around a product that truly matters - that's rare in this space."
Now that you've been with us for several months, what's your assessment of where our Professional Services function stands today?
"What struck me immediately was the maturity despite our relative size.
"Most companies at our scale either don't have dedicated professional services or they're still figuring out what that means. Aiviq has cracked something fundamental - we've got exceptional professionals with proven backgrounds who genuinely understand both the business and our clients' pain points, this truly differentiates us."
The opportunity now is massive. We can start building the efficiency engines that will let us scale without losing that personal touch. It reminds me of those early days at Itiviti - same energy, same potential to build something special."
What philosophy drives Aiviq's Professional Services, and how does this set us apart?
"We're obsessed with speed to value. Get in, get our customers up and running, deliver the agreed results and smoothly transition to our excellent Customer Services team. Everyone wins. It's about delivering business value efficiently and effectively.
It's about proving our product works and delivering business value. That changes everything about how we approach implementations. Every process we're automating, every environment we're spinning up faster, every testing protocol we're streamlining - it all serves that core mission of rapid value delivery."
Your team's client-specific training approach is quite distinctive. How does this work in practice?
"We assign dedicated consultants to major implementations, which means clients get focused expertise, not shared attention. However, our team is seeing patterns across multiple asset managers and building this incredible repository of industry best practices.
So when we walk into a new implementation, we're not just installing software. We're bringing proven methodologies, battle-tested processes, and honest insights about what works and what doesn't. That's incredibly valuable to clients who've been struggling with fragmented approaches."
"What you're getting when you're engaging in an Aiviq implementation is not just a solution being built out, it's true subject matter expertise around the business process that ties into the Aiviq solution."
How do you see Professional Services influencing Aiviq's product development?
"Our team are essentially product intelligence agents. They're sitting with clients daily, seeing exactly where the friction points are, understanding what features would make the biggest impact. That feedback loop between implementation reality and product roadmap is incredibly powerful.
The challenge is maintaining discipline - we can't build bespoke solutions for every client. But we can identify the patterns, the common pain points, the features that would unlock value across the entire market. Our standard approach is to co-build strategic enhancements and new product modules collaboratively with trusted customers. We've worked closely with clients to add support for Service and Platform Fees to our Revenue Management module and enhanced our global client matching rulesets to support automated TA Account matching - these are just two examples of how real-world implementation needs drive product evolution.
That's where Professional Services becomes a strategic asset, not just a delivery function - we're essentially incorporating client engagements within our laboratory for product innovation that benefits the entire market."
Looking ahead, what's your vision for transforming Professional Services over the next year?
"The goal is to become the implementation partner that asset managers actively seek out, not just the team that comes with the software. When clients start requesting Aiviq implementations specifically because of how we deliver them, that's when we know we've built something special."
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