In our Meet Addepar series, we sit down with the people at the heart of our success — those who enable us to consistently deliver excellent outcomes for our clients. Today, we speak to Jamie Signorile, Senior Director, Global Enterprise Solutions Engineering.

Jamie joined Addepar in 2017, bringing with him technical expertise in financial systems engineering and industry experience from time at HSBC, Prudential and EY. Enticed by the opportunity to make a sizable impact at a fast-growing company, he began his Addepar career as an implementations manager. 

He soon joined the Sales Engineering team to help spearhead Addepar’s enterprise operation, developing it into the global team it is today. Now, he leads Global Enterprise Solutions Engineering, building and scaling the team and its processes to demonstrate Addepar’s unmatched utility to some of the largest, most complex firms worldwide.

Could you tell us about your role as Senior Director and the teams you lead?

For most of my time at Addepar, my main focus has been Sales Engineering. My team works with our largest, most complex clients — global banks (enterprises) and asset allocators/GPs (institutions) — helping to guide them through the pre-sales process. We shepherd these prospects through the buying journey with proof-of-concepts, deep discovery and due diligence.

The Sales Engineering team forms a metaphorical “tip of the spear.” We're with clients all the time, so we see what the market needs firsthand. We then work closely with R&D to define custom solutions, acting as the voice of the client as we help refine Addepar’s roadmap.

I also oversee the Program Management team, which helps coordinate the post-sale implementation process. They’re crucial in ensuring that the project stays on track and is properly resourced according to client timelines and stated business objectives. 

There are misconceptions that Addepar is only suitable for RIAs and family offices. How does Addepar serve the enterprise space?

Yes, there is a perception in the market that Addepar is just a performance reporting tool for family offices and RIAs, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. We serve enterprises in multiple ways.

First and foremost, our core value proposition for large banks begins with our data aggregation and reconciliation. The Addepar Data Network has over 450+ direct integrations with data providers that process reconciled portfolio data into Addepar on a daily basis. Our data aggregation enables advisors to see a complete picture of their clients’ total net worth in a single place, including an X-ray view into held-away assets. Harnessing the power of clients’ total portfolio data, advisors can become the quarterback of their relationships, delivering more strategic, holistic advice and differentiated service.

Addepar also offers flexible analysis and reporting tools, enabling custom analysis of different parts of a portfolio. Our easy-to-use advisor desktop lets users quickly slice and dice portfolios while layering on complex calculations. This allows for fast responses to client inquiries and makes way for proactive conversations about strategic asset allocation decisions. It also helps garner insights quickly — particularly useful in times of heightened market volatility. With customizable templates, our best-in-class report writer allows advisors to really craft their own story when preparing for client meetings. 

Above all, Addepar enables all of these workflows at scale. A true differentiator for us is our unmatched investment in infrastructure and compute capabilities — it’s what makes us a clear market leader in the enterprise space. Some of our larger clients use Addepar to generate tens of thousands of reports monthly and process over one million accounts daily.

What typical challenges are enterprises and institutions trying to solve, and how are we helping to solve them?

Many enterprises and institutions face a fundamental data challenge. Over the years, these large organizations adopt various point solutions that can result in siloed data management across the firm. Addepar is here to provide them with underlying data infrastructure that unifies data from multiple sources into a common data model. 

As many of these firms are evaluating their own data lakehouse strategy, Addepar Data Exchange (ADX) — our fully managed data lakehouse solution — provides the ability to aggregate all client data in one central place in one unified format. Addepar can act as a conduit to centralize all this data across a firm while they leverage our proprietary data network for external sources. 

We’ve been perfecting our portfolio data model for over 15 years, positioning us to be the golden source of all client portfolio information. Layering our core analysis and reporting on top of this data foundation is the true unlock for firms that we partner with. Beyond that, our calculation capabilities can be used to power countless client applications downstream.

We’ve also built various products atop this data foundation to further empower firms. For example, one prominent asset allocator that works with us leverages our Alts Data Management product to streamline portfolio data collection from their managers. Pairing our core platform, Alts Data Management and our Navigator functionality for modeling and forecasting gives them a full end-to-end solution to manage their alternative investment strategy.

What kind of work goes into understanding the needs of enterprise clients, given the size and complexity of their demands?

Enterprise clients don’t typically purchase analytics and reporting solutions from outside vendors. They usually build their own proprietary technology systems, so we need to be highly consultative as we help them through that process. That entails a thorough evaluation process that helps prepare both parties for a successful integration. 

One way we demonstrate value is through a proof-of-concept (POC). My team will work with our prospects to build and rapidly deploy a miniature implementation. To do so, we spin up a production instance of Addepar, connect and configure real data and create actual outputs for the prospect’s client(s). In the process, we train advisors on how to use Addepar for their daily workflows and often find ourselves presenting to their clients too. This allows advisors to get their hands on the tech and demonstrates to their clients their bank’s willingness to invest in best-in-class technology for a better client experience.

Aside from POCs, we also conduct in-depth due diligence and discovery. Larger firms are looking for best practices. They want to know what their peers and competition are doing, so we perform discovery on everything they need to know in order to make implementation successful. This includes ascertaining actual business requirements, mapping workflows, implementing operating models and planning the technical integration. 

Understanding their current systems and how Addepar will integrate into their existing tech stack is key. By the end of the implementation, Addepar is a core component of their tech stack, so it’s critical clients can first envision how Addepar will integrate with both upstream and downstream systems.

When working with new clients, what does the implementation process look like? What do you prioritize first?

Implementations at Addepar are a truly cross-functional effort. We’ve been able to fine-tune our process based on hundreds of successful implementations with large firms varying in structure and needs. We’re now able to effectively present solutions based on client type, and when appropriate, flex to be more bespoke. We have repeatable processes, we know best practices, we have insight into what our clients’ peers are doing, and we have amazing teams across Client Solutions, Engineering and Client Success to help guide them through deployment.

We typically break large projects down into smaller workstreams focused on: integrations, data onboarding, solution configuration, historical data conversion and change management. Each workstream has a subject matter expert on the Addepar side responsible for engaging with counterparts on our client’s side. 

The key priority for these larger engagements is technical integration. It’s crucial for the project and partnership to be built on a strong technical foundation, as this unlocks significant operating leverage in the implementation and business-as-usual management of the system. For banks, it’s also important to maintain data consistency downstream to Addepar to ensure proper security and compliance.

What new developments are you most excited about for 2025? And beyond that?

I’m looking forward to working with enterprise and institutional clients as they adopt ADX. It couldn't have come at a better time — we see many firms re-evaluating their data strategy, and this gives us an opportunity to be at the center of that discussion.

In addition, our global expansion continues to be a key component in our growth story. We are rapidly expanding our headcount in the EU and just opened a new office in Dubai.

I’m also really excited to attend our annual AddeConf, where our R&D team hosts a multi-day event on the future of the product. Our clients are going to be thrilled to see what we have in store for them.