Compliance has been called a lot of things, but fun has rarely been one of them.
Then True Office came along and turned compliance training into games, with scoring and record-keeping. The company enables global organizations to educate their workforces more effectively by delivering interactive experiences that make complex policies understandable.
Pretty obvious, once you think of it. Instead of bulky boring manuals, put the information on screens, make it challenging and occasionally amusing, keep track of the results, and you meet compliance requirements.
Now the company has been acquired by the NYSE which announced: “And, just last week, we acquired a small, innovative technology business [True Office] to further enhance our role as thought leaders in the Governance Risk Compliance setting.”
You might expect a little more excitement and detail from a company which itself has such an impressive history of innovation and entrepreneurship.
True Office founder and CEO Adam Sodowick, who started making training videos, got the idea of going interactive with the material. Entrepreneur magazine described well how the company covers topics from sexual harassment to insider trading. (I was at a risk conference some years ago when an official from the Fed said the biggest losses for Wall Street firms the previous year were not from derivatives contracts gone haywire but from sexual harassment lawsuits, including one brought over an email circulating at an investment bank on 100 ways beer is better than women.)
Non-compliance can get expensive.
Because the True Office training is delivered through a computer, an employee can do it at her convenience.
The FT’s Alphaville was a fan and even persuaded True Office and
“True Office has taken those incredibly boring snoring compliance tests that loads of people have to do every year and made them fun. Actually fun. It’s pretty cool… and/or our memory of taking the dry version of these tests is pretty darn awful,” the FT wrote.
True Office participated in the New York FinTech Innovation Lab, developed by the Partnership Fund for New York City and
In addition to participating in the FinTech Innovation Lab in New York, Sodowick helped coach newcomers to the program in both New York and London.
The FinTech Innovation Lab has helped several startups succeed, said Maria Gotsch, President and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City which launched the Lab with Accenture in 2010. It connects technology firms to bankers and venture capitalists so they can learn what a big security-conscious enterprise requires, and see what problems banks are trying to solve.
“Since the FinTech Innovation Lab was founded, companies have raised more than $100 million in venture funding after participating in the Lab,” Gotsch said.” After honing their product offering and value proposition during the program, graduates are securing customers and seeing adoption of their innovations by large financial services firms,” she said.
“In addition to the success of True Office and BillGuard, this fall Digital Reasoning closed a $24 million Series C round of funding led by Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. Earlier this year, InkTank was acquired for $175 million, and inaugural participant CB Insights has gone on to become the leading source of data and analytics on venture investing, with revenues in the seven figures.
“True Office is a great example of the power of the FinTech Innovation Lab and how it helps startups convert very innovative technologies into products that are highly relevant and interesting to financial services companies. Though the Lab, True Office was able to secure customers, investors and their chairman, who also happens to be the Lab’s Executive-in-Residence Cris Conde.”
The FinTech Lab is currently in the process of recruiting for its 2015 Lab (deadline December 5), she added. That would seem a leisurely deadline for Sodowick. He learned about the Lab from Gotsch a day before the application deadline and filled out his forms on a wifi-equipped Virgin America flight to San Francisco.
Gotsch, after reviewing applications from companies that haven’t left filing to last minute work on transcontinental flights, said the next Lab looks promising.
“We have been thrilled by the caliber and diversity of the applicant pool.”
