Financial platforms, such as Eikon App Studio, need a vibrant developer community to thrive. What’s behind our approach?
- Creating a vibrant developer community is critical to the success of financial platforms, such as our own Eikon App Studio or Elektron Data Platform.
- The developer ecosystem goes beyond individuals who code, also including tech savvy end users and business owners with technology needs.
- Building a vibrant financial platform developer community requires a multi-faceted approach that is more than just tools and services.
We have previously described the rise of financial platforms and how they are enabling both fintechs and established financial institutions to bring their solutions to market faster and at a lower cost.
Digging a little deeper, platforms such as our own Eikon App Studio provide a set of tools and services to developers who can utilize them to build and launch their offerings.
This typically involves SDKs, access to data and a way to integrate their products with other offerings on the platform.
The idea is that these tools and services attract enough developers to form a vibrant community which creates enough value to, in turn, attract buyers and users.
The developer ecosystem, however, is quite complex and doesn’t only include individuals who code.
End users who want to build or customize their own tools, technology leaders who set strategy and assign resources, or even business leaders with a technology need all play a part in this ecosystem.
As such, the platform offering for developers needs to go beyond providing technical tools such as SDKs and documentation.
Our financial platform developer community
We have designed a multi-faceted approach to engaging developers and all those who work with them. This includes:
- A vibrant Developer Community portal with self-serve tools including overviews, documentation and sample code addressing the core needs of developers who code.
- Forums giving those who need more human interaction the ability to reach out to in-house experts as well as other community members.
- Hands-on support from experts who work with our select partners and customers to help overcome technical issues and provide advice.
- Tools and documentation within our products — such as Eikon — that make it easier to try things out, especially for users who are inclined to tinker.
- Technical account teams who help technology leaders think through various technology strategy options and direct them towards most appropriate solutions.
- Partner and account teams who interface with business leaders as well as end users to ascertain needs and how to meet them.
- We’ve also historically provided customers with managed services and pre-packaged solutions which can help supplement in-house development.
Outreach to developers goes beyond the boundaries of our own organization to include engagement in other communities such as GitHub for code sharing and FINOS to drive innovation and standardization in the financial services industry.
We have also opened up tools such as PermID and Calais which allow anyone to use them in their offerings.
Vibrant ecosystem
We’ve found that a more integrated approach to engaging with partners and customers who are looking to leverage a financial platform leads to more realized opportunities and a more vibrant ecosystem.
Within Eikon App Studio alone, our integrated approach has allowed us to engage with over 800 potential partners or interested customers over the past few years — from conversations with business users to providing developer support to those who end up building a solution.
Getting developer engagement right is critical as having the most vibrant ecosystem building the best solutions will go a long way in attracting users.
We have spent a lot of resources and effort to create the right tools, services and engagement models to build our community — an investment worth making as we continue our open strategy.
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