Meet Sycamore: The 2025 InvestmentNews 5-Star Tech Award Winner

[00:00:09] Andy Burt: 
Welcome to Investment News TV. My name is Andy Burt, and today we're joined by Mike Overdorf, a leader in the financial services space with a career spanning over three decades. Mike founded Sycamore Company with the aim of improving how wealth management firms handle complex operations through technology. Sycamore's approach to integrating systems for RIAs and IBDs has set a new standard in the industry, emphasizing data integrity, transparency, and real-time insights. Mike, thank you for being with us today. 

[00:00:43] Mike Overdorf: 
Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:44] Andy Burt: 
Let's jump in. Mike, before we get to Sycamore's platform, I do want to take a step back. With such a diverse background across banking, wealth management and even insurance, what led you to take the leap into creating a technology platform like Sycamore? What was the driving force behind the decision? 

[00:01:04] Mike Overdorf: 
Well, we've been in business for 16 years. I've told this story quite a bit. I grew up in the wealth management space and the tech side of the wealth management space, working for very small companies, big, huge companies on the CRM side, on the compensation side. And about mid-2000s, I was just getting frustrated with the current solutions out there. They're very siloed. The data was siloed. The different systems didn't talk to each other. They had horrible, horrible CRM capabilities. Report writing was a mystery to a lot of the vendors. And I just kept thinking there had to be a better way. And then along came Salesforce. Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics was also out there too. I noticed some friends of mine were telling me, you can start building on these things. You can start building packages and programs. So I looked into it and it was like one of those ideas that just don't leave the back of... So around 2008, I went out and got some startup money and we started Sycamore. And the whole goal was, well, at the time, the goal was, our first module was compensation. It was to build a compensation engine on top of Salesforce. So you have the best of both worlds, right? You got this big, huge commission engine sitting on top of the CRM system with a beautiful report writer and something simply that had not been done before. So we started that and that's how we got going in 2000 by 2009. The rest is history, as they say. 

[00:02:19] Andy Burt: 
Thanks for taking us on a walk down memory lane. Let's focus a little bit more on, you mentioned that Sycamore's platform is built on Salesforce and integrates both front and back office operations. Can you explain for us how does this integration benefit wealth management firms? 

[00:02:37] Mike Overdorf: 
Oh yeah, well, it's a single platform, right? So now you're sharing the same, your advisors are seeing the same data as the back office is seeing. The back office folks, they log in, they process commissions and update the statements and things like that. Whereas the advisors, they can log into their portal and they're seeing the exact same data real time. And now we've gone and we've expanded. It's not just compensation anymore. We built a whole bunch of surveillance functionality, some recruiting functionality, data. We're heavy, heavy data these days in analytics. So we've expanded over the 16 years. But for as a single platform, all users, back office and front office, meaning the advisors, are all sharing the same data, the same platform. 

[00:03:16] Andy Burt: 
Thanks for unpacking that for us. And since you place such a heavy emphasis on the data collection, real-time data collection, and data integrity, as well as real-time processing, how does Sycamore handle the task of ensuring accurate commission payments and seamless client reporting? 

[00:03:34] Mike Overdorf: 
Well, we learned early on, early, early, early on, that we needed to be maniacal over data quality. A lot of our competition wasn't. You know, they just, because they were just doing comp, they were just doing commissions. They had this thing called quick create. Oh, the account's missing? Just quick create, put it in there. And that turns into a lot of garbage data. So we don't allow that. We never did. So when we bring data in from the various data sources, and we support just about all of them these days, we cross-check and cross-reference and say, huh, that doesn't look right. It may be right, but we put a flag up saying it doesn't look right. And we force our users to look at it and fix it if need be. And that actually was the springboard that started with the comp. That was a springboard into how we got into the surveillance side of things, because it turns out by default, we got to be really good, really, really, really good, really good, clean data, which you need for surveillance. And that's where we kind of spawned our whole surveillance module. 

[00:04:26] Andy Burt: 
Thank you. How did you approach building a platform that not only meets compliance requirements, but also offers the flexibility that firms need? 

[00:04:36] Mike Overdorf: 
Well, I got to tell you, I mean, Salesforce is a great partner. They really are. I mentioned at the start, I looked at both Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, and Salesforce just made it so easy for us. I mean, they gave us access to all these development environments and free access to the training and all that. And it was just really a partnership that I loved then and I love today. They make it so easy for us. But the fact that we chose Salesforce as our platform has made things very, very easy for us. It's nice when they go out and spend $16 billion or whatever it was to buy Tableau a few years ago. I mean, that's just a bonus for us because now we have Tableau that we can do all our reporting on. So Salesforce is constantly growing. They're a great platform to build on. They're great business partners. And I can't say enough good things about them. But that's really where it all came from and why we're able to be as flexible as we are. We've picked a great platform to build on. 

[00:05:27] Andy Burt: 
Thank you. One more question about technology. Cloud-based technology is prevalent now. And so I'm curious, how is cloud-based technology changing wealth management? And what role do you see Sycamore playing in this shift over the next few years? 

[00:05:42] Mike Overdorf: 
Back in 2008, no one, they said, what's this cloud thing? You have to educate me. And now it has to be on the cloud. It really does. We still have some competition out there that's on the old client server, but I'd say anyone and anybody is on the cloud these days. So I think that's already happened. I mean, the whole industry has already moved to the cloud.  

[00:06:03] Andy Burt: 
But as they say, the wealth management industry is still based on relationships.  So my next question for you is, how does your platform foster stronger long-term partnerships between wealth management firms and your clients? 

[00:06:17] Mike Overdorf: 
Well, my clients are technically the advisors, right? And so my client or the back office, the large RIAs or the independent broker dealers, they consider their client, their advisors. And advisors, they're looking for easy use, accuracy, and speed. If a broker dealer or a large RIA can provide their advisors those three things, that's going to be an excellent relationship. And our platform provides all three of those, especially the accuracy part. And speed, it's the real-time data, right? So the speed's there. And I think it's fairly easy to use. 

[00:06:45] Andy Burt: 
Thank you. Looking ahead, what can we expect from Sycamore? Are there any key areas of development or innovation that you're particularly excited about in the future? 

[00:06:56] Mike Overdorf: 
Yeah, AI. It's the same answer everybody's giving right now, right? But there's a lot of truth to it. Again, we benefit from using Salesforce as the platform. They, as you know, if you watch TV and the commercials, they're rolling out a whole suite of AI components. And we're benefiting from that. So what we're doing right now is our dev team is taking a long, hard look at the AI tools currently being provided by Salesforce. And we're coming up with some pretty cool stuff. That's the bulk. I mean, the last couple of years, analytics was the bulk of our development roadmap. We did a pretty good job with that using Tableau. It's a great tool. Then for the development roadmap going forward, it's AI. I mean, it's really how can we automate, how can we put some AI into our current workflows. 

[00:07:43] Andy Burt: 
Thank you. Mike, your insights into how Sycamore is ensuring data accuracy and enabling real-time decision-making are a reminder of the critical role technology plays in modern wealth management. It's clear that these advancements are more than just upgrades. Do you have a final thought for us before we go? 

[00:08:03] Mike Overdorf: 
Yeah, the industry is constantly changing. You can't be stagnant. You can't. Some of our competitors have been stagnant since the 90s, and they're paying the price for it. It constantly has to be moving. Being built on top of the Salesforce platform, we always know and will always be the latest, greatest cutting-edge technology. And if you're not changing, I mean, you just might look good out of the way. 

[00:08:24] Andy Burt: 
Well said. Mike, thank you for sharing your perspective with us today. 

[00:08:28] Mike Overdorf: 
Thanks, Andy. 

[00:08:30] Andy Burt: 
That wraps up our segment. Thank you for joining us. My name is Andy Burt, and this is Investment News TV.