Launching a new product is worthy of celebration, and no one knows that better than the product experts who’ve guided an innovative possibility from idea to reality. For these leaders from Capital One and Bridge Legal, product launches are about much more than smooth internal processes; they also require careful attention to the needs of clients and customers.
Alex Sha, chief product officer at Bridge Legal, understands the challenge and satisfaction of helping clients address their specific needs in a dynamic, changing landscape. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach,” he says. “We spent extensive amounts of time researching and having conversations with litigation finance leaders to understand their experiences and the way they think about the market.”
Elida Cruz, vice president and head of business experience design at Capital One Software, shares this customer-centered approach. For Cruz’s team, product launches begin with asking customer-centered questions to understand a product’s impact: “What are our customers feeling? What are they challenged with? How can we make their lives easier? You’ve got to bring all of those things together,” she said.
Bringing together customer challenges and market realities drives innovation, so Built In sat down with Sha and Cruz to learn more about how that works at Capital One Software and Bridge Legal.
Capital One is more than a financial institution. Its team thinks and works like a tech company, using their digital fluency to turn a stodgy industry on its head.
Tell us about a recent product your team launched.
We launched Capital One Software, an enterprise B2B software business of Capital One, in June of 2022. This business is a natural evolution for Capital One. We needed to build our own tools in order to operate at scale in the cloud. With Capital One Software, we’re able to take these solutions to market and help other companies solve similar challenges.
Our first product is Slingshot, a data management solution that helps businesses optimize costs, reduce waste and inefficiencies and accelerate time-to-value for Snowflake.
We needed to build our own tools in order to operate at scale in the cloud. With Capital One Software, we’re able to take these solutions to market and help other companies solve similar challenges.”
What was the biggest challenge your team faced while developing this new product, and how did you overcome it?
It’s not a challenge, but an opportunity. We have to create a differentiated value for our customers so they recognize us as a technology innovator solving important problems.
What are our customers’ feeling? What are they challenged with? How can we make their lives easier? You've got to bring all of those things together to have a really well-rounded perspective on what products, services and experiences drive business impact.
What have you enjoyed most about working on this product, and why?
I am incredibly excited by the entrepreneurial, get-up-and-go spirit this team has. Whether it’s a designer, leader or product or program manager, I’m always working alongside people who exercise curiosity, demonstrate empathy and communicate clearly.
Named a 2023 Best Place to Work by Built In, Bridge Legal provides a software platform that automates marketing, intake, casework and business intelligence for consumer law firms.
Tell us about a recent product your team launched.
One of our most recent product launches was our Fund Management System within our Bridgify SaaS platform. This advanced FMS is designed to revolutionize how litigation funders manage their legal investment portfolios.
The system came about as a direct response to the growing inefficiency and transparency concerns within the legal investment landscape. Our system is specially designed to mitigate these concerns using sophisticated algorithms to provide predictive analytics regarding our clients’ ROI. The system detects any potential anomalies or inconsistencies within a client’s portfolio to help expose risk and potential fraud.
Within the platform, users can communicate directly with their stakeholders, manage the deployment of investments, get insights into case valuations and stay up to date with court filings and case updates.
What was the biggest challenge your team faced while developing this new product, and how did you overcome it?
Creating algorithms based on accurate assumptions and ensuring high-quality granular case portfolio data were our highest priorities when building this system to create something that provides real value and precise insights to our clients.
Each case within our clients’ portfolios contains forecasted fees and predictive returns that differ based on many factors determined by the specific case type. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach, so we needed to understand the market and how each case type would affect the overall health of our clients’ portfolios. We spent extensive amounts of time researching and having conversations with litigation finance leaders to understand their experiences and the way they think about the market. From this, we gained a holistic view that allowed us to build an intelligent platform funders can trust to manage their risk and maximize returns.
What have you enjoyed most about working on this product, and why?
It’s been rewarding to see how the product can address many of the unique challenges our litigation funder clients face. Litigation finance is growing rapidly, and traditional forms of asset management technology are not equipped to handle the complexities of this growing esoteric asset class.
It’s been rewarding to see how the product can address many of the unique challenges our litigation funder clients face.”
The FMS is a feature within our greater litigation software suite built specifically for litigation fund investors. Our technology bridges the gap between traditional investment management platforms and case management software. This platform offers enhanced security, transparency, compliance management and control over our clients’ investments. Without a system like this in place, funders would not have the ability to make informed, timely and effective decisions, which ultimately affects their law firm clients and the people they serve.
We think of ourselves as innovators in the litigation technology space. While we’ve built a lot so far, we’re just in the beginning stages of what we plan to build to streamline the evolving litigation finance industry and the firms they fund.
