Killik & Co: Choosing performance over the "default" suite

Discover how wealth management leader Killik & Co consolidated five legacy systems into a "single pane of glass." By prioritizing technical resilience and "just works" reliability over default software suites, the firm achieved 80% AI adoption and transformed compliance workflows in a highly regulated cloud environment.

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Industry:

Wealth Management

Region:

United Kingdom (European Data Centers)

Key Challenge:

Fragmented tools for phone, recording, messaging, and meetings that led to IT strain and advisor distraction.

Solution:
  • Consolidation Strategy: A "single pane of glass" to replace five disparate legacy portals.
  • Coexistence: Integrating enhanced communication alongside an existing Microsoft E5 stack.
Impact:
  • 80% AI Usage: Rapid adoption of automated summaries, allowing advisors to stay "fully engaged" with clients.
  • 85% Increase in Summaries: A massive shift from manual "pen and paper" note-taking to automated documentation.
  • Instant Compliance: Searchable summaries allow trade verification in seconds instead of hours.
  • Technical Resilience: Robust performance on low-latency connections where some default tools were less responsive.
Products used

For wealth management company Killik & Co, the move to the cloud was not a simple software upgrade; it was a strategic exit from high-maintenance on-premise hardware in favor of a unified communication architecture with robust security measures. While the firm is a dedicated Microsoft shop with E5 licensing, the IT team recognized that certain client communications required a level of technical resilience that "default" tools often struggled to provide. This realization led to a "coexistence" strategy: maintaining their existing productivity suite while leveraging Zoom as a complementary engine for critical interactions.

The pursuit of "just works" reliability

The decision to look beyond the default stack was driven by performance benchmarks during peak remote work periods. The IT team observed that while some platforms became "sluggish" or suffered from dropped connections under heavy loads, Zoom remained robust, even on low-latency remote links.

 

For an advisor, a dropped call isn't just a technical glitch; it can be a disruption to a client's trust. By prioritizing a system that functions smoothly "out of the box," the firm effectively reduced the hidden tax on productivity; those hours previously lost to IT teams investigating why a meeting failed or a phone call wouldn't connect. This shift allowed the organization to consolidate five separate systems for phone, messaging, and recording into one "single pane of glass," drastically reducing the complexity of their administrative footprint.

Testimonial Icon

For us with Zoom, as I said before, it just works. We do have the Microsoft stack available to our users, but it seems to be that Zoom is the system of choice... we wouldn't have to have the overhead of trying to work out why things weren't working.

Adam Belenkin IT Support Manager, Killik & Co

A governance-first migration

Operating in a highly regulated environment meant that "due diligence" was the cornerstone of the transition. The IT and compliance teams moved with intentionality, starting with messaging before layering on meetings and finally migrating their primary phone systems from physical data centers to the cloud.

 

Security was not treated as a checkbox, but as a foundational requirement. The availability of European data centers became the "final piece of the puzzle," providing the compliance and operational oversight teams with greater regional assurance they needed to sign off on the cloud-first strategy. Within this new environment, administrators gained a level of control they previously lacked. They could now manage permissions with granular precision, enabling a team head to access specific call queues or recordings for their members while helping limit exposure of sensitive data to the broader organization.

The AI-driven shift in engagement

Perhaps the most profound change occurred at the advisor level. Previously, meetings were often characterized by "half-engaged" advisors who were forced to juggle client conversation with the manual task of scribbling notes and tracking next steps. The introduction of Zoom AI Companion addressed this "pen and paper" barrier overnight.

Testimonial Icon

It has pretty much changed [meetings] overnight. Users have gone from being half-engaged and taking notes to being fully engaged... because they know that the AI side of it is going to give them a full transcript, what was discussed, next points, all that sort of stuff. So effectively they're more involved because they know they're not going to miss anything.

David Davey Senior Cloud Support Engieer, Killik & Co
With 80% of the staff adopting AI Companion, the firm has seen a fundamental shift in how information is captured and verified. Instead of the slow, manual process of listening to hour-long call recordings to confirm a client's trade instructions, staff can now search AI-generated summaries in seconds. This near-instant audit capability helps teams validate decisions, supporting the firm's efforts to lower operational risk while freeing its people to focus on what matters most: serving their clients and making better decisions.

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