Sandstone Technology CEO honoured as "10 Most Inspiring Leaders of 2021" by Industry Era Magazine

UNITED KINGDOM – 20 December 2021 

Michael Phillipou, CEO, Sandstone Technology has been is honoured to be certified as"10 Most Inspiring Leaders of 2021" by Industry Era Magazine.

Creating a common purpose for the organization and its employees sits at the heart of everything Michael stands for. Clearly articulating the company’s vision and fostering a culture of high performance creates a highly engaged workforce who are prepared to give discretionary effort when it counts most. Building the strategy across all facets of the organization, with key staff contributing to the planning and strategic vision, promotes buy-in and aids in the effective communication of the overall goals and objectives.

It all starts with hiring the right people. Build the best possible team and place them in the right roles to develop and inspire others.

One of Michael's main qualities as CEO is his ability to keep the noise and distractions away from his staff. Celebrating success and communicating progress and results fosters a culture where everyone feels that together as one team, they are contributing to the company’s success and future growth.

Sandstone Technology is famous for delivering market-leading innovative solutions that future-proof customers' technical solutions. Sandstone places the customer at the center of everything they do as a product company. Part of their success comes down to the operational excellence established across all lines of the business.

“From digital banking and digital onboarding to origination and AI-based data analysis, with cloud-based or on-premise deployment, we create flexible, robust, end-to-end solutions using a multi-channel approach that gets our clients to market faster.”
For Michael, the staff is Sandstone’s most valuable asset, and their time is arguably best used to execute high-value tasks. Similarly, they know this holds true for the customers (banks’) staff. “Accordingly, we build platforms for our customers, which use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that can automate what are considered to be low-value tasks, thereby removing friction and time from processes, reducing human error rates which in turn create efficiency, and enable a better customer and staff experience,” he says. “Our platforms enable our customers’ staff to be able to execute on high-value tasks, which are more complex & engaging, which in turn drive better employee engagement.”

The critical strategy Sandstone Technology employs to remain a market leader is executing on a ‘best people’ strategy. Ensuring that they have the most experienced and capable leaders and teams throughout the organization provides Sandstone with a distinct competitive advantage. As a product company with a mission to digitize retail and SME banking operations, our objectives are to build and deliver market-leading platforms into banks across our target markets. To execute on these objectives effectively, their focus on execution is three-fold:

• To be the strategic business transformation partner of choice providing an exceptional customer experience

• To be the best place where the best people want to work delivering a superior employee experience

• To create products that remove the friction out of banking, providing an excellent product experience

Their key differentiators are the quality and depth of knowledge of their people across technology and banking expertise, their market-leading products, and their flawless track record of success in delivering transformation programs (i.e., they have a 100% success rate in implementing transformation programs).

Sandstone Technology offers a unique solution whereby they can service a bank’s front-end requirements for their digital banking and loan origination needs – from application to settlement. Their customers’ successes are Sandstone’s greatest achievements. In particular, their customers continue to be recognized by winning industry awards across Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom. Examples include being rated as the Number 1 Bank in Australia [Forbes], Number 1 Bank in Australia by mortgage customers (NPS) [Roy Morgan] and winner of Canstar’s ‘Most Satisfied Customers’ Award’ in New Zealand, to name just a few.

Moreover, delivering transformation programs is generally very complex and significant for banks. “Our customers gain great confidence from the fact that Sandstone has a 100% success rate in implementing our systems into banks for over 25 years. This is an achievement we’re very proud of and is a key reason for our exceptionally high customer retention,” concludes Michael. IE