Symphony: A 21st-Century Communicator

Initially conceived as a competitor to Bloomberg's terminals, a consortium of financial services firms launched its own secure messaging platform, Symphony, in 2014. Symphony soon expanded beyond chat to include a range of services including data integrations, bots, applications, and a web conferencing solution; by 2019 Symphony's user base grew to 400 thousand clients, larger than Bloomberg's. This case explores Symphony's options for future growth—including how to leverage the need for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the financial sector and possible expansion beyond financial services. In analyzing the firm's options, students must consider an array of challenges, including: competitive pressure within the sector and beyond its scope, changing use attitudes for communications technology, the rise of cloud computing, and a changing regulatory environment.