Zoller cited and elaborated on a categorization of technology efforts by digital analyst Brian Solis, who studies the effects on technology on business in his role with Altimeter Group. Solis lists three types of technology changes: iteration — improvements on how existing processes work; innovation — the use of new processes; and disruption — the use of new processes that make existing processes obsolete.

Zoller sees financial industry operations as being somewhere “right in the middle” between iteration and innovation. “We’re not making the old ways obsolete,” he says. “We’re trying to figure out how to take the old things and just make them better and change them to some degree. Firms are still trying to take in traditional sets of investment data and use them in smarter ways.”