The company, which was founded in 1968 to develop software for tracking the financial assets in estates, was expanding into software for administering mutual funds. The company also was pushing into investment advisory services for wealthy individuals and would eventually compete with the Vanguard Group, a corporate neighbor. Instead of smooth going, however, West says employees in different business lines were not talking to one another and, in fact, were competing with one another. West decided to shake things up. He reassigned the company's 92 secretaries to non-secretarial jobs, forcing executives, managers and other employees to do their own typing and faxing.
Some secretaries also quit rather than take new jobs offered in client service, sales and marketing.
Even before the move to Oaks, West replaced high cubicle walls with lower ones in the company's former offices, which were scattered in Wayne. He removed several layers of management, cut about 400 jobs from the payroll, mostly through outsourcing, and decided the company needed a new office - one where all employees would be centrally located. West's daughter, Paige, had discovered the firm's work on a business trip to Michigan. What caught Paige West's attention was how the firm had constructed barn-like offices for a furniture company. In Oaks, the SEI complex has a different theme.