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Implementation Archaeology: When Finding Business Logic Becomes an Easter Egg Hunt

Picture this: The monthly performance report has just been received, but it’s missing some data. No errors were generated, yet the blank section on the output indicates something went wrong. The analyst sends a message to IT to report the error, and this starts the Easter egg hunt for the issue.

How many times has this happened to you or your colleagues? Whether you rely on a large single vendor, multi-purpose platform or multiple integrated systems, I’d be willing to speculate it’s a common occurrence. Beyond tracking down today’s Easter egg, how can we avoid the problem in the future or remedy our existing platforms?

by Christopher D. Sadala, Senior Consultant

3 Ways To Accelerate Your Vendor Selection Process

Finding a vendor to solve a business need is often treated as an analytical task – pick one that checks the most boxes and provides the biggest “bang for the buck.” However, several other factors should feed this decision. Vendor selection is not only about choosing the right platform, but also about picking the right partner who closely fits the firm’s culture and offers complementary services. Often, organizations find themselves in a precarious situation when extensive analyses conducted over several months do not yield decisive outcomes. Here are three ways to accelerate the process and reach a viable option.

by Christine (Tina) M. Madel, CFA, Principal

Agile and Waterfall: How To Marry the Two Approaches To Project Management

The two main approaches to project management, Waterfall and Agile, are often viewed as mutually exclusive. Though it’s true they may have little reusable overlap, each is helpful in setting expectations and tracking iterative development and nuanced progress updates. But what happens when you are managing an Agile team and the executive committee wants Waterfall-style reporting? Let’s explore how to unite the teams that work and view progress differently.

by Elizabeth M. Colebrooke, Principal

Control Your Data: Don’t Let Your Data Control You

Financial services organizations have complex and rapidly-evolving data requirements. Whether it’s navigating compliance with ESG standards or diversifying investment products into complex derivatives instruments and alternative investments, the challenges feel never-ending or even flat-out impossible to solve. This begs the question: Are you controlling your data or is your data controlling you?

by John E. Leavy, Principal

RFP Blues: Hitting the High Notes

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC

Have you ever been to JazzFest in New Orleans? If not, I highly recommend it: ten or more stages – zydeco, jazz, blues, rock, country, gospel, African, krewes, big names, local names – all playing at the same time. The problem is:  standing in the middle, program in hand, faint music coming from all directions, people celebrating – what’s your choice going to be?

Each listener has a different strategy, but I’ll tell you what absolutely no one does:  send out multi-page questionnaires in advance to each and every band asking them about their style, instrumentation, influences, playlist, recording history, etc. Nobody RFP’s JazzFest.

by Mark R. David, CFA

Are You In Control of Your Market Data Costs?

Effectively managing market data costs is not always an investment manager’s first priority. Here within we examine the contributing factors, and the opportunities for material cost savings.

by Mick Cartwright, CIPM

Beyond Enterprise Data Management into the Challenges of Alternatives Data Management

If you think the journey to mastering your enterprise data management (EDM) is difficult, consider the teams wrestling with alternatives data management (ADM). Increasing correlation between traditional investments (equities and fixed income) and the pursuit of Alpha has fueled the expansion into alternative investments. Beyond allocations to external managers and hedge fund managers, this segment extends to private equity, private credit, real estate, real assets, infrastructure and more. Each brings its own complexity. When you layer in fund of funds, primary and secondary investments; the customary drill through for traditional investments is just not possible.

Although alternative investment teams use dedicated vendor tools; they still rely in some way on Excel and significant manual effort to wrangle their alternatives data. ADM challenges are not just internal to the team working to meet their own analytic and reporting needs, but external as well. In an analytics-led and data-driven world, firms want to see the whole picture to understand how the full range of investments roll up. CIOs and many others need to examine exposure, risk and performance from a holistic viewpoint, rather than from individual asset class silos. This paper explores the challenges of blending EDM and ADM to drive this complete viewpoint.

by Mick Cartwright, CIPM, Managing Director
and Christine (Tina) M. Madel, CFA, Principal

How Investment Management Firms Benefit from Engaging the Right Consultant

During an era when critical skills are in short-supply and valuable IT and business personnel spend most of their working hours in meetings, consultants can make the meaningful difference between a project’s success or failure. The right consultant brings diverse skills, broad perspectives and an understanding of both business and technology. In addition, consultants are best positioned to contribute in a way seldom possible by others since they can apply focus and attention to the task at hand – something that is difficult for full time employees to do when they are juggling competing demands and BAU tasks. This article:
• delves into business problems prevalent in many investment management firms, especially in vendor product evaluations and implementations;
• deals with how an outside consultant can play a significant, contributory role; and
• leverages a practical use case to demonstrate key benefits and tangible results delivered by a Meradia consultant who moved an almost failing project to a successful outcome.

by Jose R. Michaelraj, CIPM, Senior Consultant

Wealth Management Study: A Survey Prompted by the Radically Evolving Operating Environment

Meradia’s 2020 wealth management survey collates information from interviews with key executives in the industry. The participating firms range from small- to mid-size and specialize in wealth management and trust service and operations. The study surfaces how firms view market trends and potential future challenges and involves deep discussions about their internal operating models.

The final output is designed to give insight to the industry in the form of commentary rather than statistics, gauge how the market is feeling as well as how firms are managing their clients and businesses. The views are based on observations made by the executives who participated.

by Joshua B. Levitt, Principal

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