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When clients and vendors share responsibility in system implementations, what is at risk of being overlooked? The delineation of duties between clients and vendors can be ambiguous. Resourcing gaps arise when one party assumes that the other party is responsible for a task. These gaps become apparent only after project teams and stakeholders have experienced
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Mastering the Ripple Effect: Key Strategies to Navigate Financial Transformation Challenges
In the financial industry, the sales process can evoke excitement, apprehension, and optimism, often fueled by the promise of change and new innovative solutions. However, the path to lasting success is fraught with potential challenges that, if not addressed early, can create a significant ripple effect. It’s never too late to tackle these transformational challenges, but the earlier you address them, the smaller you can make your ripple. By focusing on three pivotal stages—the sales process, implementation, and post-go-live, you can mitigate risks, reduce the size of your ripple, and ensure a smooth transition into everyday business operations.
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UAT for Performance Transformations Is Notoriously Difficult. It Doesn’t Need To Be.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) can throw projects into a frustrating and mind-numbing stall, which is catastrophic to any transformation. The terror of botching a go-live event with insufficient data commonly leads users into a frenzy of checking, double-checking, approving, re-checking, and reapproving. As the process repeats across test cases, progress toward user confidence seems negligible.
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Revolutionize Investment Operations With AI-Driven Data Catalogs
Are you looking to stand up or revise a data catalog? Is understanding your data one of your company’s goals or principles? Understanding the full scope of your data involves a top-down understanding and a bottom-up inventory. This provides valuable insights into your current state to enable multiple efforts to be launched at your firm, but who has the time? The new methodology developed using AI technology and industry expertise reduced the time and client resources required to inventory data and stand up a catalog to a fraction of the normal amount. In this paper, we share the methodology and tools to help you achieve your firm’s goals both effectively and efficiently.
by Andrew Jacob, CFA, Senior Consultant
Kevin Coffin, CIPM, Zengines, Head of Customer Success
Data-Centric KPIs Enable Effective Management of Investment Performance Operations
Consider the irony… Performance departments exert their time and energy to calculate performance results that inform consumers of the impacts of their decisions on investments. Though Performance executes complex calculations and solves firm-wide data challenges for consumers’ benefit, oftentimes they forget to measure the most important performance of all… their own. This fourth installment of the Performance is Data Series explores exactly how Investment Performance teams can embark on a key performance indicator (KPI) centered approach to measure more than just the performance of others and introspectively assess operations.
by Clay Corcimiglia
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Operational Transformations: A Data-Driven Approach
Firms are constantly in flux. Day-to-day challenges and the pressure to meet existing SLAs often take center stage in business operations. Expansion of business models, increased service alternatives, and new technology solutions are pushing firms to transform their existing paradigm. The concept of an optimal model seems to allure many. Pure ‘strategy-led’ transformations typically run into years and most benefits manifest at the long end of the spectrum. A data-driven approach mitigates many risks that extend or abandon transformations.
by Jose Michaelraj, CIPM, CAIA
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From Complexity to Efficiency – Modernizing Data Pipelines
In the fast-paced world of investment asset management, accurate and timely data is crucial for informed decision-making. Data pipelines serve as metaphorical vehicles that facilitate the movement of data from its source to delivery points. Traditionally, investment asset management firms have relied on multiple pipelines for different data sources, resulting in complex and cumbersome processes. This paper explores the concept of modern data pipelines in investment asset management, their advantages over traditional pipelines, and best practices for their implementation.
by Andrew Jacob, CFA
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Reduce Risk and Enable Scalability in Derivatives Processing by Modernizing Processes and Technology
The accumulation of temporary workarounds in back and middle office operations can pose significant risks to firms. As new opportunities arise, scalability is often hindered. Fortunately, new vendor capabilities have made it easier to modernize these operations by integrating applications into IBOR or conducting a complete re-platforming exercise. Read this article to learn how to best utilize derivatives for modernizing operations.
by Jake Daly-Leonard, Consultant
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Replacing Your Legacy Investment Operations Software? Don’t Ignore These Three Red Flags
Have you selected a new investment operations system to replace your legacy technology and manual workarounds? Or have you decided to outsource investment operations to a service provider?
Both efforts are significant and likely the largest efforts your part of the organization has ever seen. Are you making the right decisions? Or do you need a golden opportunity to advance your business and improve the way you work? Here are three red flags you’re overlooking business transformation opportunities.
by Brian Lollar, Managing Director
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4 Mistakes When Implementing a Data Catalog
Building and implementing a data glossary are two common goals for many investment firms in their annual strategy setting. But what happens when you rush into it without proper planning? Four common mistakes can occur which can hamper your development or make the final product irrelevant. This paper will discuss these missteps and offer prevention strategies.
by Andrew R. Jacob, CFA, Senior Consultant
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