Financial Services Industry Case Study
A major Wall Street financial services company was relying on outdated and slow
technology for billing clients. S3's customer was embarrassed that they were unable
to answer detailed billing questions when their clients called to ask. S3's client
was chiefly concerned that the image presented to its growing client base needed
to show more technological advancement.
The Crisis:
A Wall Street financial services company was using an outdated and inefficient technology
for collecting, processing, and invoicing clients for services rendered. A transactional
cost analysis was provided on only a 90-day cycle. Market standards today require
more time-sensitve billing and accounting metrics to be competitive. A crisis was
developing as S3's client felt that its customers would perceive them to be technologically
behind.
Protocols:
The Wall Street firm was clearing more than 3 million trades per month but did not
have an adequate method for conducting immediate post-trade cost analysis, which
offers invaluable performance insight to clients and traders. The ability to combine
data, examine order routing destinations, and determine, on a client by client basis,
what the cost per transaction would be, was limited by the firm's legacy technology.
"Market standards today require more time-sensitve billing and accounting metrics
to be competitive."
Processing efficiency and analysis was further complicated by the fact that data
was being received from various sources and in differing formats. S3 was retained
to manage vast amounts of their trade data on a daily basis, assist the firm's IT
department on some elements of the project and completely manage those exceeding
IT's scope of work.
Challenge:
The firm recognized it needed a way to combine and process millions of bits of market
data in regular intervals for every order routed and every trade executed. Clients
were demanding improved and faster performance. Analysis of various orders and trades
in a timely manner would provide the basis to assess the cost of transactions conducted
by the firm. The data also had to be mined for business intelligence and reports
that could be generated in real time and on a daily basis. A series of reports issued
to relevant internal parties had to be reviewed for distribution to clients. S3's
hosted solution delivered analysis of order flow and contemporaneous billing information
to meet client demands.
"The firm recognized it needed a way to combine and process millions of bits of
market data in regular intervals for every order routed and every trade executed."
Solution:
S3's solution architecture sent all of the Wall Street firm's order flow and market
information to a secure data center for easy management. This included exchange
listed and over the counter equity orders, options order routing, and all business
currently in the firm's order management system. The data was delivered in the firm's
format to staging servers at S3's facilities. Workflow products were required to
manage the dynamic behavior of order routing and the costs associated with each
order's destination. S3's technology then compared all of the firm's orders and
trades against the instructed costs input managed by the firm. Each morning, a daily,
weekly, monthly, quarterly and/or annual cost analysis report could be requested
by the firm, via a secure web portal, for internal review and client distribution.
Benefits:
The cost of doing business on routed orders and executed trades becomes known quickly
through S3's proprietary analysis. The solution issues dynamically generated reports
to the accounting department, traders, and compliance officers to keep them more
informed on internal financial and regulatory impact. Cost analysis reports to clients
are also delivered far timelier, increasing usefulness and insight. Results improve
the firm's performance and customer satisfaction while also providing audit information
required by federal regulators. The integrity of all data is maintained and immediate
reporting metrics are defined for the Wall Street firm and its clients. |
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