Moving Data to New Provider
Summary
IMP was retained by an investment advisory company in June 2017 to provide consulting services to its operations and IT teams in order to meet a critical deadline to move all reference data from data provider, ICE (IDC) to Thomson Reuters Datascope Select (“TRDSS”), within Advent’s APX platform and ensure the new tool Atlas, output correct data. Phase I of the engagement went through in a month, as planned. IMP provided business analysis, project management and advisory services. IMP worked with the company's teams to analyze, build out business logic, validate, troubleshoot and assist in resolution of security master implementation and mapping issues.
Understanding the context
In May of 2017, the decision to migrate away from ICE as a reference data provider and to move onto Thomson Reuters Datascope Select as the reference data provide was made. The company was contracted with ICE until July 31st, 2017, which was the last day they would receive data from ICE to populate their security master file along with additional operational workflows, transaction management, RBI, pricing etc. Essentially, unless a delta between ICE data and Thomson Reuters data was found, new but like data, would not be imported. In total, there were 10 workflows that needed to be mapped over. Of those 10, it was deemed that the equity splits workflow was completely out of scope, and was not in consideration for future enhancements.
peeling back the layers
IMP’s advisers met with BA Senior operational and technical management and agreed that the SMF team needed a senior business analyst with expertise in market data with the ability to work in between business and development teams to meet the short deadline. The goal of Phase 1 was to ensure mandatory and minimum requirements were met as it pertains to the fields of information required by reference data best practices and technical requirements from APX by July 31st. Phase II would be designed to address issues that could not be resolved by end of phase 1, and for enhancement purposes.
delivering the solution
The team was able to meet the July 31st go live date. IMP was able to ensure that Atlas was secure enough to allow the business to continue to operate as expected. Every workflow that was deemed in scope (SPLITS was removed), was successfully moved to production.
best practices and recommendations
1. Enhanced documentation: Robust documentation and processes will lead to a stronger middle office/operations environment and increase business continuity.
2. Service level agreements: By developing SLA’s for each team's workflow, you are guaranteeing alignment with the business.
3. Data warehouse model/visualization: Build out a data visualization map for reference data. Within this diagram you would include APX as your central data warehouse and from there, include all the sources of data, and the downstream systems that APX interacts with, along with the corresponding data that is flowing to said systems.
4. STP/Automation: The implementation of Atlas and the migration to TRDSS positions companies to be in a place where they can achieve best practices.
takeaway
Evolution is essential as the technical landscape continues to develop and regulatory challenges and changes influence the market place. In order to be prepared for these upcoming challenges, it is imperative that existing processes marked and observed as STP capable, are actively targeted. As upgrades and testing begin, you want your teams to be free of as many manual production processes as possible.
