Market Data, CRM, and Business Intelligence - A Winning Combination

For organisations in the financial services industries there are a number of options when it comes to acquiring market data.  Some of the key players are well known names (household brands of a sort): LAVA (a CITI product), Bloomberg (possibly the premier provider of market data globally), IDC (another major player) and a few others.  But one of the greatest challenges facing organisations in our industry that use such products is the integration with our sales platforms and, more importantly developing pricing information, and the integration with our business intelligence mechanisms.

As a large scale user of CRM and Business Intelligence our focus, as a business in the financial services industry (namely insurance, lending, stock trading, currency trading, and bond trading) is to not only obtain market data, but to place it into the hands of decision makers via a format that makes it possible to absorb the information quickly and make rapid decisions.  It is here that integrating your products separates the heroes from the zeroes.  And here is the kicker - you only get one shot at this or your credibility becomes a zero along with your career options.

This is going to be too short for a case study or white paper, but it can give you some insights into how you can easily tackle what can be a rather daunting problem.

TARGET RICH ENVIRONMENT

So we have three rather high profile systems that we are dealing with: CRM (Customer Relationship Management), EFDP (Electronic Financial Data Provider); and BI (Business Intelligence).  To focus this discussion we are going to assume three key products that are highly commonplace in the market: Salesforce CRM, Bloomberg Terminal (the EFDP), and COGNOS (the business intelligence software).  The next step is to focus on what it takes to integrate all three platforms, the process, and the end results.

As you can see these are all very critical platforms for any business, but when you talk about integration the possibilities for bringing down any one of these systems increases tremendously.  That is enough to not only make you cringe, but it should frighten you into petrification.  This is not for the weak of heart.

START AT THE MIDDLE 
Let's look at the overall problem that we are faced with - there are two systems that are deployed in house (COGNOS and Salesforce) and one system that is essentially a service that you use to download information (Bloomberg Terminal).  If you are reading this article and wondering what a Bloomberg Terminal is then you are likely not in the financial service / trading industry and should read no further as this won't apply to you.   Since we are dealing with two in-house systems we are going to start in the middle by working on the components for integrating Bloomberg Terminal data into our Business Intelligence System (COGNOS).


Bloomberg Terminal (BT) is a bit different from many of its competitors and so there are a few things to know.  One, information that comes across on BT is uploaded to an internal UNIX server that then feeds data across to end users.  In some organizations the end user has a separate terminal and keyboard, but in others (such as ours) we use a toggle (or KVM) that we developed to enable end users to use a single or dual monitor configuration.

TAKE IT TO THE GOAL
The robustness of your infrastructure (in this case software) makes all the difference.  In this quasi cloud world that we live in the push to virtualise everything has to be questioned more and more.  For one thing you cannot virtualise a Bloomberg Terminal (although as of the date this article is being published that statement is true - the near future might turn that on its ear).  Secondly it is all about performance stupid.  Regardless of whether you follow football (soccer to some of you), hockey, or polo everyone knows that you have to punch the ball through the goal.  The near miss phenomena abounds with horror stories where you get 99% there and crash - you are still D.E.A.D. dead!!!

Integration on this scale is no different.  You need to focus...  So, here are the key elements to get your integration punched into your goal:

1. Make sure you have a sponsor high enough in the organisation that heads will roll if a milestone is missed or if cooperation is short in coming (this is basic project management ladies and gentlemen).
2. Know what the limitations are up front - it is a fair question to ask your vendor to prove that they have completed an integration of this type, scope, and scale and to provide examples of their work (don't be the test subject unless you really want to be).
3. When it comes to financial data such as this you are talking about sophisticated client lists - many of which are proprietary and some of the portfolio information is INCREDIBLY SENSITIVE.  So, make sure that you have your security in-line with what you want to accomplish.
4. Give yourself time to get each component aligned so that you don't end up rushing a deflated ball into play.  There are no second chances in many cases - if you bring down your trading network you will be PNG - Persona Non-Grata in a very big hurry.
5. Know what you are going to do with this new configuration after it is set up.  It is great to say you want these platforms integrated and talking to one another, but you have to know what you expect out of this excercise.  Is it better performance, better information, more built in automated analysis??? There are a plethora of reasons to do something, but finding the one that drives decision making is the one that matters here.

The flow of information in terms of pricing and how we deliver a message to our clients that keeps us competitive as well as responsive makes all the difference.  Gathering pricing information that makes sense to us internally is irrelevant unless this new integrated framework can help us deliver the same information to our clients so that we can drive sales.  You have to focus on what the overall target is and that, my friends, is to increase our transaction closure rates.