Case Study
Hedge Fund implements new information management system
Industry:
Financial Services
Objective:
Provide a system which consolidates all internal sources of data, specifically
research and emails
IT Objectives:
• Deliver automated collation and indexing of all trade,
research and email related information across systems and formats
• Implement a user-friendly and reliable system that enables
authorised company employees to locate enriched information
• Reduce cost and time for access to company information
• Reduce load and increase performance of Exchange server
Business Objectives:
• Enable employees to locate and share related information
from various sources
• Increase insight into access and use of internal
information
• Remove the need for employees to use their mailboxes as
information stores
Introduction:
This Hedge Fund was looking to improve accessibility to
information from various systems and across formats to employees, while
reducing the usage of Exchange mailboxes for storing of data. All documents
were being stored on a network drive, with access and changes not being
audited. Furthermore, related information on different mediums (particularly
email), was effectively inaccessible by other employees and in practice lost
once the employee left the organisation.
Challenge:
Most organisations, and particularly Financial Service
Institutions, have user mailbox sizes in gigabytes. These emails have important
information that could be useful to other team members and are inaccessible.
There is an expense related to this, in time and productivity, while it also
forces the business to spend large sums of money keeping their Exchange server
responsive. When the employee moves on, that information effectively is lost,
while it may reside on some offsite backup, it is effectively hidden and not
easily referenced.
Key processes related information is stored on a variety of
mediums and formats, so for example research can exist in the shape of a PDF on
the network drive, a excel spreadsheet with calculations and emails containing
relevant information. The challenge is to make that data accessible in a
central location, to enable team members to effectively find and utilise that
information regardless of where it originated from or the location it resided.
Solution:
As the manner of communication and sharing of data continues
to evolve, so must the methods and systems that are used in order to manage
that valuable information. This forward-thinking hedge fund realise that in
order to improve productivity and utilise their valuable information to
maintain their competitive edge they
needed to implement an enriched information management system.
Benefits:
Roll-out of the system has been completed ahead of schedule
and on budget, users have taken to it with surprising ease, information has
been enriched to provide additional value and email server storage has been
reduced by just under a terabyte of data, which has improved the performance of
outlook.
Client Quote:
“The amount of usable
information seems to be pouring out of nooks and crannies with the sharing of
this information taken to a new level, the major advantage from our perspective
is the continuity of the data and the traceability of who is doing what with
our valuable and sensitive data."
– Miles, CTO
