Case Study: Hedge Fund implements new information management system

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