Making the complex simple: streamlining data management

For financial services firms, data management – the process of ensuring underlying data is accessible, transparent, and accurate for end users, whatever the business need – is too often viewed as a problem to correct rather than as unexplored terrain where new ideas, new models, and new insights on how to maximize data are revealed.

In that regard, it’s no wonder so many money management companies still see data management as a complex obstacle, and not as a path to greater operational transparency, lower risk, and stronger profit margins.

But turning data complexities into data opportunities remains an uphill climb.

According to a recent study by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp, “Putting the Client at the Center: Changing Dynamics in Client Onboarding and Data Management,” 82% of financial firms surveyed cite “regulations” as the biggest challenge in data management, while 62% cite “risk management” concerns.

Additionally, firms report having technical data not recorded properly, weakened supervision of company-wide data, and improper data maintenance and storage.

It really doesn’t need to be that way, experts say. The key in making data complexities simple is through streamlining data management. Do that, and data management can lead to fewer obstacles and more profit opportunities.

“If you have good data, the company operations come much more easily,” noted Devesh Shukla, Global Head Product Development for Reference Data Services at the Bloomberg Enterprise Summit last May. “This allows firms to focus more of their resources on the really complex tasks, such as building a consistent metamodel for the entire enterprise.”

Where can an information technology manager start?

Bloomberg has a few key themes, along with some fresh ideas on streamlining data management.

Start with a complete, unbiased assessment of your data operations – Job one in your data management streamlining campaign is to gain some collective expertise on complex data issues. Taking a collaborative approach toward a thorough assessment of your specific situation can get you on the right path to better data information, across the board. Work with an experienced financial data services provider with collective expertise in complex data management. A collaborative approach is vital at the enterprise level, where every challenge is connected with many others. After you have kicked some tires and taken the pulse of your data operation, you can isolate the issues at hand and internalized your firm’s priorities.

Rethink proprietary data solutions – Increasingly, building, supporting, and upgrading in-house networks is fast becoming an unsustainable situation. Financial services information technology teams are overloaded. Worse, proprietary tools and legacy technologies limit scalability and connectivity, while response time to emerging needs is slower than it needs to be. To better streamline the movement of data, so that firm decision-makers get the right data at the exact time they need it, you will need to redirect (or even revamp) data flowing in from multiple sources. The end game? Clean, customized content channeled into the data management flow that turns insight into action, using less technology, lowering costs, and improving flexibility.

Take the centralized route – To gain maximum leverage with firm-wide data, financial services firms should think centrally, and act accordingly. That means simplifying the data management process, using a managed service that provides everything an IT manager can expect from a centralized solution, including trusted entitlements, rigorous application and system monitoring, and the ability to distribute external, internal, customer or third-party data to users, applications and other destinations worldwide.

In going from complexity to clarity with your data management operations, you need to start facing new realities—and acting on them. More specifically, you will need to offload time-consuming IT tasks, removing technology clutter and slimming down operating costs, while maintaining exceptional performance, security and control with your data management streams.

John Randles, CEO Bloomberg PolarLake expands, “The key to simplifying data management is getting started. Our clients have chosen a common route. They have decided to tackle their priority business problems by seeking to remove inherent data barriers. In doing so, they have chosen managed services in order to benefit immediately from an industrial strength data management environment whilst realizing their business solutions in a controlled and iterative rollout.”

Do that, and the path from data complexity to data simplification will be a short one, and a rewarding one, too, for financial services companies.

John Randles, CEO Bloomberg PolarLake presents at the Bloomberg Enterprise Summit