The Composable Enterprise: Improving the Front-Office User Experience

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By Dishang Patel, Fintech & Growth Delivery Partner, Leading Point Financial Markets.

The past six months have by no means been a time of status quo. During this period of uncertainty, standards have been questioned and new ‘norms’ have been formed.

A standout development has been the intensified focus on cloud-based services. Levels of adoption have varied, from those moving to cloud for the first time, to others making cloud their only form of storage and access, and with numerous ‘others’ in between.

One area affected adversely (for those who weren’t ready) but positively (for those who were) is software. ‘Old-school’ software vendors – whose multi-million-pound solutions were traditionally implemented on premise at financial institutions, whether as part of a pure ‘buy’ or broader ‘build’ approach – have worked hard to offer cloud-based services.

The broad shift to working from home (WFH) as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has tested the end-user experience all the way from front to back offices in financial institutions. Security, ease of access and speed are all high on the agenda in the new world in which we find ourselves.

The digitisation journey

With workforces operating globally, it is difficult to guarantee uniform user experiences and be able to cater for a multitude of needs. To achieve success in this area and to ensure a seamless WFH experience, financial institutions have moved things up a level and worked as hard as software providers to offer cloud-based solutions.

All manner of financial institutions (trading firms, brokerages, asset managers, challenger banks) have been on a digitisation journey to make the online user experience more consistent and reliable.

Composable Enterprise is an approach that those who have worked in a front office environment within financial services may have come across and for many could be the way forward.

 

Composable Enterprise: the way forward

Digitisation can come in many forms: from robotic process automation (RPA), operational excellence, implementation of application-based solution, interoperability and electronification. Interoperability and electronification are two key components of this Composable Enterprise approach.

Interoperability – whether in terms of web services, applications, or both –  is an approach that can create efficiencies on the desktop and deliver improved user experience. It has the potential to deliver business performance benefits, in terms of faster and better decision making with the ultimate potential to uncover previously untapped alpha. It also has two important environmental benefits:

1) Reducing energy spend;

2) Less need for old hardware to be disposed of, delivering the reduced environmental footprint that organisations desire.

Electronification, for most industry players, may represent the final step on the full digitisation journey. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, electronification is the “conversion to or adoption of an electronic mode of operation,” which translates to the front office having all the tools they need to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

The beauty of both interoperability and electronification is that they work just as well in a remote set up as they do in an office environment. This is because a good implementation of both results in maximising an organisation’s ability to use all the tools (trading platforms, market data feeds, CRMs, and so on) at their disposal without needing masses of physical infrastructure.

Because of the lower barriers (such as time and cost) of interoperability, financial institutions should start their digitisation journeys from this component and then embark on a larger and more complicated move to electronification.

Composable Enterprise is about firms being able to choose the best component needed for their business, allowing them to be more flexible and more open in order to adapt to new potential revenue opportunities. In these challenging times, it is no surprise that more and more financial institutions are adding Composable Enterprise as a key item on their spending agenda.

 

 

 

 

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"The broad shift to working from home as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has tested the end-user experience all the way from front to back offices in financial institutions."

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"It has the potential to deliver business performance benefits, in terms of faster and better decision making with the ultimate potential to uncover previously untapped alpha."

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"The beauty of both interoperability and electronification is that they work just as well in a remote set up as they do in an office environment."

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GLUE42 and Leading Point Collaborate on Front Office Modernisation

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Glue42, the company that delivers integrated desktop experiences to financial institutions globally, and Leading Point Financial Markets, a financial services advisory and delivery partner, today announced a partnership to help clients provide a next-generation trading desktop experience.  

Sales and trading activities are inherently complex and require equally complex software applications to manage data and workflows. Due to single monolithic applications and bloated technology stacks, financial organizations today find it hard to adapt to changing user, customer and regulatory needs. Those organizations that can design and build so called ‘composable enterprises’, i.e. modular portfolios of business capabilities, are able to lead front office innovation and achieve higher productivity.

As part of the partnership, Leading Point Financial Markets will help organizations define the best vendor strategy and ecosystem architecture to enable the core of the composable enterprise and optimize the desktop for the best-in-class experience. Glue42 will provide the underlying integration platform to delivers seamless user journeys and configurable workflows.

“Together, we will provide a unique mix of world-class implementation services and software,” said Dishang Patel, Partner, Leading Point Financial Markets. “In the short term, traders will gain unparalleled speed of visibility across applications so they can focus on generating alpha. In the longer run, firms will need to purchase and maintain less hardware, which will vastly improve the environmental impact and making it easier to meet their ESG policy.” 

As a result of the collaboration, IT teams will be able to selectively replace or augment legacy systems, simplifying and automating complex processes, making for a leaner, system-agnostic and agile desktop. Front office teams will be able to interact with multiple systems and data sources directly from their financial desktops using only the best functionality of each application. This intelligent, user-driven desktop reduces noise and risk. With as much as 90 percent fewer clicks for basic tasks; traders can execute faster and generate 20 percent more alpha on average for their clients.

“The perfect storm of the post-Covid world and the evolving ‘interop’ innovation has created a period of reflection for many firms. For many organizations, the digital transformation was prematurely accelerated and the need for greater efficiency and process optimization is now stronger than ever,” said James Wooster, COO, Glue42. 

“As organizations innovate and adapt to changing business needs, and vendors continue to deliver more modular capabilities, they will need to rethink how they source and deliver business solutions. This partnership will help firms gain higher front-office productivity much faster,” he continued.

For more information, read Glue42’s latest paper: Modernizing Legacy Systems: Why Loving Legacy Apps is Key to Capital Markets’ Digital Transformation​. You can also watch a recording of the latest webinar: A Practitioner's View of Legacy Migration.

Read the press release here.

 

 

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Intersecting the Old World with the New

It has always been a challenge for large corporations to adopt change.  There is constant change being experienced at all institutions but, despite the appetite for change, the size of an organisation often hamstrings its ability to execute on innovative initiatives.

So, what differentiates those who can deliver successful change versus those who cannot?  In one word: Execution!

Execution is the biggest differentiator between small, agile and nimble businesses and their much larger counterparts.  Even if you put to one side the classic large corporate roadblocks (such as organisational complexity and bureaucracy), it’s clear that those who decide to take the leap of faith and try to change the world by starting their own businesses seem to be able to avoid and, often, ignore convention to deliver significant change.

Innovation in large organisations must pass through many layers of change management and control which frequently ties the hands of those who are the agents of change. Equally frequently, organisational politics have an adverse impact.  This is not true of ‘Upstarts’.

‘Upstarts’ break the glass ceiling of ‘the norm’ to create change by significantly improving an existing system or reinventing a process, convention, etc.  But one must question why it is easier for Upstarts to achieve significant change where larger organisations struggle and fail to achieve the same success.

Is it because Upstarts have more skills or able people to execute change?  Probably not, although one must believe Upstart people form a more focused collective.  It’s much simpler than that – it’s a matter of having the time and inclination to apply that collective focus to the achievement of a single objective.  Having, as a sole objective, creating and delivering industry augmenting technology will result in an executable product roadmap and realistic delivery timelines.

Execution is the biggest differentiator between small, agile and nimble businesses and their much larger counterparts

However, there is one area in which large corporates have the upper hand: domain expertise.  Upstarts, by virtue of their size, generally do not have the breadth of expertise of larger organisations.  There are many Upstarts who are capable and indeed do produce top of the line tech solutions.  However, often these same single solutions providers (focus!) struggle to appreciate and navigate the vast array of problems large FS organisations are looking to address. Due to these information gaps, solutions can often result in not being fully fit for purpose and therefore hinder an Upstarts ability to precisely satisfy the needs of large FS corporates.

In addition, large organisations have deep pockets.  This allows them to research and develop solutions internally or to attract external innovation by setting up Innovation Labs, or both.  The main objective of these Labs is to experiment with and identify the kind of innovation that will create competitive advantage.  Upstarts may find themselves part of the Innovation Lab or even acquired in the process.

While Innovation Labs may ensure large players don’t get left behind, there is a big opportunity being missed.  This is the integration of external innovation with internal processes and capabilities.  Acquisitions should be aligned with internal use cases i.e. known (or guessed at) issues with existing business workflows such as efficiency gains.  The main reason seems to be that each is located in its own silo.

Having, as a sole objective, creating and delivering industry augmenting technology will result in an executable product roadmap and realistic delivery timelines

So internal use cases (areas in need of improvement and change) are not connected to potential external innovative solutions.  And this is not to speak of the bigger challenge which is to identify those use cases in the first place.  This raises a number of questions:

  • Does the right type of resource exist?
  • Can available internal staff ask the right questions?
  • Is an independent party better placed to conduct such an exercise?
  • Will this be prevented by internal politics?
  • Who’s going to pay for the work?
  • Who’s going to take ownership?
  • … and the list goes on.

Successful organisations engage the right people at the right level internally as well as identify and breakdown the ability of Upstarts to address wide ranging and often long-standing issues.  This takes a certain type of skill set including

  • The ability to face off across the corporate spectrum
  • Applying the correct level of domain expertise and insight, and
  • The ability and expertise to collaborate with Upstarts; to name but a few.

Entrepreneurs, especially the good ones, know that if failure is to happen, it happens fast.  This requires the ability to EXECUTE. 

The common thread: entrepreneurship. Why?

Entrepreneurs, especially the good ones, know that if failure is to happen, it happens fast.  This requires the ability to EXECUTE.  Getting the job done is very high on the agenda for any entrepreneur.  Lateral and cohesive thinking is also vital.  Steve Jobs once said, “creativity is just merging things” and entrepreneurs do this better than anyone and tend to find ways through means others don’t or won’t pursue through such approaches as marginal gains.

Entrepreneurs don’t have all the answers. Not at all.  But to bridge the gap between larger, more conventional-minded organisations and newer Upstarts, one must have the ability to “intersect the old world with the new”.  An excellent example of this was the event we ran Data Innovation Uncovered and the work we continue to do in the FinTech space including in Enterprise Blockchain and Client Lifecycle Management.

We love to talk about this intersection and encourage free and open conversation so please feel free to get in touch to share your thoughts or indeed to hear more of ours.

To bridge the gap between larger, more conventional-minded organisations and newer Upstarts, one must have the ability to “intersect the old world with the new”