Business Impact Article - Posted 8/9/2007
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Trading on Information: Major Stock Exchange Streamlines Primary Account Managers’ Work, Improves Customer Service with Web-based Dashboard
Intense pressure is something that most businesses experience on occasion—perhaps when a product is about to launch, at the end of the fiscal year, or during the holiday season. At the London Stock Exchange, the pressure is intense every working day, and usually every minute of every day.
In 2006, the London Stock Exchange (the Exchange) was the world’s third-largest exchange; the value of shares traded on the Exchange totaled approximately £7.57 trillion, or nearly U.S.$15 trillion—a 50 percent jump from the prior year. Moving this amount of money involves constant, split-second decisions made by thousands of people.
The engine of this formidable financial market is information. From currency fluctuations to the price of oil, from stock prices of companies to the number of shares bought and sold, data is what makes everything go. Such data is critical for the Exchange membership, which includes hundreds of banks and stockbrokers who trade for clients and on their own behalf. The Exchange members range from small brokerage houses to global financial organizations such as Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch.
The relationship between the Exchange and its member firms is handled by the Exchange’s primary account managers, or PAMs. The PAMs are responsible for the day-to-day interaction and management of member firms, ultimately aligning the long-term strategic goals of both organizations.
One of the key tasks for PAMs is to gather internal information on member firms’ trading trends and patterns to obtain a better understanding of individual customers and the market as a whole. The information comes from a variety of data sources, most of which are compiled in isolation and unconnected with one another. This restricted the ability of the PAMs to identify, understand, and deliver information about emerging trading patterns and behaviors that could affect the market strategies and product development of the member firms.
“One of the big challenges we faced was the multiple data sources across the Exchange,” says Nicola Lynch, Head of Client Management for the Exchange. “When our clients have questions, we want to respond to them with the best possible answers. But that involved us checking numerous databases and data sources to come up with the correct answers. Depending on the complexity of the question, the answer could take from a couple of hours to a couple of days to analyze and deliver.”
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When our clients have questions, we want to respond to them with the best possible answers. |
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Nicola Lynch
Head of Client Management, London Stock Exchange
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“Clients are never very happy when they have to wait,” she says. “They are sophisticated market participants, using one of the fastest trading systems in the world. Therefore, they expect immediate results. When they request specific data from us, we need to respond with the same urgency.”
To help its PAMS serve the client firms and to maintain its rate of growth, the Exchange decided to look for a technology solution that could help the PAMS gather and analyze information more quickly. It found one after talking with Microsoft about technologies that would become available with the introduction of the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. Working with Microsoft, the Exchange developed an Office Business Application (OBA) designed to dramatically streamline how PAMS access the wealth of information that is compiled every day in the Exchange’s data warehouses.
The central element of the solution is called the PAM Dashboard. A Web-based intranet solution that relies on a number of Microsoft technologies, the dashboard is linked to a central data warehouse. From there, the information stored in the warehouse is turned into online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes; the information in the cubes is updated every three minutes. The data cubes are then delivered to the PAM Dashboard.
The dashboard lets the PAMs work with a highly intuitive interface that is based on the most popular desktop program used by analysts: Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheet software. The dashboard uses a technology called Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, which makes it possible for users to display and work with Office Excel workbooks within Office SharePoint Server 2007.
“With Excel Services, our PAMs can create specific, customized views of information by client, which helps them to see the client’s level of business interaction with the Exchange,” says Robin Paine, Chief Technology Officer for the Exchange. “Because of Excel Services, these views can be distributed effectively and efficiently across the whole of our primary account manager community. Excel Services simply replicates the functionality of [Office] Excel 2007 on the desktop so that it can be used on the dashboard. So building custom views, client templates, and other features is as simple as using Excel 2007 itself.”
Since the earliest stages of the PAM Dashboard deployment, the Exchange’s executives and PAMs noted a dramatic improvement in how the account managers were able to use their time—a highly valuable commodity when client firms are waiting for information. The PAMs can use the tool to collate client-specific views of particular data in a matter of minutes, rather than spend hours gathering information from many different sources.
“What the PAM Dashboard gives us is the means to spend our time more efficiently when analyzing data and presenting the results to our clients,” says Edward Fisher, a Senior PAM who is responsible for managing a number of high-profile Exchange member firms.
Because trading firms as a rule use sophisticated financial products and tools, the demand for accurate, clearly presented information is greater than it has ever been. In the past, gathering that information entailed cumbersome and time-consuming processes, and usually involved hunting down various spreadsheets.
“The information existed, but we typically spent a lot of our day chasing other people to pull the data together for us,” Fisher says. “Now when one of my clients phones, I can respond immediately with the information at my fingertips. This not only enhances the client experience, it also demonstrates our responsiveness as we continue to strive towards providing a world-class service that member firms expect from their partners.”
Iain Spicer, a business consultant who helps the Exchange with its information management and was involved in developing the PAM Dashboard, says that the technology tools in the 2007 Office system will help the organization continually improve the dashboard to meet the needs of its sophisticated customers. For example, the initial implementation of the dashboard provided the PAMs with three tables and six graphs to analyze trading performance. That will soon change.
“We are planning to ultimately provide a wider range of tables and graphs, which will be available from a gallery of templates,” Spicer says. “Each PAM will have his or her own Web page and be able to drag-and-drop a graph or table from the gallery into their Web page, displaying pertinent information for client analysis.” Lynch notes that this tool is generating enormous enthusiasm with the PAMs.
“This is an excellent technology advance for our account managers,” she says. “Instead of having to constantly process requests, PAMs have information delivered immediately to their desktops from the dashboard. It allows them to get on with their primary role, which is delivering world-class customer service by spending more time understanding our clients’ business needs.”
For more information about the London Stock Exchange, visit the Web site at:
www.londonstockexchange.com
