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At a time of rising complexity and increasing data volume, when there’s an alarming echo racing across the financial services industry saying, “We’re building compliance, not revenue,” new research from TABB Group says firms are struggling to be agile and avoid additional infrastructure costs because their entrenched legacy systems lack elasticity in their usage or expansion.
When 70% of a project is spent upfront creating the environment and foundation for the creation of value, the subsequent value of that project can be signficantly diminished, says Miranda Mizen, a TABB principal, director of equities research and author of new research published today, “Data Agility: Turning a Liability into an Asset.” On a macro level, she adds, there’s a fiduciary responsibility to manage the expected 2012 global securities industry IT budget of $77 billion more efficiently, but with data residing in disparate systems that defy horizontal and holistic views, firms have been hard-pressed to connect the dots quickly or cost efficiently enough.
TABB’s new 21-page, 11-exhibit research note examines the issues confronted by firms struggling to turn a deluge of data filling disparate silos into threads of intelligence and shared corporate assets. Data morphed into information will keep the business alive but risks stunting its growth if it’s not used intelligently as part of a comprehensive, C-suite-initiated business strategy underpinning the enterprise architecture.
Although there’s little appetite for large-scale technology projects, Mizen says legacy systems often fall short in meeting the complexity and flexibility of new demands. Individual regulatory demands are often not inherently complicated, she points out, but if “your enterprise isn’t organized to easily implement solutions, it runs the risk of handling another costly IT project. Adding more information, specifically new markets, systems and client bases, will increase the risk unless efficiency’s injected into the equation.”
Large capital and operational expenditure investments are no longer acceptable costs of doing business and can’t be sustained in an environment of increasing demand and decreasing time-to-market. Says Mizen, “Firms need horizontal transparency and want independence to manage the information themselves, which means access to broad cuts of select information with common denominators on-demand.”
For the most part, she says, the constituent data already resides within the organization. It’s a question of finding and making it readily available for use and re-use, then processing it efficiently. “Today’s user community is collaborative and mobile. Those firms that can decouple their data-based business requirements from technology solutions will free up resources to focus on creating value for the organization, turning silos of data into threads of intelligence, assets shared across the enterprise.”
The new report is available for download by TABB Group Research Alliance clients and pre-qualified media at https://www.tabbgroup.com/Login.aspx. For an executive summary or to purchase the report, visit http://www.tabbgroup.com or write to info@tabbgroup.com.
