Technology has transformed all aspects of the financial services industry and continues to be a key driver of innovation. From redefining current business roles, evolving operating processes and maturing employee skills, technology has enabled faster, more accurate, and more creative ways to do business.

Among its impacts is helping to address the diverse needs of the front, middle, and back office, considering operational systems, people, and processes holistically. As more companies adopt more sophisticated technological tools to manage their operational responsibilities — serve client needs, satisfy regulators, perform with efficiency, and compete effectively — the bar has been raised for what, when, and how financial services can deliver.

Challenges of traditional reporting solutions

Not having a robust data management strategy designed to achieve a single source of truth will make it very difficult to have accurate analytics and reports. Many companies’ reporting solutions rely on data that is provided by external partners or service-provider systems. These are templated files designed by the third-party to serve all of a company’s reporting needs: portfolio holdings, key performance metrics, risk attributes, and so on. Not only does this make companies dependent on external partners to provide the best framework for reporting, it constrains what is reported, how data is presented, and therefore how it is analyzed. To modify them — say, add a new source of data — may require a time-consuming tech or developer adjustment.

While using business intelligence tools may provide greater flexibility, they are not designed to provide out-of-the-box reports that are picture perfect and presentation worthy. In addition, these tools are industry-agnostic not reporting solutions, so they will require extra work to produce the high-quality product necessary for client reporting. Nor can these tools easily connect data from multiple systems and perform analysis of that integrated dataset.

Financial services working with function-specific data repositories like these that do not speak to one another may similarly discover mismatches in their reports. It’s possible that different reports for different purposes do not align for particular datapoints as they are pulling from different sources.

Reimagining operational systems

In its 2023 Global Survey on digital strategy, McKinsey found that “innovative companies use technology to help them base decisions on facts and data at levels far beyond their peers. Innovative companies not only build cross-functional teams but also pool cross-functional data so that teams have a more holistic view of the business.”

As with all strategic decisions, the direction a company takes regarding reporting solutions is about more than just one report or two — it’s about bigger picture issues:

  • How does your operating system work?
  • What data are you using?
  • How do you staff?
  • How do you want to staff in the future?
  • What tools do you need to address your in-house vs external reporting needs?

With competitors turning to customizable reporting solutions embedded in a data system that weaves together the front, middle and back office, standard reporting solutions are becoming more inefficient, ineffective, and costly to maintain. Most important, they do not serve the current needs of the business.

Unified Data Platforms: The Road to Better Performance and Portfolio Management

Breaking out of the box

As much as technology and operational needs are driving transformation within companies, business needs—including emerging needs—are also driving change. “Analytics and reporting are becoming far more complex,” says Mahesh Narayan, Institutional Asset Management Segment Head at Arcesium. “Every asset manager is trying to personalize the reporting they offer to their clients. Reporting is becoming just more detailed, more personalized, and more ad-hoc, which also means data management needs are changing.”

Unifying data is the solution

Firms seeking to address these challenges turn to solutions such as a cloud-native unified platform, providing users with a self-serviceable way to extract and normalize datasets from varied data sources across the front-to-back systems used. Completed data quality checks ensure consistency and accuracy before letting a user stitch it all up to power complex calculations and analytics to enable new, innovative, and customizable reporting which can range from Excel files to well-structured PDFs to a live dashboard. Instead of relying on hard-coded templates, which can take multiple development cycles to amend and edit, individuals can design templates to self-author reports that capture the exact information their stakeholders need and present it in a visually compelling way.

As your reporting and analytics needs escalate along with the need to distinguish your business from your competitors, learn how we can help you meet those requirements, facilitate accurate reporting and dynamic analytics, and position your business for ongoing growth.  

Author:
Sneha Raisinghani
Sneha is a Vice President in the Product Management organization at Arcesium and is the product lead for Private Markets. In this role, she is responsible for establishing the product roadmap, driving the product vision, and supporting Arcesium’s go-to-market strategy for this segment.

 

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