Building Customer Equity at International Financial Data Services
By Jake Freivald, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Information Builders
IFDS Canada provides outsourcing administration
services and technology to mutual
fund, insurance, and banking industries
internationally. As a transfer agency, it owns
and operates its own record-keeping system,
iFAST, utilized by more than 150 organizations.
In Canada, IFDS is the largest net
settlement user over the FundSERV network,
processing approximately 100,000 transactions
daily.
“Because the Canadian mutual fund industry
requires complete transparency into every
transaction, right down to the advisor level, we
have a mountain of data,” said David Bullock,
executive vice president of IFDS. “Part of our
competitive edge comes from transforming
organizations’ data into useful information that
our clients can use to make fact-based decisions.
We recognize that decision makers at
all levels of an organization should be able to
more easily access, understand, analyze, collaborate,
and act on information, anytime and
anywhere, so we set out to create technology
solutions that make it very easy for them to
achieve these goals.”
IFDS sought to replace third-party solution
providers with business intelligence (BI)
tools that clients can use themselves. The
WebFOCUS BI platform from Information
Builders was selected to support a dashboard-driven environment, known as IFDS
Insight, for reporting and analysis of data
related to funds, asset categories, share
classes, dealers, and advisors.
IFDS Insight is quickly gaining adherents. At
one of the company’s largest clients, business
users can easily retrieve data with just a few
clicks or screen taps. Senior managers can
examine their wealth management business,
and product managers can consider how to
add, extend, or collapse their mutual fund
offerings.
“The dashboard provides a capsule summary
of the previous day’s activity, such
as top trade tickets and top dealers,” said
Sara Hilliard, IFDS vice president of product
management. “WebFOCUS Active Technology
lets them sort and manipulate statistics
on selected fund products. Other reports
permit them to analyze trends and dimensions
over time.”
Alert-Driven Capabilities for iPad Users
A mobile version of IFDS Insight for smartphones
and tablets, such as the Apple iPad,
was also created. “Our target user base is
not sitting in the office,” Hilliard said. “They
are traveling or in meetings all the time. They
want to access their metrics from wherever
they are.”
WebFOCUS’s event-notification capabilities
were also leveraged to devise a subscription-based alerting system that distributes
information and reports as critical events
occur or when certain business conditions
are met, such as when total trading volume
reaches a preset threshold.
These real-time updates are especially important
to C-level users. “If a million-dollar ticket
drops, they want to be aware of it,” Hilliard
emphasized. “WebFOCUS lets us interact with
these users by delivering relevant information
about critical events as they occur. The dashboard
is very dynamic. People can address
the big picture and drill down to underlying
details very quickly.”
Positive Feedback from Loyal Customers
IFDS expects 75 percent of its customers to
adopt IFDS Insight. As a value-added service,
the purchase price subsidizes ongoing
enhancements. For example, although the
first version focused on sales and marketing,
upcoming versions will support operational
teams, interface to CRM systems, and include
predictive modeling.
“The feedback from our entire client base has
been phenomenal,” Hilliard said. “Many of our
customers currently get their information from
Excel spreadsheets. Until now, they have not
had an easy way to roll up the data and present
it in an interactive way.”
“One of our largest customers told us that
IFDS Insight will transform his business,” Bullock
concluded. “We’re giving business users
greater transparency into what’s happening
each day so they can determine how a huge
range of data-driven variables impact their
strategies and goals.”