As you might expect there are many different aspects to how the future of client reporting will evolve, one of them being self-service reporting. Hence this blog is split into multiple parts, each part looking at a different element of the future model.
This is the second blog of the series. In the first blog we noted that the existing systems and processes should be coping with the current requirements. It would not be possible or practical to extend and move client reporting forward, if the current business as usual processes and systems can’t cope.
In part 2 of the blog, we look further at the likely future requirements of our clients and therefore, of our systems and processes. In this blog we look at self-service.
Self-service is a commonly used term in the industry – often it is used in relation to the end client self-serving. However, before we can address that model, investment firms need to be entirely self-sufficient in meeting their client reporting needs and objectives. Specifically, the reporting team within the investment firm needs to be entirely self-sufficient in their ability to regularly and reliably service the current and future reporting needs of their clients and funds without recourse to the IT team, internal project or change management teams etc.
Many legacy systems and tool kit type solutions require the involvement of project and IT teams to scale the business as usual model and deliver changes and enhancements. This, at best, slows down and, at worst, prevents the on-going evolution of client and fund reporting as well as delaying potential improvements to the content and layout of the reports. Reporting teams should be able to manage these enhancements themselves. Additionally, with a modern reporting solution, the reporting team must be able to configure and adjust the reports, as required, to exactly match the clients’ reporting requirements. With a modern flexible reporting solution this is typically achieved by the reporting team through a series of very easy manageable configuration options. Of course, a full audit trail should be automatically maintained for all such configuration changes.
Summary: Self-service will be an increasingly important element to the reporting teams of all investment firms in order to provide the highest levels of service to their underlying clients, in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective way. Without efficient self-service, delivery timescales will extend to unacceptable levels, change requests will backlog and may never be delivered, client service levels will fall and reporting team sizes will likely need to increase to cater with the additional manual work due to a lack of automation. Additionally, teams of expensive IT and project resources will be required to make the changes to the legacy systems. Without the reporting team being able to manage and control the development of reports, reporting processes will not evolve sufficiently rapidly or adequately to match the demands of the clients.
Click here to read part 3
Andrew Sherlock
Opus Nebula