For those who work in trading operations, the Holidays may represent a time to step back, plan, and begin acting upon those plans. As the year begins to wind down, it’s natural to question the processes, capabilities, and systems that need to be improved upon. What is often an important practice at this time of year becomes a daunting task that is only compounded by holiday distractions and day-to-day management that must always take precedence.
As a software provider that can help you optimize your post-trade processes, it’s clearly in our best interest to help motivate you to begin prioritizing the needs of your operation for the following calendar year. We understand how daunting it can be to have to comb through all of the solutions on the market to uncover the right one for you. Luckily, the resources you need to accomplish this task are all right around you. Here are some of our tips on how you can begin auditing and optimizing your processes for the New Year.
Trust your Network
When searching for trusted and proven service providers, no search engine is more relevant and stronger than your immediate network. A vouch of confidence from an industry counterpart could set you on the path to uncovering exactly what you are looking for. You can bet that if you’re in need of solving for a pain point within a specific process, there is a peer in your network who is in the same boat or better yet, has already solved for it. As a service provider, word of mouth is our most effective marketing tool, and for someone in search of a service provider, it can be your most powerful search tool.
Prepare to speak about your painpoints or use-case
Once you narrow your search down to a few select providers based on your network’s advice, set out to have exploratory conversations with the newly discovered vendors. While booking a demo may not seem like the most exciting use of your time, the ability to see a product in action is truly the only way to fully understand its potential impact. Be sure to go into these demos with your specific use-case in mind and make sure the folks you are speaking with fully understand and address your most dire pain points. At this point in the process, you should begin understanding all associated and hidden costs but most importantly, understand the difficulty in adding the new vendor to your process. Will the vendor require a ton of time and effort from your IT staff, will they have to come on-site to install, or is it simply a software integration that can be installed remotely? The answers to these questions may greatly impact your new solutions’ ability to make an immediate impact.
Present a compelling case
In a perfect world, finding the ideal solution to improve your operation would be entirely up to you. And perhaps it is. But more likely than not, simply discovering a new service provider does not end your search process. You will likely need to influence other decision-makers within your firm which means you must be well-armed and prepared to discuss your pain points, potential solutions, and their capabilities to secure budgetary resources. To do so, you must take the next step in soliciting formal proposals, and building out project plans and timelines that include the new provider within the greater picture.
All that said, with the year coming to a close, we hope to be part of your year-end planning considerations as you seek out ways to improve your post-trade processing. We’re excited to meet you and show you how Theorem can elevate the efficiency of your post-trade operations.