Becoming an insights-driven organisation: How leveraging data experts can improve investment management practices

Investment managers share a common objective: seamless, integrated data flows that inform and empower teams to deliver value through actionable insights. Data can have immense value if integrated, sorted, and presented in a meaningful way – the challenge is actually making progress towards that ideal future state.

In the face of daily data wrangling and reporting, creaky legacy systems and spreadsheet-driven investment operations, it’s easy for the status quo to reign supreme – even when organisations are conscious they need to find the time to make it happen.

Embracing this challenge provides the greatest competitive advantage to investment management firms today. However, experience has shown that upgrades to systems and software alone don’t provide all the answers they need. Many firms require numerous improvements to foundational data infrastructure before meaningful insights can be generated. 

This is where a software-agnostic professional service provider specialising in data and analytics can be an asset.

Capacity & Capability

Naturally, teams are experts in working with existing systems and running investment operations as they stand. However, when it comes to progressing towards the ideal future state – this transformation can be challenging to achieve. Many investment managers struggle to find and allocate the internal capability and capacity required to implement change across business units with competing priorities and disparate systems.

Given the competitive nature of the investment management space, it’s natural to keep operational transformation challenges close to the chest. A number of AlphaCert’s professional services clients feel like they’re operating in a silo, making it difficult to gather the necessary information to move forward.

Specialist external resources can solve these ongoing challenges. While adding horsepower to existing teams, consultants with relevant domain expertise can also offer the invaluable: “We’ve seen this problem before in businesses similar to yours, here are three options to address it and here’s what won’t work.”

Beyond the critical insight and expertise that AlphaCert consultants provide, there is also a level of upskilling that leaves teams in a better place to continue improving data and analytics practices. 

In need of support to achieve your organisation’s transformation goals? Find out how AlphaCert consultants can help you move forward.

Flexible Delivery

It is expected that organisations’ needs will change throughout their journey towards cohesive and comprehensive data and analytics outputs. When on the path to becoming an insights-driven organisation and navigating these changing needs – bringing in resources that provide flexible delivery can lead to faster results with more meaningful outcomes. 

An organisation may be starting by prioritising smaller, yet pressing, high-value projects before instigating larger transformation or may be looking for support and enhanced reporting post-transition to a new system. Regardless of the stage, each requires highly-skilled experts with specialist knowledge and proven approaches for long-term success. Bringing in flexible resources for this not only means organisations can bring in more agile and modern ways of working, but they can also draw on best practices in the investment management industry. 

Flexible resourcing does not only support specific requirements but also allows organisations to adapt to changing business needs. Specific, urgent problems may require specialist resources on demand, while a successful approach for larger initiatives could see the offload of entire parcels of work due to internal resource constraints. AlphaCert’s professional services team utilises a hybrid delivery model that moulds to these changing client requirements. 

Software-Agnostic

Constant change and differences in clients, markets, and investment operations mean there’s no one-size-fits-all solution stack to suit every fund manager. While the AlphaCert platform enables investment management teams to automate data processes and accelerate fund managers’ decision-making, not every organisation will be in need of a full investment management platform. 

AlphaCert recognises this and supports clients to implement modern data and analytics features that address specific needs – working across multiple technologies and leveraging extensive experience to help organisations in the investment management industry choose the right toolsets and build platforms. 

Domain Expertise

While data and analytics consultants abound, selecting an external consultant with a deep understanding of investment management can be a force multiplier. By referencing an existing scenario set that mirrors (or at least resembles) one’s own, external providers with domain expertise can deliver effective guidance and rapid, efficient value.

AlphaCert is proud of the unique combination of data and analytics capability alongside deep investment management experience that the team has built over years of both developing software and guiding clients through data transformation journeys.

If you are looking to become an insights-driven organisation but are facing data challenges that need external support, we recommend looking for a provider with a delivery model flexible enough to meet your specific requirements, investment management domain expertise, and a track record of delivering results across a broad range of software solutions.

Regardless of your current state software, systems and challenges – AlphaCert’s professional services team has the capacity and capability to drive progress towards your data-driven future.

AlphaCert is a market leader in investment management data analytics. If you’d like to accelerate towards a data-driven future, get in touch.