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Managing the Desk: Keeping Up With Information Overload
Joan Stack, trading manager at Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS), knows that implementing a new trading system is never an easy task. So when Stack as part of the OPERS team was charged with selecting and implementing a new order management system (OMS), she wanted to do it right.
OPERS knew going into the project that documentation of the entire project -- from soup to nuts -- would be key. So the team did what so many other buy-side shops only wish they had done: they allocated a dedicated team and resources to documenting the process.
Not only did OPERS hire a third-party consultant to work in tandem with the internal IT department on the implementation, the consultant was also charged with documenting "absolutely everything." And Stack stresses that she wants it all in writing -- from which server connections are used for what process to how order blotters are set up and programs created.
"Any step along the way you can think of, we want how that is done in writing," Stack says. "It's very important for us for business continuity to be able to access this kind of information."
Illustrating that importance, OPERS also has two internal business analysts focused on the documentation task who work alongside the implementation consultant to write down everything. "The implementation consultants are the primary document creators, and the business analysts are there to catch any shortfalls or gaps or ask questions that maybe wouldn't be obvious to a new user," Stack explains, adding that one of thee business analysts is from the IT department and the other is from the compliance and administration area.
"Everyone has discussed this for years, but people just never seem to get around to allocating the resources," says Matt Samelson, senior analyst at Aite Group, of the task of documenting atechnology implementation. "A lot of desks are focused on making money today, and allocating resources to this kind of thing seems to fall by the wayside."
Samelson adds that while documenting major IT projects can be costly and may be "incredibly boring," it's still important. "It's essential to have this documentation from a business continuity and an operational risk management standpoint," he asserts.
Still, because the return on investment is difficult to quantify -- often the ROI is avoidance of an event that could have surfaced had the information not been available -- it's tough to get executive buy in, Samelson notes. "When something happens, everyone wishes they had done this type of thing," he says.
The OMS Project
Stack's OMS project has been underway for about a year, beginning with the front-office assessment, the RFP process, finalist selection, on-site demos and even visits to vendor headquarters. "We had a team composed of IT, trading and portfolio managers from both the fixed-income and the equities side visit our two final vendors at their headquarters and also did visits to current system users' sites," she relates.
Once the system was selected, Stack continues, the team underwent a similar but shorter process to select the implementation consultant. After just about a year's worth of prepping and planning for the project, the OMS implementation began April 1.
"This is a large budget item, and we wanted to make sure we were doing everything exactly right," Stack says. "Along the way we have created an incredible amount of documentation that will only help speed up the implementation process -- we've already identified so many of our needs and requirements."
According to Stack, OPERS is implementing the Charles River OMS for equity trading and the Bloomberg Portfolio Order Management System (POMS) for fixed-income instruments. The firm's accounting system data warehouse, which is provided by Eagle, will provide integration of the two systems. Stack says she expects the Bloomberg POMS system to be live by the end of August or early September, and the Charles River system to be up and running by early December.
