Let’s Clear Up Some Misconceptions about ETLs

A fund administrator can have plenty of reasons to postpone investing in automated data operations. But delaying the adoption of this new technology is shortsighted if your firm wants to remain viable in the future.

Here are some common objections asset managers have to using machine-driven data operations for fund administration and why they may be missing an opportunity for significant long-term revenue growth.

We Have An ETL Already

Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) is the process of taking data from multiple sources and transferring and consolidating it into a single destination – often called a warehouse – where different types of data can work in concert.

If a company already has an ETL system, then why change to a new one? That’s a good question. The answer is that having an ETL is only half the battle.

Fund managers considering a new ETL should ask themselves some questions.

• How complex is your system. Does it need to be complicated at all?
• Is the process completely transparent? Do clients know how you got from Point A to Point B in a transaction or service?
• Are you compensating multiple vendors to run different aspects of the same system?
• How many countless hours of human number-crunching keep the fund’s general ledger updated?

In today’s warp-speed digital age, institutional and individual investors alike want an ever-increasing breadth and depth of pinpoint-accurate, transparent data analytics to drive their decisions. What’s more, they want that analysis now, or more likely, they wanted it yesterday.

Harmonate’s transformative Conductor platform, an automated data extraction tool, obtains, analyzes and calculates data in a timely, cost-effective and always-reliable manner. Machine-driven, automated data operations eliminate the risk of potentially catastrophic humans error.

Some businesses may be uncomfortable spending money on a new ETL system, but the ROI turnaround is faster than you may imagine. Conductor, for instance, has been shown to provide 20 percent cost savings in the first 12 months of implementation and 80 percent savings in ensuing years.

Conductor is also innovative in that it possesses the capacity to greatly expedite reporting delivery times by more than 80 percent. So a reporting process that takes two weeks now takes a mere 24 hours. Think of the revenue you can produce and cost savings you can achieve with those extra two weeks. You’ll be able to boost your margin by taking on new clients while middle and back office staff previously buried in aggregating numbers can be put to work in other, underserved areas of your business, further achieving efficiencies and revenue generation.

By taking on all aspects of ETL, automated data operations also helps companies offload technology vendors that now cover different aspects of the process. Again, the ROI is substantial.

We’ve Tried Another Solution and It Was a Difficult Process

At Harmonate, we know the pain that comes with misguided and misdirected change management. There is no shortage of examples.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of human resources implementing a more “user friendly” payroll application only to discover it’s nearly impossible to find the all-important “submit vacation time” icon in the new system.

Then there’s the dreaded productivity suite update that provides a comprehensive set of tools but eliminates or moves those functions that you use most. Or maybe IT doesn’t upgrade everyone at the same time. So, you send a document to a co-worker and their edits come back garbled in a new or old format.

As an automated data operations system, Conductor makes the ETL changeover process seamless, time-efficient and worry-free. The machine is trained to extract data from your old system and perform in real-time. There’s far less lag time because employees pinned down performing hours of manual labor moving the numbers into new formats. Change management is truly about improving ETL to expand and innovate fund administration. Employees, rather than coping with unfamiliar systems, have more time to develop new skills using the new tools at their disposal.

It’s completely understandable that funds that have changed ETL providers and seen diminished results are wary of putting their toes back in the water. For that reason, we spent 15 years developing and refining Conductor before going to market. We understand that, when it’s your firm, failure is not an option.

We’ve worked to ensure a results-driven, automated data operations platform that introduces a new era of time-efficiency and, even more importantly, provides not only accurate but forward-thinking data every time, without exception.