COMM2222 Final Report - Ayush Kapila PDF

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Word Count 2725 Option 2 Prepare a professional report for the owners of your organisation based on the specific project you were in involved with. In business, the information provided in reports needs to be easy to find and written in a way the client can understand. Ensure your report is divided into sections clearly labelled with headings and sub-headings that address the below: / The Alternative Data Module at 3D Innovations Company description 3D Innovations is a new breed of data management consultancy for financial and commodities market data that focuses on helping clients grow in the financial sector. 3Di also focusses on global data management consultancy with resource hubs in the City of London, Amsterdam and New York. The company focuses strongly in the market data field but also specialises in three distinct areas of financial and commodities data, reference data, derived/computational data and enterprise data. 3Di utilises many different concepts in order to deliver vital information to major financial institutions in local and global markets. 3Di, originally was founded by Stephen Veasey in 2002 now has branched off to different regions in the world. The company currently employs over 40 people. The data management company uses its global knowledge of markets to offer investment banks, brokerages, central banks, fund and investment managers, insurance companies, hedge funds, wealth managers and IFA’s, the best of breed market data advisory and implementation services. On a day to day basis, 3Di is involved in conducting research and analysis of market information, pricing and reference data, ensure financial data is current in vendor and product tear sheets, data compliance, licensing and consultancy. Project outline, including concept and background - why was it undertaken? What did you hope to achieve? My project was the Alternative Data Module. 3DI for nearly two decades has been providing financial data and consultancy worldwide through its profiler and DCDM modules. Together, these modules successfully help clients gain critical information which could not be found elsewhere. In the previous couple of years, the market data industry has changed rapidly, and many new competitors have entered the industry, thus making 3Di’s profiler module out of date. As a result, 3Di decided to initiate a new project, the Alternative Data Module in order to provide clients and financial institutions with unique and useful data information to make correct investment decisions and increase on a great scale. Due to the dynamic environment of the market data industry, 3Di formulated a new project on profiler, alt data module, which would take company positions to a whole new level. Here I was given the opportunity to work alongside industry professionals on one of the biggest projects in 3Di’s history. Market data is extremely diverse and hence alt data not only delivers valuable information but also compiles alternative information which no one else can provide. This is useful for our clients as they are able to access valuable information from our product and vendor tear sheets thus providing them with a boost in comparison to their competitors when investing and trading. The main aim for this project was to provide our clients with an unmatched view of data services and this will also increase 3Di’s reputation rapidly. This was undertaken specially to allow buy-side and sell-side firms including hedge funds, wealth managers, private banks and investment banks to benefit from enhanced alternative data coverage for improved investment edge. This project was not only initiated in order expand our business and increase revenue but moreover enter a larger client scale by

Word Count 2725 being the first financial institution in order to provide an alternative data module in the market data industry. Furthermore, this module has the ability to derive unique datasets from non-traditional sources giving traders, asset managers, wealth managers and brokers the investment edge they require. Within this project, I had the objective of running through all 263 alternative data vendors and ensuring all the financial information for the companies are up to date and correct alongside ensuring all other information regarding to merges and acquisitions was current. This job was challenging and tough as it involved a lot of research and time but was extremely interesting at the same time. This allowed me to be sure of the accuracy of the project and usefulness to our client base. In doing so, I was not only able to achieve my goals and targets but also increase my understanding of multinational companies and institutions in the financial industry as well as the market data industry. Participants and stakeholders There are a range of clients and participants. Personally, I was fortunate enough to have multiple client meetings and was able to successfully lead multiple client interactions in order to discover the demand for alt data in the market data industry. During this project, Apptopia was a major vendor and valuable information could not be found in order to include our tear sheets. In order to resolve this issue, I approached the client via a phone call and organised a meeting. Despite the different time zones, I was able to successfully organise a time in order to discuss issues with their senior manager of index benchmarking (James). In addition to Apptopia, I was lucky to interact with individuals from other major organisations including, Thomson Reuters, Refinitiv, Macquarie Group, Global Legal Group, FISD, JP Morgan, Reserve Bank Australia, Crypto compare and many more. In the duration of this project, due to the high advertising and high demand for the alternative data module, I was able to assist my team in the process of landing Reserve Bank Australia as a client. In this process, we offered RBA access to our profiler version 5 trial in order for them to realise the value of our information. Once they experienced our version 5 and read about the alternative data module, we were able to have multiple informative and client discussions leading up to signing them up for our new alternative data module. Furthermore, specifically to the alternative data module, multiple clients showed extra interest and offered to alter their contracts in order to include this module. These clients included Thomson Reuters, Apptopia, ApexData, Blackstone, Wind Terminal Services, Bloomberg, BurtonTaylor International consulting and many more. Project goals The goal of this project was not only create and launch the alternative data module but to also to run statistics on all previously created vender/product tear sheets in order to ensure all the information is up to date and current. This contributed heavily to achieve the main goal to be the first database management company in the financial industry to create a module which offered alternative data solutions. Branching out from this main goal, there were multiple smaller goals that had to be achieved. These included ensuring all news and financial information was updated correctly, all alt data vendors were constantly monitored in order to ensure every change is noted and added into the sheets and successfully completing client requests (CR’s). By completing these goals, the alt data module was kept up to date with latest, current and valuable information and hence allowing 3Di to be the first financial institution to launch market data new type of data, alternative data.

Word Count 2725 Furthermore, as a company, 3Di had another major goal to ensure that previous clients were constantly reached out to and informed about the alt data with the intention of providing them with a free trial. This goal was extremely important because transferring previous clients to this new module will allow new clients to be more approachable and convenient to land. Finally, the main goal of creating and launching the financial sectors first alternative data module can be completed by 18th of July 2019. This is only possible through achieving the small goals and ensuring our clients are fully informed as well as maintaining the efficiency of our tear sheets. My main role was to ensure the maintenance of the tear sheets was completely up to high standard in order to not only maintain our current clients but attract new major clients such as RBA. Risk Analysis Since this project was one of the biggest projects in 3Di’s history, the whole team was fully diverted to ensure everything is up to standard and runs effectively in order to avoid all our risks. In completing this project, the risk analysis was extremely high due to the high volatility of the market data industry. Alternative data was newly launched and the awareness in society was slowly increasing so invest a large amount of money would be a big risk as at the first initial stage, not much interest was shown into alternative data module In the beginning, we approached multiple clients with the idea and received a varied response as multiple clients appreciated the new technology being launched in our modules whereas other clients found it as irrelevant. After doing deep research and different interactions with company officials, there was enough interest and demand to go forward with this module. There were 353 alternative vendors total of which only 124 vendors were new. This meant that 229 vendors already existed in our version 5 profiler but were now out of date as those vendors also launched the alternative data technology within their products. The process here became complicated as we had to ensure those 229 vendors were updated immediately by conducting extensive research and client interactions before any clients access those tear sheets as the information they receive will be out of date. Alongside, we also had to ensure that the new 124 vendor tear sheets were created in order to launch this module as soon as possible. The first risk avoidance approach we took was to develop a systematic plan in order to distribute the different sections to different teams. The new vendor tear sheets section was distributed between four senior analysts, the updating old tear sheets section was given between 16 junior analysts and 3 interns, the CR’s were given to 3 market data analysts whilst most client interactions were run by management and senior management. By developing this plan and effectively distributing different sections to teams around 3Di, allowed for an effective flow and also allowed for the team to give weekly updates to senior management to highlight the progress of this project. Another major risk analysis approach that had to be maintained effectively was the competitor’s section in the tear sheets. Each tear sheet includes specific vendors for our vendors and products but due to alt data vendors being new, extensive research needed to be conducted in order to evaluate the correct competitors. A risk here was that very minimal information was found after research through multiple software’s and programs. Here, the major risk was that incorrect information cannot be recorded and competitors have to be included in order to allow our module to effectively link vendors and products together. This risk was tackled through multiple approaches including client meetings, shared excel sheets

Word Count 2725 by tabulating similarities and differences and extensive research by multiple analysts to systematically differentiate between distinctive traits.

Actions taken There were multiple actions taken throughout this whole process in order to ensure our project would be completed as soon as possible and avoiding all possible risks alongside it. The major risks in this project were risk management, allocation of resources, creating and updating new vendor tear sheets whilst maintaining previous ones and ensuring current CR’s are completed without any further delay. On top of that, another major risk was determining the correct competitors for new alt data vendors through determining their distinctive traits. Here multiple different approaches are possible to resolve this issue but in order to ensure our company reputation and client base remains strong, we needed to develop a combination of different measures in order to retaliate any risks in this project. Firstly, since this project was on a big scale, it was essential to efficiently allocate different sections to different teams. Further, it was vital to develop a systematic procedure in which each analyst had their specific goals per week and a share drive to update at the end of every week, so senior management were informed. The allocation of resources was very useful as not only was the project developing and being completed but also maintaining our current client base and reputation. This plan also allowed us to get weekly updates of the progress of the project and determine a suitable date for launch and advertise accordingly. We did have many issues during this as many times there were confusions as clients did question us about Refinitiv and Bloomberg, but these tear sheets were out of date. We immediately were able to take action by assigning myself these tear sheets to have updated immediately. After this incident, we added on another role of actively running through excel reports in order to search our previous modules to detect any out of date tear sheets. Alongside, we also contacted clients to determine which vendors they are specifically interested in. By following these two approaches, we were able to update the urgent tear sheets and hence meet our client demands whilst still making progress on the alternative data module. This approach was useful as we developed a system to address urgent issues first and allow for less urgent tear sheets to be updated in the future. The biggest advantage in this approach was that progress continued steadily with the project and was not delayed. Secondly, another system was developed to ensure correct competitors were determined for the new alt data vendor tear sheets. Once again, specific analysts were in charge but as an intern I was given the opportunity to lead the extensive research part. At first, this was very complicated as I was not sure the best approach to tackle this situation. After analysis, I developed a excel spreadsheet in which I got all the analysts to record their specific findings when creating new tear sheets. This was really useful as when I had to determine the competitors, I was able to run formulas and filters in order to determine similarities between the distinctive traits of different alt data vendors. On top of that, I did extensive research on many different platforms and through the 3Di platforms in order to determine previous, current and future possible competitors. This was extremely useful as through the research I was able to find competitors of which we didn’t have tear sheets for. This constantly increased our list of new vendors but as a result further increased the variety of alt data vendor sheets, we have to offer our clients for their desired requirements. Outcomes

Word Count 2725 The outcomes were really good for the development of this project. Successfully, I was able to update all vendor and product tear sheets as well as be able to fulfil current client requests. The approach we developed was very useful as we further were able to identify new alternative data vendors which we were not already aware about. Although, this did increase the list of new alt data vendors, it allowed for us to have a more comprehensive and valuable module. Due to the addition of the more alt data vendors, the project was slightly delayed by two weeks, but we were able to still develop the original project as planned. The alt data module is ready and with CEO’s approval it can be officially launched. During the production of the new module, current clients read our weekly newsletters and showed very high interest in it as we got closer to finishing the alt data module. It started off slow but over the previous weeks we have had more than 40 clients show high interest with ¼ of them being new clients curious to find out more information. During the production of this module, we were able to also able to advertise effectively and thus the increase client demand. As a result, despite the multiple problems experienced on the way, the alternative data module is finally developed and ready to be launched on a version 6 on profiler. As 3Di is the first financial institution to have a module with consolidated alternative information, the demand will increase as clients will definitely be benefitted from the valuable and extensive knowledge in this new module. Recommendations This project has run very efficiently and produced very great results within the market data industry. Though alternative data is a new technology, multiple companies, clients and vendors are highly interested in the new module. This module will not only provide a boost to our clients but provide investing, trading and consultancy a new approach as alternative data can revolutionise the market data industry. 3Di’s project, the alternative data module provides all the valuable and required information and this this project should definitely be launched.

References 1. 3di-ltd.com.(2019). 3d Innovations.[online]Available at:http://3di-ltd.com/ 2. Learning, Problem Solving, and Mindtools. (2013). doi:10.4324/9780203111062 3. Delapp.J.(2018). Communication is crticial. Brain & Life, 14(3), p.7. 4. Risk Analysis and Risk Management - Decision Making from MindTools.com. 2019. Risk Analysis and Risk Management - Decision Making from MindTools.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_07.htm.

5. Risk Analysis and Risk Management - Decision Making from MindTools.com. 2019. Risk Analysis and Risk Management - Decision Making from MindTools.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_07.htm.

6. Alternative Data | Big Data Analytics For Financial Services. 2019. Alternative Data | Big Data Analytics For Financial Services. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.alternativedata.co.uk/? gclid=CjwKCAjwnMTqBRAzEiwAEF3ndtE6bV7qj5VbEgSOtDbux9g5hcXIuZX_gJ3HHV6 ntGRdBQwUS3azcxoCz8MQAvD_BwE....