Investit, a leading investment management consultancy, is launching a new research unit alongside its IT Value Service, which analyses the value of IT investment in the industry. The new service aims to drill down further into the most pressing IT issues of the day as well as identify the most effective strategies to address them.
Simon Stratford, principal, Benchmark and Systems, at Investit said, “We are introducing the research service in response to client demand. Our long term subscribers have asked us to go into more depth regarding certain subjects. We are using the Intelligence research service which identifies three relevant topics every six months as a blueprint. As part of the research we will conduct workshops to examine how the recommendations can be turned into practical solutions.”
The first three topics chosen this year by the eleven fund manager subscribers to the research with assets in excess of £1.7 Trillion are testing, the total cost of ownership and information security. Stratford said, “Although these subjects are relevant to any industry we will be looking at them from an investment management perspective. For example, testing has become complex because many firms have adopted a best of breed approach which makes integration of the different platforms difficult. It is an enormous challenge to pull together all the systems and develop an effective and efficient testing capability.”
As for the total cost of ownership, what we are finding is that traditional models used to evaluate the cost of ownership fail to recognise many of the key influences or look at the total platform. The key question that Investit will be examining is how to build a model that reflects the true cost of ownership which takes into account not only the obvious vendor package costs and maintenance but the full impact of all systems in the overall solution.
Finally, information security has become an increasingly important part of every aspect of the financial services industry. Every firm has a different approach depending on size and remit but the common thread is how to implement a controlled and secured environment without losing the innovative edge which is crucial in today’s fast moving world. The research aims to examine the varying risk profiles and responses which different types of asset management firms can use to address these issues. The results are expected to be published in the fourth quarter of this year.
