Making key decisions during a time of increased market stress has placed further pressure on firms’ operations teams and existing technology. For many firms, the all-remote work environment has brought to light a number of challenges spanning across data management processes and procedures.

Within this new environment, data teams have quickly realized the high number of manual workarounds they tend to use for daily activities. Highly problematic from a risk standpoint due to their error-prone and time-consuming nature, these workarounds have placed added stress on firms’ overall data management capabilities and processes.

Firms that continue to try and move forward with existing processes in place will find a number of issues with dataset accuracy and analysis. Without centralized access, team members will have little to no transparency into how a dataset was created, making it impossible to guarantee its quality. These actions will impact both the efficiency of the data management team as well as portfolio managers who rely on accurate and efficient datasets to source new investment insights.

As firms continue to work remotely, they need to ensure that all data team members have a “single source of truth” through an automated and centralized data catalog that offers complete transparency for firm-wide critical datasets. Harnessing a data catalog within a firm’s data management strategy will provide users with capabilities such as:

  • Data LineageUsers can conduct research into each dataset, every attribute within a dataset and possible errors or issues through the catalog’s lineage capability. Users can not only see the upstream systems for each dataset (backward lineage) but they can also see the downstream systems (forward lineage).
  • Consistency and AccuracyUsers can create extracts for consumption from one place. This ensures that everyone in the organization is using the same dataset. Each dataset can be rated by users for quality, consistency and integrity, which also ensures that only the highest quality datasets are consumed.
  • Error DetectionUsers can track exceptions within each individual dataset. If there is a critical data point that is missing, users can avoid using the wrong data for future reporting.
  • Comment TrailUsers can create a comment trail and document their questions via the catalog. Users can post their questions in one place, further leveraging the power of shared knowledge and collaboration.
  • ExtensibilityUsers can combine multiple datasets on the fly to create complex datasets for consumption without having to physically store the underlying combined data.
  • AccessibilityUsers can consume updated data from these datasets through multiple methods like file extracts, APIs, SDKs and Excel add-ins.
  • Out-of-the-Box CalculationsUsers can use standard calculation libraries to easily perform common calculations like XIRR, TWRR and more on appropriate datasets.
  • Easy DiscoveryUsers can search for specific attributes, datasets and extracts across the entire catalog using embedded filtration and smart search tools.
  • OwnershipUsers can easily identify the owners of individual datasets. The ownership of datasets is assigned automatically based on its original creator.

Funds will continue to transform their business to meet the operational needs of the new all-remote work environment. A holistic approach to data management is the most strategic way a firm can gain insights on its operational transformation and continue to drive success. Adopting an automated enterprise data management solution can provide managers with data integration, data profiling, data governance, data stewardship, data lineage, status monitoring, real-time data analytics, self-service data preparation and data distribution.

IVP EDM is engineered to solve a number of data challenges facing managers during COVID-19. The core of this next-generation, cloud-enabled platform is a flexible, domain-aware and enterprise-level data layer that can transport, process, transform, govern, catalog and deliver data to and from any destination including apps, service endpoints and individual users. Discover how your fund can simplify and streamline its data through IVP Enterprise Data Management or contact us at sales@ivp.in.