Microsoft development powerhouse, 3fifteen, has announced the successful completion of a new portal for Absa Capital Exchange Traded Funds, implemented on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS).
“The portal, apart from fulfilling a vital informational role for both new and seasoned investors,” explains Vanessa Black, 3fifteen's e-Business Development Manager, “has been designed to allow customers access to a mix of historical and live data on the five main exchange traded funds that Absa Capital has in its portfolio.
“Right from the landing page,” she continues, “customers can take a glance at the historical performance of Absa Capital's five main funds, namely NewGold, NewRand, NewSA, eRAFI and Shri'ah and customise the view of these funds to be indicative of various timeframes, ranging from weekly to yearly.
“If they want a different view of this data, with the click of a mouse they can immediately access a graphical representation of those funds' historical performance or the current bid and offer prices pulled directly from Reuters every 15 minutes,” she says.
Black says, however, that on clicking through into the 'funds' section of the portal, the true power of the site becomes evident.
“Each fund is listed under the 'Funds' menu item,” she explains, “and by clicking through to any individual fund, customers are greeted with a wealth of information, ranging from a thorough fund background to a detailed view of all the data, live statistics and breakdown of the asset information for the fund.
“Where applicable,” she continues, “top constituents are graphically displayed using a pie chart.”
While Black admits that this is achievable using a conventional approach to portal design, the use of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server ensures that the administration of all information is extremely simple and can be carried out by the back-office administration staff with ease.
“Everything from the asset information to the fund's historical performance is uploaded daily by Absa Capital staff, who can either elect to use the convenient conduit that exists between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Excel, or to exploit the SharePoint lists that have been set-up as data stores,” she says.
“This not only allows the administrators to upload the data that has changed in the past day (using the lists method) or to clean out the list and bulk-upload all of the historical information using an Excel upload.
“Apart from convenience, this also means that should an inconsistency creep into the data, a fresh version can be uploaded in a matter of minutes,” she says, “or by exploiting the embedded version history in the SharePoint lists, simply revert to a previous version of the data.”
Other features of strong interest to customers thus far include a metadata-driven download section on each funds page, which renders fund specific downloads according to the filter set. Black adds that the final feature receiving great feedback at present is the interactive chart, which is exposed under the 'Tools' sections of the portal.
“This feature,” she explains, “allows users to select a fund and either its percentage return or absolute value, and view the data graphically benchmarked against a number of comparative metrics, such as the JSE All Share Price index.
“To achieve this, we modified Microsoft's .Net 'charts' tool to work within SharePoint, something that took relatively little time compared to the weeks it would have taken before, using a variety of different tools,” she says.
Even though this portal was delivered in the space of two months and there's still a great deal of functionality the company would like to add over the coming months, Black says the features it currently has on offer are the core of what Absa's investment customers are looking for today.
“It's also capable of scaling with Absa Capital's needs,” she adds, “and will cater for the additional funds the institution plans to add to the portal over the coming months.
“Because the portal is built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, we have been given the freedom to innovate freely and continue deliver on Absa Capital's ongoing business needs,” she adds.
“We're convinced we will be capable of delivering a vast array of new features over the coming months,” she concludes.
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