DSTi aims to reduce costs, improve accuracy with HiData

Financial data is the lifeblood of organisations. Board management and CEOs do not have the necessary insight into the daily running of their organisations to make decisions based on soft factors; they look at the numbers and little else.

When it comes to relying on external data, the validity and accuracy of the data is often assumed, sometimes incorrectly. This can lead to bad decisions that can cost the company money, or worse. A recent Tower Group survey (September 2002) showed that, of trades rejected from automated processing routines, 45% of the failures were due to faulty reference data.

"The ability to receive market data from various vendors with a degree of certainty and confidence in its validity can increase the accuracy of financial decisions," says John Kirkby, international product manager at DST International.

"In line with this reality, we have developed HiData, a product designed to ensure the accuracy of external data feeds into organisations based on similar feeds and historical trends."

HiData imports data feeds from a dozen vendors, such as Bloomberg or Reuters. Once in the system, the application commences the verification process. "This entails checking the quality of the data and augmenting or changing data according to set business rules," adds Kirkby.

For example, the first scan checks the figures for impossible numbers, such as securities priced at zero. It then compares the previous day`s data as well as the figures from different vendors to ensure there are no discrepancies that should be highlighted and investigated.

HiData has also been designed to perform intelligent functions such as deriving data that is missing, or extrapolating future data from historical records for decision-making purposes.

In addition, HiData provides a centralised data management offering that collects and collates data from multiple vendors and stores the validated, de-duplicated data in a central location. Departments can then extract the data they require on an as-needed basis sure of its accuracy and reliability.

"HiData ensures only accurate data is filtered down the organisation to the desktops where it is needed," adds Kirkby, "while reducing the need for independent divisions to download and manage their own data."

HiData has delivered measurable benefits beyond the accuracy of data and improved performance in trades and decision-making. "One of our first customers had a data management team of 10 people. After HiData was implemented, eight people were able to move to other value-added tasks, while two people continued to focus on data cleansing." Kirkby notes.

Moreover, companies implementing HiData have been able to rationalise their vendor feed provision at an organisational level. Complementing that with managing the contents of their subscription requests, via HiData`s universe feature, a coherent strategy for data provision may be defined. "On the introduction of HiData`s centralised service, the effort to manage the feeds and the risk of error will be greatly reduced," says Kirkby.

HiData can be customised to suit all data feeds and reduce the cost of data while increasing the quality and reliability, and therefore the accuracy of actions taken as a result of the figures.