EDMworks is a team of data specialists dedicated to providing solutions to help you organise your data.
EDMworks was founded in 1994 by Dennis Slattery. He had a role of Corporate Data Manager for a global asset management company with offices in London, Zurich, New York, Hong Kong and many other financial centres. He worked with a team of exceptional professionals to migrate the company’s retail, institutional and private wealth businesses onto a common, integrated data platform. He saw the position of strength that afforded the company:
‘Genuinely’ faster (and cheaper) to market for any new product including highly complex structured products and hedge funds
- Easier global distribution, particularly via the Internet. The company launched the first interactive funds website in 1996
- Lower costs and greater accuracy because of fewer manual processes and spreadsheets
- Availability of trusted data for Management Information and running the business
- A confidence about the organisation in the knowledge that people had real control of information
In 2000, Dennis formed a marketing alliance with Business Objects to sell a combined Data Model and Business Intelligence Suite to fund managers. The venture was successful and led to many similar implementations in the UK, Europe and the Far East.
Then the surprises came. Things we found to be easy in one company were found to be hard in another. Getting silos to buy in to the process was hard. Every company had its own technology preferences.
Key lessons were learned:
- One size does not fit all. Financial organisations compete in the same space but they do so in a unique manner that requires building on individual strengths.
- People make it happen. The creativity, motivation and persistence of people makes the difference. Tools, technologies, organisation structures, methods and other fads come and go.
- Mastery of securities and client data was a mandatory foundation to any data program. Yet, existing approaches to creating ‘golden copies’ didn’t work and mostly misunderstood the concept of genuine data integration.
This led to training, consultancy and collaboration becoming key parts of the business. We now run a range of data training courses that deal with awareness, strategy, architecture, design, implementation and operations.