ONE CLICK for faster and more accurate results
Every billing cycle, this regional large wealth management company provided each investment manager with a spreadsheet containing all of his/her accounts with pertinent information such as available cash and estimated fees to allow the manager to review each account. In order to provide this critical information, a complicated, multi-step process was required, including running a query for each manager, copying the data, opening Excel and saving the data to it, and then emailing the spreadsheet to the manager. This proved to be a very time consuming process, and, it was easy to skip a manager by mistake.
Examining the steps carefully led to an automated design solution able to handle the entire process with one click of a button. The new process read through the manager table, and for each one, used the query job to write out an excel spreadsheet for that manager. It was then able to generate an email linked to the specific spreadsheet. This way, all managers were guaranteed to be processed, and hours of time was saved in back office support for each billing cycle.
INTEGRATION of two high functioning systems
It often happens that two software systems are purchased as they are best of breeds. However, that can lead to duplicate data entry in order to get data from one system into another. A common example of this for our clients is passing information from a portfolio accounting system into a general ledger system. By reviewing how the general ledger was organized, we were able to create tables in the portfolio accounting system which were used to generate general ledger transactions from all the different portfolio transactions. In addition to the obvious need to assign the correct chart of account number, a unique reference number was generated which enabled a cross reference between transactions of the two systems.
This integration allowed all the portfolio transactions to automatically create at least two general ledger transactions for posting the debits and credits. This insured that all transactions were processed by both systems. Not only did this save time during each posting cycle but, even more importantly, insured that the same amounts were processed by each system as there was no human intervention leading to keying mistakes.
THE LOW-TO-NO MARGIN FOR ERROR METHOD for greater accuracy
Anyone who has worked with mutual funds understands that if an inaccurate price is listed for even one day, it will cause enormous problems. Every trade must be adjusted and each shareholder made whole which happens at a tremendous cost to the mutual fund company. For one firm, we examined their process for entering the price into the transfer agent system. By analyzing all the underlying systems, we designed an enhanced new entry process featuring multiple check points to ensure that the price used was correct. By comparing a manually entered price with the system-generated price and also by checking against the prior day’s price, the company saw that the margin of error was vastly reduced. The process was also designed so that no part could be skipped to that the price used was accurate.