Sal Auditore is a Director and senior consultant with extensive experience in advising investment firms on SimCorp Dimension’s investment management software solutions.  He recently agreed to share his experiences and lessons learned given his involvement in numerous engagements.

1. Sal, can you tell us the kinds of SimCorp Dimension engagements you’ve worked on?

I have worked on 6 SimCorp implementations at asset management firms and pension plan sponsors both in the US and Canada.  These engagements covered most of SimCorp’s modules.  The implementations involved complex account structures and all security types including OTC derivatives, bank loans, and alternative investments.

2.  Can you share the key factors for technology and operations executives who may be considering a systems conversion?

The first key factor is to identify where your operations and technology is deficient, taking into account both your current and anticipated future state requirements.  A gap analysis, which should encompass all areas of the firm, from portfolio managers and traders to back office personnel, is essential.  This holistic approach eliminates the possibility that something critical is missed.  Many firms over the years have cobbled together disparate technologies, taking a best of breed approach.  While this distributed systems architecture was often necessary or preferred, it has almost always led to data synchronization issues.  Multiple systems lead to data discrepancies, increased risk, high cost, and at times, lost investment opportunities as data issues can impede trading and lead to costly errors.

After conducting a thorough gap analysis and needs assessment, the second key factor is to identify technology that meets current and anticipated requirements.  Finding the right technology partner is a significant undertaking, and requires careful planning and committed resources.  A thorough RFP is an essential step in identifying the right partner at the right price.  My experience has shown that technology partners who can provide seamless “one stop shopping” have a significant competitive advantage.  Real time data integration and data integrity have become essential for asset managers to be successful.  Technology firms who can deliver fully integrated, robust investment modules will be the winners.  SimCorp Dimension has a fully integrated system, from front to back office investment management systems.

3.   As an independent consultant, can you share SimCorp’s competitive advantages?  Are they behind in certain areas?

SimCorp – based in Copenhagen – has grown considerably in the North American market over the past several years. They support all security types and recently released new and improved Collateral, Performance, and Reconciliation Modules.  They have also enhanced their Client Reporting module, which is a significant step since it integrates the Investment Book Of Record (IBOR) with client reports.  SimCorp now offers an ASP version for clients who do not want the hardware and maintenance costs associated with running the software in-house.  While every technology company has areas to improve, SimCorp does a good job of listening to their customers and prioritizing their enhancements accordingly.

4.   Everyone in the industry is currently focused on data management; can you share your views on SimCorp’s data structure and control environment?

No doubt, timely and accurate data is the key to every system.  From transactions to historical positions to pricing, accurate data across systems is critical.  This is why SimCorp’s integrated solution is in the industry forefront since it enables the investment manager to have a real time data repository, enabling real time reporting especially for cash and transactional data.

5.   SimCorp’s suite of solutions enables investment managers’ to select modules supporting front to back office processes.  Which component modules have been the most popular and scalable?

The Portfolio Accounting module is the most commonly used today.  The Performance, Collateral, Settlement, and Client Reporting modules are also popular and provide immediate scale for the investment managers given that they are integrated solutions.

6.  SimCorp releases upgrades two times per year.  In general, how much effort is involved for clients to upgrade?

Surprising little, as most of my clients upgrade once per year in order to keep abreast of the new changes in the marketplace.  Of course, a comprehensive project plan is essential to minimize risk.  While timing varies, typically a new release will take 1 to 3 months with minimal staff resources assuming a strong testing environment is in place.  Also, with the new ASP version, clients can have SimCorp perform the upgrade and provide test results.

7.  What are the top 3 lessons learned from your SimCorp engagements?

First of all, develop a realistic and focused project plan.  Avoid scope creep at all costs as it delays implementation and seek short-term wins to keep consumers engaged.  SimCorp offers multiple modules and different ways to integrate them thus a clear path is important to hit your target dates.  Fully test run the system so you’re certain your security firewalls can be open and data can run through.  I have seen firms chase “red herrings” when the fault resided in the firewall rules.  Ensure your hardware is sufficient to support your businesses processes now and as your firm grows and volumes escalate.

Secondly, know your data sources (benchmarks, indices, security updates, prices, corp. actions) and how it will be represented on SimCorp.  The systems jobs must be constructed accurately and timely into and out of SimCorp to ensure downstream data integrity.

Lastly, keep control of your implementation.  Set rules for data or code migration.  Remember, ultimately the responsibility for a transparent integration or conversion falls on the investment management business executives.  Active engagement and due diligence are essential business practices regardless of the size of the project.

8. How does Adeptyx add value beyond the SimCorp team or other consulting firms?

Adeptyx adds value to SimCorp engagements in many ways.  Since we are an independent consultancy, we can provide unbiased guidance and honest assessments.  Our 25 consultants average over 20 years of industry experience and thus we have been involved in hundreds of engagements.  This experience and perspective leads to a faster and more thorough analysis of issues.  Because of our expert level knowledge of the SimCorp solutions, our consultants immediately add value to any engagement.  There is no training or wasted ramp-up time.  We hit the ground running and help clients achieve their project goals more effectively and efficiently.

Adeptyx Consulting Inc., a provider of consulting and operational support to the institutional asset management business, announces that Jon Weisblatt has joined the company as a Director. The addition of Mr. Weisblatt is a strategic move in adding a key resource to broaden our ability to serve our clients. “Adeptyx is working to continuously add qualified resources to assist our clients, and Jon brings the necessary experience to extend our capabilities,” said Ari Fuad, President, Adeptyx Consulting. “He will be instrumental in extending Adeptyx’s services and unique solutions to new and existing clients across the buy-side industry.”

Jon is a successful Senior IT executive with extensive experience in maximizing the business value of Information Technology solutions. His strong track record includes implementing high impact technology programs while reducing technology costs year-over-year. He is a proven motivator who wins the trust and confidence of diverse stakeholders by creating innovative solutions. Jon has experience in the full lifecycle of projects from requirements definition through implementation to system support. Mr. Weisblatt brings more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry to Adeptyx. Jon will serve as a Managing Consultant on Adeptyx engagements and will assist in growing Adeptyx’s client base across the buy-side. “I am excited to join the team at Adeptyx – the premier provider of consulting services in the asset management space,” said Mr. Weisblatt. “Adeptyx Consulting resources have the expertise and skills that are transforming its clients investment operations and I look forward to furthering its successes in the marketplace.”

Mr. Weisblatt has held a variety of senior-level positions within the financial services industry, at companies including Nuveen Investments, Man Financial and Calyon. He started his career at Andersen Consulting. Jon has an MBA from the University of Chicago’s School of Business. He also holds a BA in Economics from Northwestern University.

Have you been seduced by technology? Imagine sitting in a conference room
listening to a vendor expound on the amazing capabilities of their products, then,
taking the plunge and integrating this amazing software into your workflows. The
vendor sends out an integration specialist (at your expense) to help implement said
software. Everything is going wonderfully. Then, the specialist moves on to his next
project, only to leave you with software that doesn’t quite live up to its conference
room presentation.

Vendor presentations are created to show the capabilities of their products.
Therefore, they are crafted and designed with precise parameters. Carefully
rehearsed so there are no rough edges. Wouldn’t it be great if there were no rough
edges in the real world?

Adeptyx Consultants can help smooth the rough edges. We take an objective view
of your workflow and of the vendor solutions. Applying industry best practices,
we construct workflows that work for your business utilizing the capabilities of
software.

Adeptyx was recently engaged to help a company with their trading system
workflows. The root of the problem, we discovered, was from the suite of back
office products. Data was incorrect. Corporate Actions were being missed.
Reconciliation was an arduous process (much more than usual). Dividends were
posting incorrectly or not at all. They were bleeding. While the engaged consultant
had never worked with this vendor’s products, he rolled up his sleeves and jumped
in.

We started with corporate actions. For over a year the “automated” process
had been inoperative. The company had come to rely on custodian data for
Corporate Actions and dividends. We rebuilt the process from the ground up and
successfully “integrated” Corporate Action Notification. Now that we had data
flowing in this enabled the back office to post on ex-date with the ability to adjust
the data, if necessary, prior to pay-date.

Reconciliation is often an arduous process. The vendor’s products offered a solution
to reconcile positions, and if necessary, transactions. A very capable suite of tools
on the surface. However, the solution implemented was solely a transaction-based
reconciliation. In addition, the system wasn’t exception processing. Matches were
manually approved, near matches were manually approved (making the cash
position incorrect), and mismatches were investigated. Dividend accruals were
also an issue. Some banks accrued, while others did not. This made the month end
reconciliation very problematic.

We discovered a report that allowed for exception based position reconciliation.
Not only did it allow reconciliation of the cash position daily, it would compensate
for any buys or sells posted in the accounting system trade date-2 against the
custodian’s position. In terms of positions, some banks supply Trade date positions,
some supply Settle date positions. To complicate matters, some large banks deliver
Trade date positions, but Settle date cash. Working with the vendor we learned
of a beta report that would allow reconciliation of trade date positions and settle
date cash. It also allowed us to either include dividend accruals or not at an account
level. Utilizing this report, we executed an exception-based workflow that not only
saved valuable time and resources, but also now delivers correct position data to the
trading system.

Compliance is a trader’s enemy. Data is key to compliance violations. Now
that we had correct data flowing to the trading system, it was time to unravel
the compliance puzzle. During the implementation of the trading system, the
compliance department was informed that the trading system could not perform
basic compliance validation. To deal with this limitation, adaptations were created
outside of the vendor system using Excel. With the compliance department’s
consent, we decided to look at fixing the compliance rules in the trading system
as an initial implementation. The contracts and mandates were examined for all
compliance violations and they were organized so as not to create duplicate rules
in the trading system. In starting the process from the beginning, we were able to
automate 99% of the compliance rules in the trading system. This enabled us to
eliminate the need for Excel spreadsheets. The new process not only saved valuable
time and resources, it also allowed the traders to execute trades without invalid
compliance violations.

By correcting the data at its source, and re-implementing compliance into the
trading system, the rough edges of the trading system started to smooth out. The
ghosts plaguing the system were gone, not by adjusting the trading system as
originally thought, but by correcting the underlying problems. The approach to look
at the entire process not only rectified the trader’s workflows; it saved time and
resources in the Back Office and Compliance departments. By taking a holistic view
of the entire process we were able to build a solution that works utilizing the chosen
vendor packages.

In today’s market environment, several key factors exist that serve to make the effect of convexity on a MBS
portfolio especially pronounced. This article will briefly review two principal issues that mortgage portfolio
managers are currently focused on – volatility in the US Treasury market and options for hedging – together with
the corresponding impact on fixed income analytic systems (such as Yield Book, POINT or Blackrock).

MARKET VOLATILITY First, the USD Treasury market presently illustrates a level of volatility consistent
with historical, non-crisis highs. As the current pricing of implied volatility for a basket of at-the-money options on
liquid, benchmark off-the-run Treasuries demonstrates, the bond market is clearly communicating expectations for
continued high volatility in the near & intermediate term. As various pieces of positive global macroeconomic news
are unveiled, and investors consider the asymmetrical risk associated with a 2.50% 30-year UST, the potential for a
sharp V-shaped move higher in US interest rates remains only a catalyst (or two) away.

With mortgage portfolios, however, rising rates introduces a self-feeding reinforcement mechanism as PMs sell
duration (principally via USTs and interest rate swaps) to hedge the portfolio lengthening impact of convexity,
which causes rates to go higher which causes PMs to sell more duration and so forth. This increases both the
severity and speed of a rate environment adjustment due to every mortgage PM having the same predictable
problem. Due to the enormous growth in the size of the MBS market over the past decade, the hedging
requirements (on an absolute basis) are commensurate and issues with liquidity in certain Treasury instruments
quickly emerge. These yield short-term pricing distortions unquestionably result in a higher cost of convexity
hedging which can act as a material drag on overall portfolio performance.

RISING RATES Second, significant uncertainty exists coming from the unprecedented record prolonged low
nominal mortgage rates.. It is simply unknown how sharply prepays will fall if (or, perhaps more aptly, when)
rates revert to their long-term “normalized” trend line which exist in the stratosphere somewhere perhaps ~200
to 300 bp above current levels of a 1.50% 10-year UST. While research resources at firms such as Citi (Yield
Book) and Barclay’s (POINT) have no doubt been working diligently to model the impact of rates experiencing
a lasting regression to the mean, the absence of historical experience or analyzable data makes this ultimately an
academic exercise. With refi activity encompassing almost 80% of the MBA’s Market Composite Index, however,
it unquestionably will have a generational influence on the mortgage market. Mortgage investors everywhere will
feel this uncertainty, volatility and potential lack of reliability with existing prepayment models, and with particular
emphasis on those mortgage instruments that exhibit outsized dynamic price behavior with even modest changes in
market parameters.

IMPACT ON APPLICATIONS Let’s now transition to the impact of these factors on a buy-side firm’s
fixed income analytic platform. While the process for accommodating prepayment assumptions on a bond-
level basis almost certainly exists for pricing within any batch processing structure, the uncertainty surrounding
the performance of existing prepayment models has no doubt put MBS traders, quants and PMs in a position of
needing to potentially make substantial changes to the speeds at which various MBS instruments are priced. Buy-
side firms with a substantial exposure to MBS will need to review the process by which prepayment assumptions
for pricing are generated (such as through a IO/PO Breakeven model, for example) and consider structural reform,
if necessary. Furthermore, a pertinent, logical question remains as to how all of these moving parts will affect
mortgage benchmark duration. For the FI Applications Manager, now is the time to be evaluating and enhancing
existing processes, not once the market fireworks have begun.

Secondly, the recent volatility witnessed in both global Treasury rates and risk spreads communicates quite clearly
to the Head of Analytics (or FI Financial Engineering / FI Technology) at every buy-side firm the absolutely
critical nature of ensuring that any problem with processes associated with Yield Book, Blackrock and POINT
be proactively addressed by support staff. In an environment where 10 to 20+ basis point shifts in benchmark
US Treasury rates can be repeatedly seen on a daily basis, it is simply unacceptable to front office FI resources
to be asked to rely on day-old data – or data available at 11:00 a.m. – should any vital production process break
down. The absence of current FI analytic data is one of the fastest ways to hamstring an organization’s trading and
portfolio management operations.

Left unresolved, these issues can end up costing a firm in several different critical ways. In a more volatile
investment environment, it becomes increasingly difficult to rely on day-old data should problems occur which
result in traders, portfolio managers and analysts needing to spend valuable time manually calculating current-day
values prior to taking action. Additionally, with the expected variability and uncertainty in prepayment model cash
flow projections, not having a sufficiently developed process for generating daily prepayment-speeds for MBS
holdings could result in poor portfolio performance, inaccurate risk forecasts and duration mismatch between
portfolio and benchmark. Put together, both of these problems can have material negative impacts – both explicit
and implicit – that justify the economics of allocating resources towards taking proactive steps to resolve them.

HOW ADEPTYX CAN HELP At Adeptyx, our Fixed Income Analytics Consulting practice offers expertise
in both of these crucial areas: DEVELOPMENT and SUPPORT. Whether your needs encompass updating your
existing Fixed Income Analytic infrastructure to address the types of issues outlined above – or simply ensuring
that your POINT, Blackrock or Yield Book setup delivers reliable, consistent results every night of the week – we
have the unique resources to solve your most complex and challenging problems. Our Fixed Income Analytics
Consulting practice brings highly experienced, hard-to-find skill sets bringing together expertise in:

• Understanding esoteric bond structures and analytic / risk calculations
• Conceptualizing how FI analytic applications such as Yield Book / POINT / Blackrock interact with
  other fundamental systems such as accounting, trade order management, client reporting and performance
  attribution
• Enabling communication between FI Technology and Trading / Research / Portfolio Management / Risk

Contact Mark Bredesen (markbredesen (at) adeptyx.com) or Ari Fuad (arifuad (at) adeptyx.com) to begin a collaborative
discussion on how Adeptyx can benefit your firm.

Order management and compliance systems such as Charles River (CRD) and ITG are some of the more complicated systems in use by the typical asset manager. When we are called in to assess existing OMS implementations, we frequently discover that the systems have either not been properly configured or, more commonly, even if they had been properly configured, on-going configuration and data decay has set in. How to Address: If the users are not completely frustrated with the vendor, the quickest solution to a case of OMS configuration decay is a systematic “reimplementation”. Sometimes, this may be done in parallel with an upgrade to a more recent release of the core software but can also be done as a “retuning” of the existing implementation.If the users are completely fed-up, a more nuanced approach may be needed to (A) demonstrate that the system should be capable of meeting their needs, (B) to communicate the risks / costs associated with changing OMS, and (C) picking key issues to address quickly to demonstrate that improvements are possible OR (D) decide that it is a lost cause and look to an alternative solution.What causes it? There are a number of reasons why implemented systems are not meeting organizational expectations:

1. Incomplete initial understanding of configuration elections.
2. No on-going dedicated application expertise
3. Poor data management practices
4. Poor application administration controls

How to avoid? For smaller institutional asset managers, completely avoiding configuration decay can be difficult. Cost justifying and maintaining the right expertise can be difficult. Getting help from the vendor can be difficult as well.Adeptyx Consulting has a stellar track record identifying the core issues causing the underlying problem and working with firms to address both the underlying problems as well as defining processes and procedures to help avoid recurrence of the problems. If you are experiencing problems with Charles River or any other Order Management Systems, please give us a call and let us show you how we can improve your level of satisfaction.  

To our valued friends and clients:

On behalf of the entire team at Adeptyx, we thank you for your business in 2011 and through the first quarter of 2012.  Your continued interest in our industry professionals and the solutions they provide contributed to a record year at Adeptyx in 2011. Our focus continues to be on delivering Investment Management Systems and process solutions to Institutional Asset Managers.  Over the course of 2011 we either led or participated in initiatives that drove operational efficiency in trading, compliance, reporting and data management.  Among those projects:

• Developed and implemented a Municipal Bond Trading System for one of the five largest Municipal Bond investors in the US
• Performed a CRM Assessment for a diversified institutional asset manager.
• Performed a Data Integrity and Platform Study for a large investment management firm.
• Guided the Investments Operations Outsourcing initiative for a large global asset manager
• Started an engagement to assist with the implementation and integration of SimCorp Dimension (SCD) for a large multinational investment organization.
• Worked on multiple Charles River (CRD) upgrade and application tuning projects

As our client base increased, our team of professionals grew with the addition of several new consultants.  Among those are:

Joan Cichoski brings twenty years experience in the financial services industry including retirement plan investing, portfolio management and brokerage services. Investment experience in all major asset classes, including domestic and international equities, fixed income, private equity, real estate and energy sectors. Joan possesses a special expertise in investment operations and system design.

Caroline Hellreigel brings more than 10 years of management, analysis and consulting expertise involving I.T. and workflow solutions, utilizing collaborative and business skills and acumen along with an advanced education to provide solid outcomes that improve revenue, reduce costs while improving efficiency and productivity.  Caroline is a natural leader, with broad experience with a wide range of front and middle office systems including CRD, MOXY, and XIP. In addition to experience as an IT Analyst, she has also worked in an implementation Quality Role with responsibility for establishing test plans and test cases for a wide range of application software.

Jian Sang has more than 10 years of enterprise software engineering experience. He has extensive financial industry experience in Charles River Investment Management System and custom investment applications written using .Net, Java and C#. Jian has a solid software architecture background in logistic optimization and implementation and a strong knowledge of multi-tier enterprise software architecture and the software development life cycle.

In September of 2011, Mark Haertzen joined us as Director of Business Development.  Mark has spent over 25 years bringing IT solutions to large corporate clients in the financial services arena.

As you can see, we continue to build on our strength, providing consultants with deep industry experience to solve our client’s toughest problems.

Also in the first quarter we released our first software product, Contracts HQ.

Contracts HQ is a web-based application to help track client contracts, guidelines and mandates. It does this by:

• Supporting the decomposition of client contracts into constituent mandates and capturing this information in a structured manner
• Tracking the source of each mandate
• Documenting internal interpretation of guidelines for consistent
• Identifying the method used to ensure compliance and who is responsible
• Supporting comprehensive auditing

Adeptyx Announces Expansion into Fixed Income Analytics Consulting

April 2nd, 2012

Adeptyx Consulting Inc., a provider of consulting and operational support to the institutional asset management business, today announced an expansion of the company’s consulting offerings into fixed income analytics.  As a natural extension to Adeptyx’s existing expertise in trading systems, investment operations and similar functions, the growth into fixed income analytics will allow Adeptyx to meet the needs of our clients’ most complex, complicated fixed income data environments.

With the expansion into fixed income analytics, Adeptyx will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience into such industry standard platforms as Yield Book, POINT, Blackrock, and Bloomberg.  Based on the feedback received from clients, Adeptyx expects to initially focus on three specific areas within the fixed income analytics space:

• Development Projects – with constant change, growth and evolution in the bond market – innovative security types being introduced, new methodologies to interpret risk exposure, and so forth – clients demand the latest transformations in managing risk and achieving consistent outperformance.  With every firm striving to generate the ever-illusive alpha, in order for an asset manager to keep up with its competitors, it is absolutely critical that their fixed income analytic technology infrastructure reflects the firm’s commitment to success.  Adeptyx now has the expertise to manage projects ranging from smaller efforts spanning a few weeks to support the newest fixed income derivative to larger, firm-wide initiatives geared towards a major enhancement or implementation of Yield Book, POINT, Blackrock or Bloomberg.
• Support Optimization – as clients process several thousand portfolio and index holdings on a nightly basis to generate fixed income analytic and risk metrics, there are a large collection of support issues that inevitably need to be managed. Most of the time, clients end up with a piecemeal, haphazard approach to support that results in missing / inaccurate data, delays in meeting production service levels, lack of confidence from the user base, and the wrong personnel mismatched with inadequate tools so that issues cannot be quickly fixed.  Adeptyx can build an automated, results-driven solution to comprehensively address the multitude of support issues that a client faces each and every day, resulting in production service levels being met, reduced overall support costs, and a happy collection of users.
• Cost Structure Enhancement – with providers such as Yield Book charging clients on a per-CPU minute basis, running unnecessary, inefficient or duplicative calculations can end up costing thousands of dollars a year.  A comprehensive review of a client’s Yield Book overnight batch coding can potentially unveil substantial and immediate cash savings tied to a lower monthly invoice.  Engaging Adeptyx to perform an analysis of a client’s batch coding offers a superior cost/reward profile together with a quick way to benefit from a prompt, material impact with existing production processes.

To support this expansion into fixed income analytics consulting, Adeptyx announced today that they have partnered with Mark Bredesen, to add a deep level of proficiency within the fixed income analytics space.  During a 6+ year consulting engagement at one of the world’s leading asset management firms, Mr. Bredesen developed the largest single implementation of Yield Book with 30+ licenses supporting a variety of overnight batch processes providing information to the firm’s fixed income portfolio managers, traders, and quantitative research analysts.  To bolster the firm’s fixed income performance, the firm build a standardized data environment to provide its fixed income team members access to consistent, reliable data paired with cutting edge interest rate, volatility and prepayment risk models.  Information from Yield Book was fed into a collection of downstream systems including Risk Management, Client Reporting, Portfolio Construction and Compliance.

“Mark’s consistent track record of success with the most extensive implementations of fixed income analytic systems such as Yield Book and POINT will translate into an even stronger product offering for our existing client base,” said Ari Fuad, President, Adeptyx Consulting. “Furthermore, firms that have historically not benefitted from Adeptyx’s expertise due to the absence of a fixed income analytics offering will now have the opportunity to gain from our proficiency across several critical areas within an asset management firm.

Mr. Bredesen brings more than a decade of experience in managing complex projects associated with analyzing, implementing, testing and supporting highly advanced fixed income analytics systems.  He will be responsible for working with Mr. Fuad to grow the new fixed income analytics business, in addition to consulting directly for asset managers that can gain from having their difficult, systematic problems solved.

“Adeptyx represents the perfect venue to effectively utilize the fixed income analytics skill set I have built over the past 10+ years,” said Mr. Bredesen. “Expanding into fixed income analytics and data warehousing is a logical evolution of the Adeptyx approach to offering comprehensive solutions to the variety of problems faced by today’s institutional asset managers, mutual funds, hedge funds, pensions, endowments, banks and insurance companies.”

Mr. Bredesen has held a variety of senior-level positions within the investment banking and asset management industry, including blue chip firms such as Salomon Brothers (NYC), Putnam Investments (Boston), Wells Fargo (Minneapolis and San Francisco) and Dain Bosworth (Minneapolis).  He started his career in the Quantitative Fixed Income Research group at Salomon Brothers as an Analyst in the Yield Book group.  He holds a degree in Quantitative Economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Adeptyx Consulting was recently hired to help with the implementation and integration project for a large bank merger in the US and Canada. This engagement, where Adeptyx provided advisory assistance, involved the replacement of an existing investment accounting system with SimCorp Dimension (SCD) and the integration of SCD with key applications including several trade order management systems, reconciliation, custodian, and external data vendor feeds.

The Adeptyx team focused on the following work streams:

• Data conversion and reconciliation
• Functional testing specifications and product group configuration
• Downstream data transformation and mapping logic
• End user acceptance testing cycles
• Conversion, parallel, and cutover planning
• Cutover to production, knowledge transfer and ongoing support

Adeptyx’s industry experience and close working relationship with the SimCorp Professional Services Group, enabled its team to provide hands-on subject matter expertise, share implementation know-how, and ensure a structured and efficient utilization of resources to implement the SimCorp product.

After a fair amount of work, we have completed the first major update to Adeptyx.com since the company was launched 3 years ago. With the advent of this blog, we also plan to more actively communicate with our clients, prospects, vendors, and other interested parties. I hope you find the content of the site informative and please pass on any suggestions.

Ari Fuad, Adept-in-Chief