Leveraging Mashups to Address Financial Services Challenges

Transcription

1 An Oracle White Paper Jan 2010 Leveraging Mashups to Address Financial Services Challenges

2 Disclaimer The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

3 Like many terms that flow from technologist tongues, Web 2.0 will someday wind up on a list of overused Internet language alongside the likes of e-commerce, rich content and social networking. While the language may be hackneyed and ambiguous, there is no doubt that advances in Internet technology have enormous potential for helping financial services firms manage their business. One of those technical advances is the mashup. Mashups leverage Web services, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, blogs, and a myriad of other data sources to essentially connect disconnected yet related data into a cohesive view. For the purposes of applying specific functions supported by mashups, there are three essential mashup flavors: External Content Aggregator: If someone has used a mashup, this is likely the type he or she has seen. Content aggregators bring content from multiple sources to form a cohesive application. Combining Craigslist real estate listings with Google maps, for example, delivers HousingMaps.com. Business Intelligence: Business intelligence mashup tools operate much like external content aggregators, except they focus on internal data. They can also aggregate data from multiple databases into a cohesive view. For example, a user can tie account activity data from a back-office system with customer activity from a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. Disposable Business Processes: Thes mashup tools leverage internal Web services to create a custom user interface for building processes. They may also extend processes with notification services, capabilities and other services to fill in process gaps between existing solutions. Mashups are a niche market in financial services, but that is not to say they lack a market. Aite Group estimates capital markets firms will spend 24 million USD on mashups technology in 2009 (see Figure 1). 2

4 Figure 1: Spending on Mashups Technology Source: Aite Group estimates While most mashup growth categories will be flat in 2009, the growth will be fueled by external content aggregators as firms seek to improve their risk management and research capabilities without having to add staff. Beyond 2009, Aite Group expects modest growth in the 3% to 5% range year-over-year. Where Mashups Add Value Mashups have made inroads into capital markets. For content aggregators, capital markets firms are creating market moving alerts, research and trading dashboards, and proprietary fundamental data sets for trading. For business intelligence mashups, firms have created virtual deal rooms for evaluating Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and budget mashups for retail banking clients. Business Process Management (BPM) mashups have been deployed to help track issues, perform change management, and coordinate sales efforts. IT managers plan to look at workflow improvements where processes cannot be automated. Many capital markets solutions incorporate some level of BPM functionality in their applications, from customer onboarding to trading and settlement. Some enterprise solutions have even released workflow add-ons, while others incorporate BPM engines into their core platform. Business process automation and accountability suffers where there is more than one dependency between systems or groups of people. In this case, firms need to supply incremental changes to process either through systems integration efforts or through implementation of enterprise workflow tools. Both options take time and money; two things that are in short supply in capital markets technology organizations. Further, the scope is just too large to tackle in a meaningful way. Consider all of the areas in which capital markets firms require coordination across multiple groups (see Figure 2). 3

5 Figure 2: Where Capital Markets Firms Need Help With Business Process Source: Interviews with 12 capital markets executives, Aite Group estimates The most obvious area is simple communication across departments, though firms also need help with account openings, managing data, credit, research and many other areas in which small process improvements can reduce operational risk and cut costs by creating time efficiencies. Mashups provide the ability to create incremental processes that will never fall in the technology roadmap. In discussions with Aite Group conducted in September of 2008, technologists routinely commented that they could never release a tool to their business users to design their own processes because they either thought the users would not use the tool or the users were not qualified to access exposed Web services. Mashup vendors would say that any business user can do it. Aite Group tends to fall somewhere in the middle in the capital markets realm: While no front-office person is going take the time to play with a process design tool, no matter how simple the tool is to use, a few business analysts trained well and let loose with the right technology could make major headway in a larger firm. Beyond coordination, capital markets firms still spend a majority of their time chasing paper. The great advance is that we have managed to turn the paper trail into a virtual trail we call an chain. Aite Group estimates that paper and account for 60% of the coordinated processes done in capital markets (see Figure 3 on page 5). 4

6 Figure 3: Getting Rid of Paper Trails Source: Interviews with 12 capital markets executives, Aite Group estimates The problem with using to manage business processes is that a process can be interrupted by unrelated . Trading systems do not randomly pop-up suggestions for checking out a news story or getting a coupon for a trading magazine. In addition to improving productivity, moving small-business processes from paper or into a mashup provides accountability and traceability. Providing a workflow helps measure bottlenecks in processes and can help identify and manage when employees are missing from the process (on vacation, sick, etc.). Conclusion With technology budgets declining, mashups may seem like a strange technology subject to explore in the current capital markets environment given more pressing issues on the plates of technology executives. If firms get caught up in the vernacular of Web 2.0, mashups and other confusing terms, odds are that they will not look twice at mashups. If the same firms consider some of the significant challenges headed the industry s way and frame mashups in the context of how they add value to the business, however, the time spent exploring may be worth the effort. 5

7 Leveraging Mashups to Address Financial Services Challenges- Jan 2010 Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: oracle.com Copyright 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 0110