Opportunity
A single source of authoritative data is critical to companies’ functioning. For one global asset management and investment firm we worked with, its system for maintaining key information was inefficient and unwieldy. Various internal departments maintained their own data in Excel spreadsheets and access databases. Small applications, built over time, served different areas within the company, which meant data was inconsistent and not centrally accessible, hindering the company’s efficiencies and limiting informed decision-making.
Results
The asset management company's data governance team soon realized the need for custom data masters. The firm engaged Devbridge, with whom it had worked on several other projects.
“They chose us due to our industry expertise and proven historical delivery under tight deadlines,” Aurimas Adomavicius, Devbridge president, said. “Specifically, they needed a team with proven successes in attacking legacy systems for financial services companies.”
Approach
Demonstrating the speediness of agile development, Rimantas Benetis, technology director at Devbridge, led a team that built the first data master in just three months.
He based its design on a microservices architecture, consisting of small pieces of code that can be deployed and used independently. “We made the framework as flexible as possible so that over time it would be easy for the client to modify as needed,” Elijah Chang, director of product management at Devbridge, said.
Soon, Devbridge and the employees built additional data masters, all leveraging the same templates. The work is ongoing, with Devbridge teams releasing a new data master every three or four months.
“There is always an urgency to get more done,” Adomavicius said. “Often, our clients do not have the internal capacity to do all of the work—that’s where we come in. We promise product to market faster, which allows the businesses we work with to achieve a competitive advantage faster.”
Thanks to the data masters and microservices architecture, the asset management company standardized its data, providing centralized access to all relevant employees. With 20,000 employees in 40 offices worldwide, the scale is significant and the stakes high.