There was a lot of press last week surrounding big data. One of the best industry perspectives came from IDC.
While much of the discussion around big data applies to the sell side, it also applies to the buy side. Take for example historical data. In the simplified world of the past before the heightened regulatory environment and the need to demonstrate transparency, the model used to be that portfolio management and accounting systems could overwrite the data and replace old data with new data without storing the previous values.
Fast forward to today – having the same business practice puts buy side firms at serious compliance risks for not storing the correct historical data in the event of an audit. Scarily enough, a number of today’s portfolio management and accounting systems do, in fact, still overwrite data and the most infamous of these are the legacy systems that we have discussed in previous blog posts.
Smart firms will leverage technology providers who integrate data management tools into their core applications to help them with this important industry issue and those providers who have already invested in data management technology are the best bets to keep buy side firms from running into compliance issues. At the same time, data management tools and technology will also help these same firms keep ahead of their competitors.
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