The introduction of Support Services, CJC’s enterprise-level, global market data infrastructure managed service solutions, enabled a global tier-one firm in the capital markets industry to handle large volumes of monitoring, support and client requests concurrently, in a fast and effective manner within the APAC region.

Our client’s business users are now happy that they have local support to address their issues, with fast response times and high-quality service driven by stringent, capital markets-grade Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Market Context

The rise of cloud-based technologies in the capital markets, though bringing considerable opportunity, has also introduced numerous challenges in the shape of devices, platforms and applications for IT departments to manage and secure globally. These challenges can add up to significant expenses associated with staff, asset ownership and maintenance of IP for generic functions.

As a result, many are increasingly exploring managed services to handle a variety of IT support tasks. Managed services allow firms to focus on what they do best – their core business – while benefiting from services tailored to their business needs, delivering an IT infrastructure that meets their daily demands and helps them prepare for and execute digital transformation.

Challenges to a Global Solution

Our client has a complex market data environment, spanning three regions and operating around the clock. They had an APAC-based front office requirements for immediate market data application support, particularly given that the vast majority of production issues directly impact trading revenue, or can cause internal or external compliance risk. During our initial engagement, their market data teams were based in the US and UK, with no presence in the APAC region, where support was done via an overnight on-call rota, shared between the two teams.

Their data environment encompasses a vast range of interlinked technology and applications, including a web of multiple dependencies across time zones. A key challenge existed with managing a large number of vendors and exchanges in the
APAC region, where specific local requirements were often not fully understood by the US and UK teams. This caused delays in fixing issues and resulted in unsatisfactory feedback from the business.

The impact of the overnight call support for the global UK and US teams had been very disruptive to their productivity, given the
criticality and frequency of problems during the APAC time zone. The business had voiced concerns that the level of support in this current set-up was insufficient for their needs.

Fully Managed Application Support

As part of CJC’s Support Services, we now provide our client with a fully managed application support service throughout the APAC time zone, covering level 1 and 2 monitoring and support. This comes with stringent capital markets-grade SLAs and KPIs. The service is a fit-for-purpose alternative to providing headcount in APAC, where recruiting experienced market data support engineers can be difficult and costly.

In addition to local CJC support teams proactively monitoring client infrastructure and applications, the client can interact with CJC via a dedicated support hotline or real-time Symphony messaging to raise cases or check for status updates of issues. CJC interacts with multiple parties as part of our support model, from the client’s business users to the UK and US market data teams, as well as interfacing with internal IT teams, external vendors and other third parties during incidents.

Seamless Reporting

CJC runs a start-of-day check, various weekend health checks and shift handover notes, which are sent to UK and US market data teams to inform them of the status of the APAC environment. Our SLAs ensure incidents and issues are addressed and resolved, in most cases much faster than frequently multi-tasking in-house support teams. We provide a level of resource scalability far beyond the cost capability of in-house solutions which, combined with our extensive industry expertise and experience, allow us to handle large volumes of monitoring, support and client requests concurrently in a fast and effective manner.

CJC works closely with our clients, understanding and integrating their environment and support requirements into our operational workflow, from onboarding through to production. From our suite of Support Services, our models encompass best-of-breed operational procedures, combined with CJC proprietary toolsets, which are constantly updated to reflect changes in their environment and requirements.

The Results:

• Overnight calls for the US and UK market data teams are greatly reduced, increasing productivity and focus within their respective regions and reducing resource constraints. 
• No surprises at the UK start of the day as issues in APAC are already being managed or escalated well beforehand.
• Business users are happy that they have local support to address their issues, with fast response times and high-quality service driven by stringent, capital markets-grade SLAs and KPIs.
• The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is lower than having an in-house market data team locally.

About CJC

CJC is the leading market data technology consultancy and service provider for global financial markets. CJC provides multi-award-winning consultancy, managed services, cloud solutions, observability, and professional commercial management services for mission-critical market data systems. CJC is ISO 27001 certified, enabling CJC’s partners the freedom to focus on their core business. 

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