Managed service offerings for software can provide a range of advantages to financial institutions. Cost-efficiency; access to specialist support and expertise; improved scalability, agility, reliability and security; and freeing inhouse teams to focus on core business functions are just some of the well-documented benefits.

Despite the obvious opportunities presented by managed service models, businesses often have a reluctance to cede control. In fact, when it comes to extremely complex and customisable platforms such as Sophis or Fusion Invest, this reluctance may be especially acute. You may assume that your unique needs cannot be met by an outside party, or that institutional knowledge of your particular setup cannot be effectively handed over. In such cases, it may not be a reluctance to cede control, but rather an assumption that doing so is not even possible. 

This view is entirely misguided, however. With the right specialist partner, a managed service for applications like Sophis or Fusion Invest is absolutely within reach and can actually provide your business with more control.

If that seems counterintuitive, then it is worth exploring what control really means for your business. It’s not about micro-managing the minutiae of your trading system operations. It’s about having certainty in your ability to get maximum business value from your technology. Control is about reliability and stability. It’s about predictability and transparency of costs. Control means having the power to deliver technical innovation at pace, using your own specialists to add long-term value. 

How the traditional, internal delivery model undermines control

To best understand how a managed service can give you more control where it really matters, we should consider the implications of the traditional, inhouse approach.

• Are you in control if you’re running out-of-date and potentially unsupported software? 

Delivering a Sophis or Fusion Invest upgrade is a huge drain on internal teams and comes at the expense of other activities, leading many businesses to run upgrades infrequently and at the last minute. Using outdated versions of your trading software denies you access to the latest functionality. This harms your ability to adapt to changing market conditions and regulatory requirements. In an attempt to keep pace, you may build customisations or workarounds – further diverting attention from other activities and adding complexity and cost.  All of these factors erode your ability to maximise the value of your software. 

• Are you in control if internal resource constraints hamper innovation?

It is not only upgrade cycles which divert internal teams from valuable work. Handling production issues inhouse can also mean that your teams are unable to focus on strategic innovation. Juggling competing priorities brings an inability to deliver with certainty against regulatory deadlines, or to reduce change request backlogs. With a fixed team size and a reactive paradigm, you are denied the control you need to drive growth and improvement, or to commit to project schedules and budgets. An inability to keep technology in line with business requirements is a risk that no institution can afford to take.

• Are you in control if you’re vulnerable to operational incidents? 

At both the application and infrastructure levels, reliance on finite internal capacity for critical support functions leaves institutions vulnerable to downtime and operational disruptions. Key-person risk and knowledge islands increase the potential for disruption still further.

• Are you in control if you have unclear accountability and inefficient workflows between teams?

Inhouse management of trading solutions, with application and infrastructure teams often working in silos, can result in unclear accountability and sub-optimal processes. This impedes operational efficiency, obscuring the root cause of disruptions and perpetuating inefficiencies. This reduces your ability to deliver optimal technical solutions for your business. 

• Do traditional infrastructure models put you in control?

Lengthy lead times for infrastructure changes hamper your ability to react to performance or capacity limitations as your business grows. The need for significant upfront investment to provision new infrastructure impedes control over innovation programs – stifling, or even blocking, your agility to respond to market or technological advancements. Furthermore, the data centre model lacks scalability, meaning businesses pay too much for underutilised infrastructure during periods of low demand, whilst also suffering from opportunity costs due to capacity or performance limitations when demand is high.

• Are you in control with actual or potential skills gaps? 

Even assuming the relevant skills are available in your geography, finding, hiring, training, retaining and managing specialist teams is a significant and ongoing burden. For most institutions, headcount constraints will inevitably compromise the range of skills and experience available. Solutions to obscure or highly complex problems will occasionally be out of your reach. 

In each of these scenarios, the in-house approach to managing complex trading solutions falls short. It is easy to assume that placing responsibility for all aspects of your trading system in the capable hands of your trusted internal teams will keep you in the driving seat. But the reality is that this model perpetuates uncertainty and inefficiency. The increased risk, capacity limitations and skills gaps inherent in the traditional model actually mean that you are not in control where it counts.

Take a simpler, smarter approach with Sophis / Fusion Invest PaaS

Here at Phi Partners, we have developed a highly specialised Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering for Sophis and Fusion Invest which can have a transformative impact for your business. 

Our bespoke managed services provide everything you need to maintain complete control of the things that really matter, no matter how complex or unique your environment.

Our outcome-based services provide certainty. Contractual service level agreements and robust delivery frameworks provide reliability.  Proven cloud technologies provide stability and scalability.  Access to all flavours of experts brings agility. And fixed price models with robust governance and reporting provide predictability and transparency of costs.

Crucially, our PaaS solution for Sophis and Fusion Invest allows you to take control of innovation, removing all capacity limitations and giving you access to whatever you need, whenever you need it.

Our scalable, bespoke service empowers you to adapt. Your own experts are liberated from day-to-day operational tasks and upgrades to focus on genuine value-adding activity. You can call on our world-leading expertise, if and when you need us. With an evergreening model bringing you regular upgrades as standard, you can access the latest features from the vendor without effort. And, because our PaaS is cloud-enabled, you can embrace pay-as-you-go models, scalability and an OpEx approach to infrastructure procurement – with profound implications for costs and agility. 

As a single provider with world class application and cloud capabilities, Phi Partners is uniquely positioned to help you unlock the full value of your trading solution. With our Platform-as-a-Service for Sophis and Fusion Invest, take a simpler, smarter approach and get back control of your business.

Visit https://www.phipartners.com/sophis-fusion-invest-paas/ to learn more about Sophis / Fusion Invest PaaS, and discover what it can do for you.