Data is the "fuel" of the digital age and asset managers that embrace the digital and data revolution will have a significant advantage. Olmstead refers to these firms as "data driven" asset managers which are known to have the following traits:

Strategic: the business strategy and data strategy are aligned (business drives data solutions)
Accessible: having quick and easy access to existing data, including rapid onboarding of new datasets
Actionable: using data, analytics, KPI's, and dashboards to drive decisions and outcomes
Foundational: building solutions with quality data (single source of truth, Governance, MDM)
Cultural: data providers and consumers collaborate and share challenges and solutions

We help our clients define a business-driven data strategy and then leverage and transform their existing data capabilities into a competitive advantage and efficient business accelerator.

Read below to learn more about the consulting services Olmstead offers in support of our clients’ Data Management initiatives and their journey to becoming data driven.

How can Olmstead help?

Is your data strategy in alignment with your business strategy? Is the business impact of your data platform causing you to struggle to just “operate” or efficiently enabling you to grow through mergers, create unique products, and find Alpha? Olmstead’s approach to helping our clients leverage data as a strategic asset and business enabler focuses on improving two primary capabilities:
  • Data Platform Maturity
  • Data Governance Maturity
Improving data capabilities will help your firm make better decisions, identify risk, execute strategy, create better products, and improve overall efficiency.
Is your firm ready for your next large data-intensive initiative? Client Reporting? IBOR? Middle Office outsourcing? Chances are, you are not. Olmstead helps our clients assess their Data Readiness and then prepares them for successful projects. Olmstead and our vendor partners have seen data initiatives & implementations delayed over 25% due to data gaps (consolidation, completeness, quality, availability, etc.).

Olmstead’s Data Readiness Assessment tool is used to conduct a point-in-time assessment of the readiness of your data for a planned system implementation. Outputs include a scorecard for all data in scope, ranking of key implementation data risks and proposed mitigation tactics.

Click here to learn more about how Olmstead's Distribution Data Model and Data Service Layer provides an accelerated Client Communications implementation. 

Improving your data platform (architecture) or building a centralized data warehouse requires experience and a well-thought out execution plan. Olmstead helps guide our clients to mature their data capabilities from application centric (all data in apps) to data centric (primary, centralized data solution) to data driven using our proven methodology and years of industry experience. We believe all data projects are business driven. We ensure business strategy is aligned with data strategy and business value delivery is predictable and scheduled, mitigating the risk of the “runaway IT data project."

We manage vendor tool solution evaluation, selection, and implementation (MDM, data quality, data catalog, data lake, database platforms, more). We also help you select the best data warehouse solution for your unique needs – vendor or custom, cloud or on-premise.

To accelerate design and development, Olmstead has pooled 20+ years of data architecture experience and has created the Olmstead Investment Data Model that can also be used as a blueprint to guide your data architecture modelling initiative. We constantly test and refine our data model in our AWS Lab.

Mastering data is an essential data capability providing the “single source” of accurate data in your data platform. Olmstead will apply our proven framework, use cases, and knowledge to efficiently lead your team through a vendor selection process from RFI (if necessary) through vendor scoring and contract negotiations (if desired). We are vendor agnostic and work with the industry’s leading solution providers. Our targeted systems experts have over 20+ years' experience with leading MDM solutions, including native and cloud-based providers. We will provide data analysis, business analysis, project management, and implementation support for your system implementation. 
From passive reporting, canned reports, and dashboards to visualization, predictive decision making, and machine learning, your firm needs the right tools and flexible data sourcing to compete in today’s data-driven industry. Olmstead maintains an enterprise view of data analytics to ensure the right tool is used for the right user and use case. Our data experts successfully guide firms in selecting and prototyping dashboards, reporting and data visualization tools (Power BI), data lakes, and platform selection. Olmstead also helps with tool adoption and change management. Through workshops and education, we can help your organization roll-out new analytics tools, data catalogs, and new datasets to ensure your organization gets the most from your data investment.
Data Governance is no longer a “rule enforcement” function and has become a critical component in firms aspiring to become data driven. Data Governance as a business function aligns data strategy with business objectives. A modern Data Governance operating model inspires an engaged and collaborative data culture necessary to speed data solutions and data quality. Our experts assess your firm's readiness to successfully establish a data governance framework using tools compiled based on experience and client engagements. We help firms improve five primary data governance capabilities: Stewardship, Data Quality, Master Data Management, Metadata, and Data Policies/Procedures. The primary design deliverables include a readiness scorecard, recommendations, and execution plan.

Olmstead has helped asset managers launch their Data Governance programs successfully leveraging our “stealth” methodology. We ensure the solution is right-sized for your unique needs and believe in an Agile delivery focused on building value one data domain at a time. Whether you choose an internal build or implement a third-party data governance tool such as Collibra, Infogix, Alation, Informatica or others, Olmstead can provide the required skills and experience to select, map, configure and migrate your data, metadata and lineages.

Olmstead's Data Strategy & Solutions

Olmstead’s approach to helping our clients leverage data as a strategic asset and business enabler focuses on improving two primary capabilities: Data Platform Maturity & Data Governance Maturity. We combine strategic design with practical Agile delivery to ensure value is continually delivered. 


 


Client Testimonial

 “Olmstead’s data centric approach has been instrumental in assisting us with the assessment, design, and development of a technology platform to support the requirements under the SEC Liquidity and SEC Modernization rules. Because of this approach, we are ahead of schedule in our infrastructure build out and workflow preparedness.”

- CFO of Funds, Global Asset Manager


What your peers are asking:
  • What does it mean to be "data driven" and how can we achieve this?
  • Why is data culture important?
  • How do we launch a Data Governance program that is right-sized for our firm?
  • Is my business strategy aligned with my technology and data strategy?
  • How can modern data catalogs help improve my data culture & collaboration?
  • What is the impact of my data platform on my business performance?
  • How do we best manage data lakes across various analytics and data science teams?
  • How do API's improve access to data and minimize the impact of application change?
  • How can data science and AI help create the optimal Prospect & Client User Experience?
  • How do we maintain control of our data if we outsource our operations?
 
 
SAMPLE ENGAGEMENTS

Olmstead is guiding a mid-tier investment manager's Portfolio Analytics team through the design and selection of a data warehousing solution with the end goal of automating and scaling their client pitch books and enhancing their client reporting capabilities. Olmstead has established an Agile methodology, including new processes and new tools (Jira, Symphony, BOX). Olmstead has lead the project kick off, educated the client, and coached the client throughout the process. Our team has managed the Agile process, including building and managing Kanban Board, Sprint Planning, Sprint and Story management, and daily scrum meetings. The project has also included Resource planning and management, resulting in burn rates and load balancing reports.
Our Client had spent five years implementing new solutions for areas including trading, accounting, collateral management, performance and attribution. Each new solution created a new "island of data" for the business which resulted in additional complexity in the environment and confusion about which data to use or trust. Olmstead was engaged to design and manage the implementation of a strategic data management platform (Markit EDM) and data governance program. The approach introduced an enterprise data architecture coupled with the rollout of a comprehensive data governance program and an integrated data information access portal.
Implementation of a comprehensive enterprise GIA platform (Eagle). Worked across multiple work streams, managing discovery and requirement sessions, the automation of the nightly batch cycle, disaster recovery, and documentation of processed and procedures through parallel. Led the upgrade of the Eagle platform and the User Interface design of a proprietary transaction management and distribution system.
Olmstead was asked to evaluate the scope of effort that a large Investment Management firm required to comply with the October 2016 SEC Modernization Act requiring RIC's to provide enhanced reporting and disclosures beginning June 2018. Olmstead's approach included conducting an "As-Is" assessment of their data environment including the IT architecture, data flows, Operations and Reporting. Olmstead then worked closely with IT and business stakeholders to define a future state business and IT architecture to support the new reporting requirements which surfaced gaps versus current state. We also delivered a detailed N-PORT and N-CEN data gap analysis down to the field level specific to the client. The gaps were used to build a roadmap and supporting resource and cost estimates which enabled the client to quickly seek executive approval to begin the project, without risk of delays and limiting risk of meeting their regulatory deadlines.

See more samples of Current & Recent Data-Centric Engagements


RECENT BLOG POSTS

Asset managers hire top talent and want to get the most out of them.  To do that, they need to be given the right information, tools, and culture to be successful. This includes freeing data and promoting a data culture where decisions and changes are made according to data-driven insights.  Data is a product that drives business outcomes.  Success comes from cultivating the best ideas and making the best decisions based on the best available data.   Read More
Data integrity, operational risk, and firm reputation are key considerations in how a firm develops its client reporting & pitch book production processes. To protect these interests, the standard practice is to create and manage a structured data such as performance, holdings, transactions, and attributions in a single source of truth. But what about unstructured data, which accounts for at least 50% of the content in these reports and books?  Read More
How does the asset management industry adapt and thrive in the age of digital disruption? In a series of Olmstead Insights focusing on Digital & Data-Driven Asset Management, we explore the critical role data plays at the heart of the digital transformation. Topics include: meeting the needs of the data-empowered employee, generating alpha from your data platform, and becoming a data-driven asset manager.   Read More
 
MEET OUR LEADERS

Anthony is a Managing Director, leading Olmstead’s efforts to empower data-driven asset managers. He is an accomplished technologist with 20 years driving technology and data initiatives for large and small asset managers.  He was  Head of IT Common Services at Western Asset, where among other responsibilities, he enhanced the firm’s data architecture and developed its cloud strategy, leveraging data virtualization, Snowflake cloud data warehouse, a data science platform, and data lakes. Anthony was CTO at Fischer Francis Trees & Watts (now BNP Paribas Asset Management), where he built a sophisticated global investment management platform that elicited digital transformation across the firm.  At his core, Anthony is a software and data architect/engineer driven to enable asset manager innovation and agility.  He is a problem solver who delivers and moves the needle.
Jeff's LinkedIn Profile
mehlman@olmst.com

Jeff leads Olmstead’s Data Management services focused on the investment management lifecycle. He has served as a lead architect and technical manager delivering strategic, operational, information technology, and organizational change implementations, including migration planning and large-scale systems development and integration. Jeff has supported client engagements delivering business & database architecture, data analysis, and business user acceptance testing. He has designed and implemented technology solutions and data warehouses delivering consistent information to internal consumers (e.g., Risk, Credit, Performance / Attribution, Accounting, Regulatory Reporting, and Compliance). Jeff has defined and designed operational data stores capturing end-of-day books and records data, moving from redundant, point-to-point data sets to a consolidated view of end-of-day.
Stephen's LinkedIn Profile
sonderegger@olmst.com

Stephen leads Olmstead’s Data Management services focused on Distribution – sales, marketing, and servicing. He is the chief architect of Olmstead’s AWS / Snowflake Data Lab, which houses our distribution data services and data model, providing accelerators for client communications systems implementations. Stephen leads client engagements providing data architecture, business & data analysis, data engineering, and project management. He has served as an architect and technical lead for client reporting, sales enablement, web, and CRM integration projects from requirements definition and planning phase to re-design and re-platforming. He has also managed the design and architecture of enterprise data hubs / warehouses / lakes, resulting in fast time-to-value integrated views of investment and CRM data.

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Olmstead Associates is a leading specialized consulting firm to the investment management industry. For over 20 years, Olmstead has provided consulting expertise to help investment managers plan for, select, and implement solutions. Our Operations, Technology, and Data experts, proven methodologies, and leading edge tools help inform our clients to make better decisions and lower project risk.
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617-778-0372
info@olmst.com
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