AIM Software is challenging competitors in the enterprise data management (EDM) space with a business approach to data management that includes fixed price, packaged applications covering market data, reference data and corporate actions data. The Vienna, Austria based company says these solutions, plus a ‘Go West’ strategy focused on expansion in the US and UK, are helping it to build out its client base in new sectors and geographies.
Typically a strong data management player in wealth management, asset management and securities management markets across the Nordics and in the Netherlands, AIM has recently won two large US contracts and will support its extended reach with the opening of an office in the US this year. The company opened an office in the UK last year.
One of AIM’s recent wins is the wealth management division of a global, but unnamed, Wall Street bank. The client selected AIM’s Gain Security Master data management application to support operations in the US, Switzerland and India after issuing a request for proposal (RFP) towards the end of the first quarter of 2013 and selecting the AIM solution after a proof of concept in July. Competitors included local incumbents as well as global EDM providers that include in their ranks firms such as Markit EDM, Asset Control and GoldenSource.
The wealth manager is in production with Gain and is using it to centralise and streamline front-to-back operations such as the on boarding of new securities. The system creates golden copies of securities from multiple data vendors, allowing the user to reduce operational costs, improve client service and ensure consistent, high quality data across services used by private clients in 69 global locations.
The wealth manager says it selected AIM on the basis of its track record in wealth management and private banking, its knowledge of the firm’s business, and ‘its business application approach to data management, which allowed us a very fast initial implementation’.
Josef Sommeregger, global head of business development and strategy at AIM, adds: “We feel this is an endorsement of AIM’s business application approach to data management, which provides our clients with measurable business outcomes within a shorter timeframe and with lower project risk than alternative approaches. The solution was configured and ready for client testing in less than three months.”
AIM set out its business application approach about three years ago and began to see the beneficial effects last year. This year, it plans to expand into new capital market sectors and geographic markets, and already has a second US win with a global fund accounting and custody utility in the bag.
Sommeregger explains: “We developed the business application approach by looking for patterns among our 100-plus customers. We saw similar needs for processing securities data, prices and corporate actions, so we captured the functionality to create business applications covering these areas. The data management applications are centred around business ownership. Business users can onboard data feeds and make rules with little input from IT, allowing projects to get an accelerated start.”
AIM says the business application approach, which includes fixed price contracts, has been favoured by financial institutions in recent RFPs and expects to win not only new business in additional markets, but also in a replacement market that is growing as a result of increasing market complexity and regulation.
Sommeregger concludes: “Customers can license an application package and after a few iterations can deliver a production solution in weeks. They can also specify extensions to the package that we will help them develop and, if these could be reused by other clients, we will productise them and put them back into the application.”
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