Rimes Technologies and Bi-Sam have boosted their commitment to work together and deliver streamlined performance solutions for asset managers based on Rimes’ index and benchmark data management and Bi-Sam’s performance measurement and reporting functionality.
The companies already have a joint interface to their solutions that is well used, but the new partnership will provide a more sophisticated interface based on an application programming interface (API) that will support streaming data and allow users to work with data at a more granular level than is possible with the existing interface that allows only files of data to be downloaded.
Peter Ellis, EMEA chief operating officer at Bi-Sam, says: “One of the main challenges for investment managers when implementing a performance solution is data. Bi-Sam and Rimes have a lot of common clients, so by working together more closely we can take away the pain of integrating external index and benchmark data with a performance system. This is great for our clients and also attractive for our prospects.”
The API integration solution will streamline the process of getting data onto Bi-Sam’s B-One platform where it can be stored and used by platform functions including performance and risk measurement, client reporting and data management. The API, which is being developed by a joint Rimes and Bi-Sam team, is a few months away, but is expected to give users greater operational scale around performance and data management and alleviate manual processes.
Ellis explains: “Many firms have a heavy manual overhead in collecting, validating and cleaning index and benchmark data before passing it on to a performance measurement system. The improved Rimes and Bi-Sam interface should reduce the manual burden and deliver greater scale, helping users solve a complex problem that is getting worse.”
While similar data plus performance and reporting solutions are available from providers such as FactSet and StatPro, Ellis suggests the Rimes and Bi-Sam solution is differentiated by comprising two best-of-breed components rather an all-in-one single vendor solution. For Rimes, the partnership will open the door to selling its Benchmark Data Service including index and benchmark data to B-One users, while the integration of the Rimes data will add value for B-One clients.
Bi-Sam also intends to upgrade Rimes’ role in its hosted services that include hosted performance measurement systems with or without index and benchmark data, as well as a fully outsourced performance measurement and reporting function. Bi-Sam has offered hosted services including Rimes’ data for about a year, with Rimes acting as a subcontractor to Bi-Sam. As Bi-Sam promotes these services and pushes customer numbers beyond four early adopters, it plans to create a joint proposition with Rimes so that both companies can market the hosted solutions.
While Rimes is Bi-Sam’s first product partner, it will not be its last as the company is talking to an accounting system provider with a view to improving its overall proposition – expect an announcement on this in the next few weeks. “If we can do something similar in the back office to what we have done in the front office, we will be able to help clients fulfil the performance measurement and reporting task and will have a compelling solution. By working with a best-of-breed accounting system we are moving towards a best-of-breed platform and a performance solution with no integration headaches for our customers,” concludes Ellis.
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