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Seamless Interoperability: The Next Chapter for LSEG Workspace

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Over the last couple of years, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has been undergoing a transformation in how it delivers data and tools to its customers, with the Workspace platform at the centre of this effort. Led by Nej Djelal, Group Head of LSEG Workspace Platform, the initiative aims to redefine how financial professionals interact with data by seamlessly integrating Workspace with widely used tools like Microsoft Teams and Excel.

A year after our last conversation, TradingTech Insight caught up with Nej to discuss the progress made on LSEG Workspace, the impact of their strategic partnership with Microsoft, and their ambitious goals for the year ahead. From integrating natural language capabilities powered by generative AI to reimagining how financial professionals interact with data, Nej shared his insights into how LSEG is pushing the boundaries of innovation to meet the needs of a global, interconnected user base.

TTI: Nej, you and I had a conversation a little over a year ago about your plans at the time. Now, a year on, where are you in terms of progress? How is the LSEG Workspace evolution coming along? And how is your partnership with Microsoft developing?

ND: Let me give you a quick helicopter view as a reminder. At its core, our mission is to transform the customer experience—enhancing decision-making across the investment and trade lifecycle. We’ve been focusing on three key areas: discoverability, visualisation, and actionability.

Looking back over the last couple of years, we’ve invested immensely in our flagship Workspace platform and user adoption continues to grow. We’re proud of the progress but are also further pushing the boundaries to evolve the platform. A key focus has been integrating natural language capabilities, powered by generative AI, and re-designing the overall look and feel to make it even more intuitive than ever before.

Microsoft is also a key differentiator for us, enabling us to meet customers where they are at scale. For some users, their journey starts in Excel; for others, it’s Teams. While Outlook and other areas remain possibilities, Excel and Teams have been our primary focus so far.

The goal is seamless integration, creating fluid interoperability between Microsoft and LSEG platforms. For example, a user could ask a question in Teams and see the response rendered as a chart in Workspace. This kind of deep integration provides customers with the best of both worlds: the familiarity of Microsoft tools and access to the rich workflows and data in Workspace.

TTI: Talking about interoperability, how much is OpenFin facilitating this kind of integration?

ND: OpenFin is a key strategic technology partner for us, playing an integral role in powering the Workspace container. This allows us to deliver a seamless deployment experience. Customers report being able to install and run Workspace in just a couple of minutes—a significant improvement over the complexities of traditional application rollouts, especially for global firms managing deployments across desks and regions.

Beyond deployment, OpenFin enables us to integrate Workspace with our customer’s native desktop ecosystem.

TTI: Can you elaborate on the Teams and Excel integrations?

ND: Of course. Starting with Teams, our initial focus has been on enabling users to generate company data quickly, especially for meeting preparation. While its called “financial meeting prep,” it’s applicable beyond meetings. With a button in Teams, users can create a comprehensive company financial data report in seconds instead of hours or even days.

This capability is powered by a large language model, which saves time and rapidly surfaces value for users, ultimately empowering customers to spend less time preparing and more time prepared. Adoption has grown steadily since last year’s pilots. We’re now in the mobilisation phase, scaling up customer activation. The app is available in the Teams store, making adoption straightforward, and user feedback has been instrumental in refining it.

We have big plans for Teams this year. By the second half, a new Workspace Teams app will launch, featuring Open Directory for cross-firm collaboration and a generative AI-powered content discovery tool. Microsoft is also making platform-level changes to enable regulatory compliant external collaboration in Teams, which is a significant development.

For Excel, we’ve reimagined how users access LSEG data through a first of its kind add-in. Previously, such integrations required a degree of sophistication with formulas, introducing complexity. Now, we’ve simplified the process by containerising data as objects within Excel, making it easier to access and visualise our content.

For example, users can populate Excel with company data, visualise it in a time-series chart, and overlay it with news to tell a story—all within Excel. This seamless workflow has been highly praised by power users. Additionally, users can transition directly from Excel to specific content in Workspace, combining the strengths of both platforms.

Looking ahead, we’re focusing on agentic flows—AI agents within Teams, Excel, and Workspace that simplify content discovery and visualisation, making the experience even more efficient and valuable.

TTI: Regarding Teams, this might be slightly tangential, but given that voice trading is still prevalent – particularly with the rise of soft turrets – do you have plans to integrate Teams as a voice- or chat-based trading application within the Workspace ecosystem?

ND: Absolutely, there’s potential to explore voice-based use cases, particularly as turrets are increasingly software-based. However, we’re taking a community-specific approach, focusing on micro-communities across the trade lifecycle.

Instead of treating it as one massive community, we’re identifying smaller groups – buy-side and sell-side desks – that need to collaborate around specific topics. Anchoring these communities with high-quality content adds value, especially within Teams, which is already a common canvas on most desks.

We’re starting with content-driven areas like research, sales commentary, and conversations between analysts. Another focus is trade support, where non-front-office staff need access to front-office staff. In such cases, premium licences can be cost-prohibitive for simple chat functionality, so we view chat as a fundamental right for collaboration.

TTI: Last year, you mentioned a 10x transformation in the user experience. Has that been achieved?

ND: Yes, 10X is a reference to our ambition to transform the flagship experience. This includes a gen-AI powered natural language experience which is live and in use. The journey we’re on is iterative, with constant customer feedback shaping the process. We’ve reimagined how customers interact with content through our flagship experience, starting with fund-based content and now expanding to company data. Adoption is growing, and we’re refining the platform to consistently improve the quality of answers and functionality. What was an idea when we last spoke is now a live reality, and we’re fully engaged in enhancing it further.

TTI: Are you still on track to sunset Eikon this year?

ND: Yes, we are. This has been a clear objective, requiring significant effort across our product, sales, account management, operations, and engineering teams. It’s been a massive undertaking, but we’re confident we’ll meet the target as planned.

TTI: What have been your biggest learnings over the past two years?

ND: Transitioning to a more customer-centric, data-led way of working has been pivotal. We’ve aligned multi-disciplined teams, bringing product design, product management, and engineering together as one cohesive group, working in close partnership with our Sales, Operations, and control partners.

Key themes also include federated platform-based architecture, which enable scalable solutions across diverse businesses, and user-centred design, which involves research, wireframing, and ensuring products resonate with customers.

Product-led growth is also important — particularly reducing the time it takes for customers to realise value by ensuring onboarding is quick and benefits are immediate. Formalising agile methodologies through a defined playbook has also been instrumental.

Another key theme is a focus on platform economics. We’re not just optimising the customer experience but also enhancing the producer experience—developers and authors—aligning this with our federated platform approach. These themes will continue guiding us forward.

TTI: What are your key aims and targets for the next 12 months?

ND: Last year, we assembled the rocket.

This year, it’s lift-off—scaling up usage across the LSEG Workspace Ecosystem covering our flagship experience and new integrated experiences with Microsoft Teams and Excel.

Next year we’re aiming for orbit, where adoption and impact will significantly accelerate further. I think the rocket analogy sums up where we are in this journey.

TTI: It sounds exciting and very busy!

ND: It’s a breath of fresh air to be at LSEG. I’m really enjoying the customer centricity, remarkable breadth of great products across the trade lifecycle, and the ambitious transformation mission we are on.

TTI: Thanks Nej

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