Outsourcing – What to Look for In Your Provider
May 30, 2013
Today’s markets offer great challenges to asset managers, pension funds, wealth managers and other types of investment firms. Companies need to focus on strategic initiatives, while challenged with resource constraints, margin pressure and mandates to reduce fixed costs. To help address these challenges, many firms are choosing to partner with an outsourcing provider to run the “non-strategic” parts of their business.
Integrating an outsourcing solution into your overall IT strategy allows your organization to:
- Contain middle and back office costs, particularly for technology infrastructure, and tie cost to variations in revenues and volumes
- Gain access to external knowledge, expertise and talent
- More effectively manage and distribute operational risk
- Successfully utilize more sophisticated technology
- Achieve the flexibility to address ever-changing client needs while also meeting regulatory requirements
- Focus on traditional core client-facing strengths
As your organization begins to analyze whether an outsourcing solution is right for you, there are a number of decisions you will need to think about such as:
- Why should we outsource?
- What do we want out of the relationship?
- How do we choose an outsourcing provider?
Thinking through these concepts before engaging with vendors helps ensure you pick the right solution to benefit your organization, but it can be overwhelming. To help you start the process, we invite you to download our whitepaper “Middle-to-Back Office Outsourcing: A Guide for Front-Line Strategic CFOs”
When choosing an outsourcing provider, it is critical to find a vendor with deep experience in financial technology, with firms similar to yours, and with a history of success offering outsourcing services. Investment firms should be skeptical of software vendors who only dabble in outsourcing – we advise against using vendors who lack consistent, independent outsourcing credentials and certifications (such a SSAE 16 Type 2 review), who rely on third-parties to provide services and infrastructure, or who are just launching outsourcing solutions.
SS&C PORTIA has been in the outsourcing industry for over 14 years and in the investment management software solutions industry for over 25 years. This experience allows us to understand the unique needs of all our clients and work directly with them to determine the areas where they can benefit most from our outsourcing solutions.
Contact us today to learn more about how PORTIA Outsourcing Services can help manage and service some or all of your middle-to-back office operations, enabling you to better allocate resources and control costs.
– Munther Haddad, Vice President, Global Implementation and Outsourcing Services