During the course of the year, a firm will undoubtedly encounter unique situations or unanticipated business events, further straining resources and bandwidth. Given today’s rapidly changing times, it’s inevitable.
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While managing through these challenging times, your business is likely also looking toward the future. With “business as usual” upended, you may be trying to position your firm for whatever comes next while staying ahead of your competitors.
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A crisis might not seem like the time to evaluate your operations, but now is perhaps when opportunities to improve are most visible. Some of these potential areas in need of improvement are reporting, risk assessment, remote access, ability to scale up or down quickly, domain expertise and immediate access to information.
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Given current conditions, many organizations are facing new or amplified challenges with operating efficiently. COVID-19 has forced businesses to work remotely, and they have now found themselves struggling to keep up with resourcing, internal communication and automation. In the early stages of the pandemic, clients had experienced significant spikes in trade volumes, collateral calls and wires activity that posed operational challenges.
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Every business has adjusted its near-term priorities and longer-term outlook in the wake of COVID-19. In the financial services industry, we see that the pandemic has accelerated some trends. For example, we see firms reassessing their use of outsourcing services for the business-as-usual benefits and operational resiliency.
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When financial companies seek to outsource operations, they are referring to the process of entrusting an external vendor with certain in-house tasks. These tasks are usually repetitive or mundane in nature but crucial for the day-to-day processes of an organization. Examples of common outsourced operations include accounting, IT services, digital marketing, human resources, etc.
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A growing trend continues among financial services firms to outsource their middle and back-office operations and accounting processes. In a recent SS&C survey of companies in one major buy-side segment, 62% of those firms surveyed cited outsourcing or co-sourcing as a high priority.
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At a time when margins are down, performance is under pressure, global regulation is driving up costs and fundraising competition is fierce, alternative fund managers need to be looking at operational and technology transformation as a means to differentiate their offerings and boost the bottom line. In this environment, the case for outsourcing is increasingly compelling for firms to offload their IT burdens and reduce the risks posed by legacy system constraints.
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