Best Enterprise Data Management Vendor: IHS Markit

To help customers reap the benefits of centralized and standardized management of data, enterprise data management (EDM) vendors are pushing the boundaries and delivering systems with improved user experience and performance. Topping the reader survey in the space this year, and named Best Enterprise Data Management Vendor, is IHS Markit.

In 2012, IHS Markit responded to growing interest in EDM by acquiring software provider Cadis. Three years later it further enriched its offering in this space by acquiring CoreOne Technologies and integrating its VistaOne data warehouse, reporting and documentation tools under the EDM umbrella. As a result, IHS Markit has been adding more than 20 EDM customers a year. Spiros Giannaros, global head of EDM at IHS Markit, says the focus is on providing an end-to-end solution and, after taking 10 months to integrate the new data warehouse capabilities from the CoreOne acquisition, the IHS Markit EDM platform was offered as a fully integrated solution with the new EDM Warehouse. In May 2017 US-based investment manager Glenmede became the third customer to sign up for the combined offering of the EDM platform and EDM Warehouse in as many months.

Glenmede has taken the offering as a managed service, and IHS Markit EDM now has close to 30 managed service implementations. “It seems managed services are here to stay,” says Giannaros, explaining that taking data management as a managed service offers firms a cost-effective and efficient system, making it easier to manage change and upgrades. “Around 60–70 percent of new customers are now subscribing to our managed services,” he says.

IHS Markit has also been consistent in putting out two new product releases a year, and is continuing to look for modules to incorporate into an end-to-end data solution. “We’ve been very diligent about investing [in EDM], and we’ve increased our research and development fivefold over the past four years,” says Giannaros. At the end of last year, new capabilities enabled users to mark favorites and share views with peers, for example, and this focus on empowering users is continuing this year. “The next 12 months will be focused on further improving visualizations and workflows … We look at some of the flexibility in business intelligence tools to see what users expect,” he says.

The fact that IHS Markit EDM is built on a flexible data model means the system can also be applied in different verticals, and the group is working with other areas of IHS Markit to identify new opportunities. “We’ve targeted energy as the first area of focus, and we’ve onboarded 10 customers within the energy space in the past six months,” says Giannaros.

Read more about the IMD/IRD Awards 2018 winners