BST Awards 2018: Best Implementation at a Buy-Side Firm (Data & Operations)—RIMES Technologies

RIMES Technologies just can’t seem to stop winning categories in the Buy-Side Technology Awards. There was a time when the New York-based data management specialist focused exclusively on “its” category: the best data provider to the buy side (see page 64), a title it claimed all the way back in 2007 and is yet to relinquish, underlining its stranglehold on the category. This implementation category is one of only two in the BST Awards line-up that scrutinizes the specifics around a product or service implementation at the buy-side firm, and considers the measurable benefits to the client in terms of cost-savings, improved efficiencies and enhanced or extended business opportunities.   

RIMES emerged top in this category thanks to its collaboration with a $50 billion global asset manager. The project initially entailed the client undertaking a series of business-transformation programs on the underlying data feeding its investment platforms, opting to work with RIMES for the first stream: the development of a new service model for managing its reference data. Following a successful proof-of-concept, the asset manager went live with the first phase of the project after approximately eight months, where it saw improvements in its data quality and efficiency, and a reduction in its data management costs by a six-figure number.

The client’s primary objective was to maintain growth without increasing operational headcount or seeing a rise in associated costs. It identified index and asset data optimization as the starting point for the project, although its existing data processing approach—entailing multiple processes and data onboarding models that had evolved over time, each of which required its own support—made effective data governance difficult to achieve. It therefore developed a new data management and governance approach using the RIMES Managed Data Service. 

Key to RIMES’ enduring success across the buy side is the extent to which it tailors its services to meet the specific needs of each of its clients, effectively crafting unique services for each of its more than 350 user-firms. “The implementation was not that atypical for RIMES,” explains Alessandro Ferrari, chief marketing officer at RIMES Technologies. “We don’t have products—we have a service, and it’s a managed service, so it’s not like your typical outsourcing model. With every client, we go in on a fact-finding exercise where we look to figure out what they are trying to achieve. We also look to identify whether what they are doing now can be replicated more efficiently or whether it needs to be restarted from scratch. The point is that we always go in with an open mind with the goal of developing a long-term partnership with our clients,” he says.