WSI Eyes Expense Management Tool Expansion

WSI launched Xceptor Vendor Data Manager last year (IMD, July 4, 2013) to provide a data centralization layer between data consumers and file- or request-based data sources to cache data that might be needed by multiple users, and provide this data from the cache layer rather than querying the vendor source each time a user requests data, hence reducing duplicative data requests and corresponding market data fees.

The vendor initially applied the technology to a large, unnamed bank client's Bloomberg Data License subscription, and is currently working to extend XVDM to support Thomson Reuters' DataScope non-real time data service, having originally intended to support a raft of vendors from day one. Once that project is complete, WSI intends to add support for services from Interactive Data by year-end, and from Markit and SIX Financial Information and others by the middle of 2015, says WSI director Peter Madigan.

After these, it will be up to clients to prioritize support for other, more niche vendors, he adds, such as providers of commodities data, where the markets are still significantly paper-based, and where vendors might rely on information from far-off mining companies sent by fax, rather than delivered via the vendor's usual contribution or data collection channels. WSI then uses its optical character recognition software to transform printed materials into electronic formats.

The vendor is using this same technology─along with its reconciliation tools originally developed for matching and reconciling reference data─to provide invoice management and reconciliation services, by capturing data from invoices and comparing it to what a bank's own records say the data should cost. The vendor can offer this service as part of a cost review process conducted by its newly formed Professional Services group, headed by Amer Ali, who joined the vendor earlier this year after spending six years at Bloomberg, most recently as enterprise project manager and global account manager.