Financial Services
Industry: Financial Services
Client References: Available
The Challenge:
Client’s Financial Services (IFS) division needed to reconcile its products portfolio with its agent network and in-force policies. Products, when introduced, are related to Offices. Over a period of time, as offices were closed and agents left, numerous orphan products resulted. Information was spread across an existing federated data warehouse and 2 legacy agent systems with little documentation regarding its data. Key questions included:
- Is there a way to re-establish the Product/Office relationships?
- How well are inter-field relationships maintained (e.g. Status and Termination Date) by the systems delivering data to Data Warehouse?
- What is the overall status of field accuracy (unexpected nulls, invalid data, etc.)
Enter Mitchell Martin Inc: Mitchell Martin applied the tools and methodology of its industry unique Data Integration, Migration, and Cleansing Serviceware Offering to analyze the agent system and search for a method of linking this data to the information in the data warehouse. The process also highlighted information inconsistencies in data columns, as well as inter-table, cross-table, and cross-system relationships. A key finding was that the agent data was linked to contract data via common key with totally different names in the two systems. Through Mitchell Martin’s unique approach to value analysis, it was discovered that agent-id and contract-id were actually the same field, something that would have gone completely unnoticed using traditional analysis and cleansing methods.
Results: In summary, the Mitchell Martin value proposition included:
- Rapid processing and analysis of over 1,000,000 rows of data across 6 tables in a few weeks.
- Discovery of 28 business rules to jump-start the Rules Definition Process with little knowledge, no documentation and no experience with the data.
- Presentation of Business Rules in a readily understood and universally accessible format.
- Discovery of Hidden Relationships to support Business Problem resolution.
- Discovery of Inter-field relationships and Quantification of data at issue.
- Significant time and cost savings over manual efforts that might never uncover some Business Rules. (DAMA estimates 4-5 hours per attribute for manual analysis.)
Telecommunications Company
Industry: Telecommunications
Client References: Available
The Challenge:
For over 20 years, client has been spending significant resources on maintaining the quality of its data. The accuracy and consistency of data across a multitude (476) of Ordering, Billing, and Provisioning systems was deemed critical to revenue recovery, increased throughput, and reduced cycle time. Inconsistencies between systems could lead to customers being billed for circuits not used, for more or less costly services, or could lead to idle circuits invalidly assigned to customers.
Enter Mitchell Martin Inc: Mitchell Martin applied the tools and methodology of its industry unique Data Integration, Migration, and Cleansing Serviceware Offering to analyze the set of Ordering/Billing/Provisioning systems supporting the revenue critical Frame and ATM businesses. The mission was to prove the applicability of the Mitchell Martin offering to the client’s challenge by not only identifying potential data issues within each system, but across and between the systems as well. In addition, Mitchell Martin was tasked with identifying business rules that could be implemented to automatically correct data when certain conditions were met and to implement these “Pollution Control” procedures.
Working with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who had been researching and correcting data issues for more than 20 years, Mitchell Martin worked to validate and enhance the Business Rules generated from the output of their automated Data Profiling, Standardization, Validation, and De-duplication software. In the course of a 12-week period, more than 40 business rules were identified and validated by the SMEs. Data corrections for each of the rules were forwarded to the appropriate Source System(s) for update. Most important, more than half of the 40 rules were based on conditions that allowed for automated corrections to be generated and sent without SME review. As new and changed data flows through the DataStage-based Rules filter implemented by Mitchell Martin, inaccuracies can now be corrected almost as soon they occur, significantly reducing the time and costs associated with manually researched and corrected issues. While there will always be data issues that must be corrected manually, the Mitchell Martin Methodology and Tools still achieve dramatic savings by automatically detecting potential issues and delivering the suspect data to the appropriate SME via its web-based Interface.
Results: To paraphrase the Senior Business Owner of four Operational Customer Service Centers, Mitchell Martin’s approach has reduced or eliminated the days and sometimes weeks a Customer order can be delayed due to system inconsistencies and data errors. The Mitchell Martin solution is being currently being implemented for the Managed Services, Connectivity, and Data Services Operational business areas, with the potential to be rolled out across 476 operational systems in support of the client’s multi-year, Data Base of Record Cleansing project.
Major Petroleum Company
Industry: Oil and Gas
Client References: Available
The Challenge:
British Petroleum completed its merger with Amoco and Arco to become the 7th largest corporation in the world. As the former three companies moved towards a common business model, they faced the challenge of merging data from each company’s legacy ERP system into a common SAP system to support their combined business practices. Past conversions to each company’s latest ERP system had in large part resulted in too much inaccurate and unclean data. While the process of mapping the data from each system to SAP was being undertaken, the burden of ensuring that the data was accurate was placed on the business units.
Enter Mitchell Martin Inc: Having developed the industry’s most extensive web-enabled, Business Rules based Data Quality Serviceware offering, Mitchell Martin was called to action. Mitchell Martin employs leading industry standard software tools, linked through our proprietary web-interface to provide the most effective Data Quality Solution available today. This offering was recognized by BP as the first to extend the concept of Data Cleansing from Name and Address data to all data, regardless of type, purpose, or format.
Mitchell Martin in Action: Mitchell Martin brought its Data Quality Serviceware offering and extensive expertise to bear in analyzing BP’s legacy ERP system’s data before migrating it to SAP. Engaged on the project at its halfway point, facing dwindling timeframes and ever-tightening budgets, Mitchell Martin’s Data Cleansing team quickly went to work. Based on their assessment of the “Current State”, it was evident that traditional data cleansing approaches based on specifications, program code, and data sampling of a mere 1 – 5% of production data was not the solution that would meet the goals and objectives of the project.
A key Mitchell Martin differentiator is the detailed analysis of the raw data values currently stored in existing databases and files to determine the actual meaning, descriptions and relationships of the data. Using ground-breaking new software technologies for Data Profiling, column analysis, table analysis, and cross table analysis is performed, providing the most accurate information possible to the Data Quality Analysts. Merging this analysis with traditional address standardization and merge/purge technologies enables all data in a system to be addressed. The creation of business rules, which are presented to the business users for approval or change, enabled the Subject Matter Experts to focus on making key decisions related to the data, avoiding the endless cycle of what to approach and how. Through the Web Interface, data not compliant with the business rules is then presented for correction and remediation. Data is also sorted and reclassified within the Web Interface to ensure that the focus is always on the most important data first. Compared to the traditional manual and assumption based approaches, this approach reduces the amount of time spent by the business community by up to 80%!
Results: Mitchell Martin provided British Petroleum the capability to identify, analyze and cleanse data related to over 20,000 customers across three separate Business Units (Air, Commercial and Retail) and enabled an unprecedented 99.7% of the targeted data to be successfully migrated to SAP without error.
Project Solutions
Chartered with driving higher value consulting services Mitchell Martin Solutions was created to assist its clients with solution offerings across CRM, Data Services (Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, Data Cleansing), ERP and specific Financial Services applications. Mitchell Martin Solutions addresses the unique needs of our clients by offering a true alternative to the larger system integrators and off-shore providers.
Financial Solutions
Mitchell Martin has been servicing the Financial Services Industry since its inception in 1984. Our clients range from Fortune 100 global organizations to newly formed Hedge Funds and Private Equity firms.
Mitchell Martin has significant experience across the following domains:
Capital Markets
- Fixed Income
- Equities
- Derivatives
- Investment Banking
- Foreign Exchange
- Prime Brokerage
- Prop Trading
- Electronic Trading
Wealth Management/Asset Management
- High Net Worth
- Emerging Affluent
- Private Banking
Consumer and Retail Banking
- Credit Card
- Student Lending
- Auto Lending
- On-Line Banking
Compliance & Risk Management
- Credit and Market Risk
- Basel II
- Sarbanes Oxley
Insurance
- Life, Home, Personal
- Property & Casualty
One of Mitchell Martin’s key differentiators is our understanding and in depth knowledge of specific software packages and platforms that our specific to front office and back office applications. Our consultants and subject matter experts are experienced in
- ADP
- Netezza
- Bloomberg
- SAS
- Calypso
- SmartStream
- Charles River
- SunGard
- Fiserv
- Thomson
- Guidewire
Representative Projects:
For a Global Investment Bank
As the Lead Business Analyst for the banks strategic market risk projects, Mitchell Martin participated in the following efforts:
- Implemented a global scenario engine for all products (FX, Interest Rates, Credit, Asset Backed) using historical simulation based VaR using relative/absolute methodologies and stress. Regions in scope included New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong.
- Standardized risk factors globally that included FX (Spot, volatilities), IR (Libor, Non-Libor, treasury, OIS, ATM and smile volatilities), Credit (single name, index spreads, Correlations), MBS (Mortgage rates, ABX, CMBX), Equity (Spot, Vol). etc. for different traded products for FX, Rates, Interest Rates Derivatives, Credit Derivatives, Metals, Equity Derivatives and MBS businesses.
- Implementation of risk materiality for Cancel and Amended trades. Obtained trade data from Calypso, Summit, Bloomberg, Murex, Fidessa and internal systems and filtered trades that impacted valuation. Risk captured included CS01, PVBP, delta and FX risk for these trades.
ERP Capabilities
For the past eight years Mitchell Martin has worked with its clients providing consulting and staffing services for their ERP initiatives. Our clients rely on us to analyze, manage, develop,test and implement critical cross functional initiatives.
Mitchell Martin’s consultants combine strong technological skills and deep domain experience to deliver across various technologies including:
- Banner
- Oracle
- PeopleSoft
- SAP
Mitchell Martin Offerings
| Application Areas Include: | Domain Experience: | Functional Expertise: |
|---|---|---|
| Business Process Outsourcing | Financial Services | Development |
| Financial Management | Higher Education | Data Architecture |
| Human Capital Management | Media | QA/Software Testing |
| Procurement | Utilities | System Architecture |
Representative Projects
For a Global P&C Insurer
Mitchell Martin assisted in the development of a Global Consumer application to handle billions of live policies, claims that has client facing portal. Products were customized individually to support a global client base. This system has integration with MCAS/Oracle Financial (AR/AP), SAP.
Modules: Policy, Claims, Fulfillment (Order), Inventory Management, Work Queue, Case History (Interaction), Scheme, User Management, Self Service (Client Facing), Transactions, Reports.
For a Pharmaceutical Firm
Designed & developed a Data Mart to be used for Rebate Cost Savings Reporting purposes using Cognos for a Healthcare Contract Administrations department of a major pharmaceutical company. This Data Warehousing effort, utilizing ETL processes based on advanced data cleansing & metadata collection/management techniques, resulted in DB integration of an SAP CPCC (Contract Pricing Chargeback Component) system and a proprietary system.
Data Management
The Mitchell Martin Solution
Mitchell Martin’s Data Quality Serviceware Solution, combines several new state of the art technologies with our integrated data analysis methodology and Data Quality Analysts/Engineers to identify and resolve critical Data Quality issues. This is accomplished by applying a comprehensive end-to-end process to All of your Data Quality challenges.
Beyond simply cleaning Customer Names and addresses and removing duplicates, a key Mitchell Martin differentiator is our ability to identify and clean ANY type of data and subject area, not just Customer data. Our innovative use of new Data Profiling technologies now extends the cleansing process to every piece of data in your inventory.
Mitchell Martin includes a detailed analysis of the raw data values currently stored in existing databases and files to determine the actual meaning, descriptions and relationships of the data. Data inconsistencies, inaccuracies, omissions and out of bounds domain values are clearly highlighted. This analysis along with detailed reports and the generation of business rules are used to “cleanse” the data before porting it to the new system.
Key Features
- Automated Data Analysis of all data (not limited to Names and Addresses.)
- Web-based Business Rules User Interface utilized to review and correct data.
- Identification of potential data integrity issues resulting from “orphans” and other data anomalies.
- Validation and Standardization of Name and Address, both National and International.
- Auditable process of all data corrections; Legacy data remains unchanged until approved.
- Prioritization of cleansing process based on “most valuable” data first.
Key Benefits
- Dramatically increase success rate of data migrations to Mission Critical Applications.
- Business User time provably reduced by 80%.
- Dramatically reduces costs associated with invalid, inaccurate, or duplicated data.
- Ensures the accuracy of Financial and Regulatory Compliance Reporting.
- Pollution Control and Monitoring to keep data clean, permanently eliminating costs.
- Reduced costs associated with inefficient operations, customer support and customer attrition.
Case Studies
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Mitchell Martin’s CRM practice offers a unique combination of industry experience and leading technology service capabilities to help clients realize their CRM vision.
- Industry Focus – More then 25 years experience in financial services, delivering business solutions for Investment Banking, Capital Markets, Wealth Management, and Insurance.
- Cloud Technology Expertise – Our professionals have been leading the delivery of on-demand solutions since 2004.
- Proven Success in Enterprise Delivery – We have exclusive experience delivering on-premise and on-demand solutions to global, enterprise organizations.
Mitchell Martin’s consultants combine strong technological skills and deep domain experience to deliver across various technologies including:
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Salesforce.com
- SAP
- Siebel
- Siebel on Demand
Mitchell Martin Offerings
| Strategy and Advisory Services: | Develop and Deploy: |
|---|---|
| Roadmap Definition | Functional and Technical Design |
| Product Selection | Data Services |
| Current State Analysis | Development and Testing |
Representative Projects
For a Global Investment Bank
Our team created and implemented a global CRM strategy for the equities division of the investment bank using Salesforce.com. Our team was directly responsible for:
- Managing the development resources.
- Producing project timelines and budget to achieve an optimal delivery strategy for all aspects of the program.
- Building a center of excellence for development and support to drive operational efficiencies in ongoing support of the solution.
