Case Study

The text below describes work carried out for a leading Fund Management company in the City of London. More detailed references are available on request.

Passive Cost Savings

Passive Cost Savings leave users receiving the same (or modified) services for a lower price. This can be achieved in many ways: through the consolidation of services, through negotiation with vendors and selection of a cheaper service, or through more efficient use of technology. See below for real-life examples of Passive Cost Savings.

Usage Analysis was carried out providing in-depth reports on a user-by-user basis showing Exchange Fee usage by exchange. This clearly identified those Exchanges where users are permissioned to see real-time data but are not looking at it. This was carried out for users of Reuters 3000Xtra and Bloomberg Professional.

Exchange Overlaps were identified from the reports above to identify those who are paying duplicate Exchange Fees on different platforms, effectively paying for the same data twice on Reuters 3000Xtra, Bloomberg Professional and Thomson products. Cancellations were made to eliminate the duplication for all these Exchanges, and where the Exchange rules permit, credit payments were requested and received to recover the duplicate costs.

Spare Licenses were identified and terminated for Reuters, Bloomberg Professionals and Bloomberg Travelers.

Rationalisation of Thomson services was carried out and a new delivery infrastructure was installed at no cost to the Client. This had the effect of both reducing communication circuit costs and providing resilience where there had been none before.

Satellite Delivery was implemented in place of leased 2 x 2Mb leased lines for RAW Communications.

Product Best-fit Analysis was carried out for Reuters 3000Xtra users and lower-tier access enabled as appropriate.

Active Cost Savings

Active Cost Savings are achieved by reducing the services provided to the user through cancellations or reductions in service levels. See below for real-life examples of Active Cost Savings.

Bloomberg Email-only users were identified from usage statistics and interviewed. This led to cancellations of Bloomberg Professionals.

Sharing of Terminals is forbidden by both Reuters and Bloomberg but through the strategic positioning of monitors user needs can be satisfied.

Delayed Pricing has led to reductions in Exchange Fee costs through the use of DTICs and use of the "/" in front of RIC codes. When these features are explained many users found they could still get the results they wanted without the real-time data they had before.

Cost Savings in Progress

Global Agreements with vendors are being negotiated with break points based on total annual spend.

Circuit Costs were reduced for connections to several vendors (especially Reuters) through the provision of a pair of circuits to Radianznet.