It has long been recognized that managed services provide benefits beyond cost reduction. Although commercial savings can reach upwards of 60% against existing cost of in-house models, the pandemic has shined a light on several equally important benefits that are provided by outsourcing.
Managed services have been immune to risk that localized proximity models have. The unknown fact is that managed services providers have been operating from the cloud and remotely for decades. Whether it be a 100-year storm or a pandemic, clients that have leveraged managed services are the ones that have seen no impact to their production trading infrastructures, clearing systems, data warehouses, etc.
Firms managing their market data platforms with an in-house team in place have already been understaffed and barely able to meet their business needs. They require enough resources to monitor and support these platforms 24X7 and ensure coverage for vacation, sick, personal time, and attrition. The amount of Move/Add/Change work to accommodate the pandemic has consumed 200% of everyone’s time. Unfortunately, there was no planning in place for a pandemic and how to operate in what is being referred to as “the new normal”.
Employees have a variety of challenges in working in this new model. Local technology and internet bandwidth issues are just a couple of ongoing problems. Add in all the personal distractions with managing the family while working remotely on top of the increased workload and it is clear that firms are choosing to operate in a smarter, more efficient manner.
Managed services providers are able to provide on-demand resources and are already equipped to support the industry. Issues like security, proper system access, bandwidth, and redundancy are all built into managed service provider models. These providers are well vetted and adhere to strict SLA’s so there are no disruptions to service.
About West Highland Managed Services
West Highland is the leading managed services provider for the financial community providing a 24X7 comprehensive Market Data Managed Services. Our collaborative approach enhances the client model while reducing the cost of supporting their market data platforms, reducing risk to their business and eliminating outages. We work with our clients to maximize the cost benefit, reduce risk and be able to adapt to any situation that would impact the firm. West Highland is vendor agnostic and have a proactive, best practices approach to ensuring clients get the benefits of those experiences.
