The award recognises success in the development, implementation and running of risk management software for the financial sector. Shortlisted companies demonstrated how their software has been developed to best benefit the financial sector, and evidence of performance should be provided where possible.

The FStech Awards recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sectors. This prestigious event is designed to emphasise the importance of IT as a key driver in business and to acknowledge and reward IT specialists working within the sector.

Competition was particularly fierce this year, with a dramatic jump in the number of entries received for the FStech Awards, making it a record breaking year for entries and more difficult than ever to select the final shortlist.

The winners will be announced at an awards gala dinner on the 28 March 2012 at the Lancaster London Hotel, Bayswater.  The night will be attended by over four hundred industry professionals.

These are predicated on improvements to the relationship leading to improvements in service, efficiency and therefore ROI from outsourcing.  

Here are our top five ways clients are improving SRM:

1.    Consolidation.

If your department has multiple IT suppliers that have each been brought in to fill a specific role or need, but no-one has overall responsibility or time to manage them properly, how can you identify which ones are performing and which aren't.  Until you know that, how can you decide which suppliers to give more work to and which to cut from your supply chain?  If you understand what other services those good suppliers offer you could avoid costly procurement exercises.

Reducing the number of suppliers brings benefits on two sides:

• The supplier works harder and perhaps prices its offerings better to secure your business
• Your (or our) supplier management function has fewer relationships to manage and can achieve greater consistency of monitoring and service improvement

2. and 3.  Communication and Active relationship management.

If each of your Vendor Managers has too many projects on to adequately monitor all suppliers, you lose out and the supplier can't feed back to you in a timely fashion on potential service improvements or cost savings.

Frustrations can occur on both sides if a supplier is not integrated into your organisation so that they understand your business and goals.  We know from experience that communication is key to ensuring a successful client and supplier relationship and enables you to build mutually beneficial partnerships.  

Communication can only come from regular, systematic, governance of the contract and services, through regular service review meetings, reporting and a feedback cycle to your service improvement programme.  This active relationship management differs markedly from where many organisations have concentrated in the past.  Stop firefighting suppliers who cause problems to your business and ignoring the good ones - start actively working with the good ones to learn from them if nothing else.

4. Process.

SRM can too easily become a personal matter, with two equally good Vendor Managers having different opinions of one supplier.  Drive out the inefficiency and subjectivness of personal opinion by systematising your SRM activities, allowing your team to run the process but imposing objective discipline on them.  This avoids dependence on one person in your or the supplier team, and can make good relationships last longer, and root out the bad ones.

If you devise a process for SRM at the outset of the relationship, perhaps pre-contract, you'll monitor the transfer of risk or pricing actively rather than waiting until events force you to.  Those objectives in the original business case for outsourcing should become living breathing parts of the suppliers' day to day activities.

5.    Making contracts truly win-win.

Research by the London School of Economics (See slide 35) shows that clients are most satisfied when their outsourced supplier is earning its target margins.  Make sure you measure it, for the supplier's benefit, not to minimise their margin. 

Never considered outsourcing supplier relationship management?

MSM Software provides outsourced SRM by applying ITIL principles to guaranteed SLAs.  We take sole responsibility or take the pressure off your team by adopting some of the routine and repetitive day to day elements of supplier management, freeing up your teams to focus on higher level strategic management of suppliers.  Hybrid working suits many overworked clients needing to demonstrate rapid outcomes.

1.    Improving social networking capability

A lot has changed in the World since 2007 and one of the biggest is the online explosion of social networking websites.

SharePoint 2010 has dramatically improved its capability in this arena with the addition of personal blogs, tagging and activity feeds within its social networking sites - MySites. MySites allow integration with Microsoft's BCS (Business Connectivity Services), which allows IT to link employees' MySites profiles to non-SharePoint data, such as information from a human resources system.

Wiki and blog integration in MOSS 2007 wasn't great and was widely panned by experts for not being very user friendly. Usability has been a key focus for SharePoint 2010 and it has been dramatically improved.  

Similarly, community interaction within SharePoint 2007 was pretty poor and has been given a helping hand with user interfaces similar to Facebook profile pages. SharePoint 2010 has also added keyword tagging so that content can be found quicker.

SharePoint 2010 is even following in Twitters footsteps by adding micro blogging and activity feeds into the service.

2.     Improved search and content management

The search function in SharePoint 2010 is far more superior to previous versions because of improved scalability, query functionality and index redundancy.
As for managing business content, Microsoft has removed limitations in MOSS 2007's Enterprise Content Management (ECM) feature so document libraries can grow to 200 million items.

3.    Working offline  

SharePoint 2010 makes up some ground on the likes of Lotus Notes with SharePoint Workspace.  Workspace makes SharePoint libraries, lists and forms accessible offline. This is a huge step forward and helps to improve the productivity and efficiency of the users.

4.    Better connection to line-of-business data

Previous versions of SharePoint have had difficulties when trying the access enterprise software systems.  Microsoft has made significant improvements to integrate more business data in SharePoint 2010 by using its BCS (Business Connectivity Services) suite.

A recent Forrester report cited that the BCS helps make SharePoint 2010 the "connective tissue that bridges line-of-business systems and knowledge worker systems". The previous iteration of BCS, called BDC (Business Data Catalog), could bring only line-of-business data into SharePoint. BCS will provide both read and write access between business applications and SharePoint 2010.

5.    Developing SharePoint Apps  

Improvements to the design tool SharePoint Designer means that developer will need to deal less with coding. Tighter integration between Visual Studio and SharePoint, and built-in support for Silverlight is a great improvement on its predecessor MOSS 2007.

Click here to find out how MSM Software can help you get a return on your SharePoint investment.

Do I need consent to use all cookies?

The only exception is if what you are doing is 'strictly necessary' for a service requested by the user. For example, you would not need to get consent for a cookie which is used to ensure that when a user of your site has chosen the goods they wish to buy and clicks the 'add to basket' or 'proceed to checkout' button, your site 'remembers' what they chose on a previous page.

The exception would not apply, for example, just because you have decided that your website is more attractive if you remember users' preferences or if you decide to use a cookie to collect statistical information about the use of your website.

What do I need to do now?

You should consider how you currently explain your policies on your use of cookies to users and make that information more prominent, particularly in the period immediately following implementation of the new Regulations. You must also think about giving people more details about what you do - perhaps a list of cookies used with a description of how they work - so that users can make an informed choice about what they will allow.

Practical Implementation - Our advice on the steps you should take

The UK Government has made it clear that enforcement action will not be taken until appropriate technical solutions are available.  The ICO plans to issue separate guidance on how it intends to enforce the new regulations and has indicated that in the meantime it expects institutions to be able to set out how they plan to achieve compliance.  We recommend a structured approach following the three steps below will help demonstrate that you are taking steps to change current practice to bring about compliance with the new laws.

1.    Audit your use of cookies

You should make a comprehensive audit of your website and check what data files are placed on user terminals and why. You should analyse which cookies are strictly necessary and might not need consent. This is a good opportunity to 'clean up' your web pages and stop using any cookies that are unnecessary or which have been superseded as your site has evolved.
 
2. Assess how intrusive your use of cookies is

It is useful to think of this in terms of a sliding scale, with privacy neutral cookies at one end of the scale and more intrusive uses of the technology at the other. You can then focus your efforts on achieving compliance appropriately providing more information and offering more detailed choices at the intrusive end of the scale.

3. Decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your circumstances.

We advise that the more directly the use of a cookie relates to the user's personal information, the more carefully you need to think about how you get consent. Providing information to users on the use of cookies is important, as is the ability to demonstrate you are reviewing the use of cookies and are developing a plan for compliance.

Browser Settings and Consent to Cookies

One of the suggestions in the new Directive is that the user's browser settings are a possible means to get user consent. It is the Information Commissioner's view that at present, most browser settings are not sophisticated enough to allow you to assume that the user has given their consent to allow your website to set a cookie. The government is currently working with the major browser manufacturers to establish which browser level solutions will be available and when. Once appropriate technical solutions have been developed the Information Commissioner is likely to produce further guidance.

We'll endeavour to keep you up-to-date with the latest news and developments in the coming months to ensure that you fully comply with the changes in legislation.

Legislation Reference

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 (PECR) came into force on the 26 May 2011 and the main aim of the legislation is to address issues of consent and privacy.

Further Information

Open letter on the UK implementation of Article 5(3) of the e-Privacy Directive on cookies
What do I need to do about the new rules on cookies? - ICO

The Awards are a platform for the IT profession to celebrate best practice, innovation and excellence in the UK.

Winner of IT Employer of the Year 

Congratulations to ZSL, Medallist for Environmental Project of the Year

The iBats system, developed for ZSL with MSM Software was highly commended by the judges as one of the top three Environmental projects of 2011. The award is presented to outstanding projects that employ technology to bring benefits to the environment. Read more about iBats.

We were finalists in several categories; one of our Technical Consultants, Mike Medland was up for Systems Professional of the Year, we were a finalist for Community Project of the Year for our work with the Prince's Trust and our client, ZSL was a finalist in the Environmental Project of the Year category for iBats. 

MSM Software hits gold again

We are delighted to have gained Microsoft gold competency for web development. This places us in the top 1% of Microsoft partners worldwide that have attained this outstanding degree of proficiency.

Our Microsoft Partnership means that our team have passed the latest Microsoft exams in writing bespoke web-based and Windows software and databases in Microsoft technologies, a new much more demanding achievement than the old Gold Certified Partner status.  We have prioritised achievement of the Gold level for web development as this is the skill our clients most commonly demand. 

Exam success for the MSM Software team

Well done to the MSM Software team who studied hard and passed the new set of Microsoft exams to ensure we achieved Gold competency for web development.

Four of our developers passed four exams this year to achieve the sought after MCPD .Net 4 web developer certification:

	Mike Medland, Technical Consultant, said; 'The technologies studied in the latest exams are sufficiently different to our previous standard applications, that anyone who has not undertaken this level of study will face a steep uphill struggle to get up to speed and become productive.'
	Jon Stace, our senior Principle Technical Consultant commented: 'Passing these exams results in gaining a number of Microsoft Certifications but the important one (and probably the more sought after) that allows us to upgrade our partnership status to gold is the 'Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) Web Developer 4' certification.'
	Rudi van der Heide, Lead Developer, said: 'Revising for the exams made me aware of many useful parts of .Net that I wouldn't otherwise have found. This will help me to provide feature-rich and maintainable websites to clients.
	Lee Chiswell, Technical Consultant, said 'Upgrading software is a natural part of its lifecycle and so keeping up to date with .NET is essential for Microsoft software developers.'

Other members of the MSM Software team are studying for Microsoft exams to ensure we continue to offer the latest knowledge and skills to deliver for our clients.

Customers blame vendors for software and systems that do not live up to expectations; and vendors and integrators blame clients for moving the goalposts.

It is all too easy to apportion blame, but what lessons can be learned, both from the outright failures and the projects that are not as successful as they might have been? Is it inevitable that large programming and integration projects go wrong or is it just that so many are badly managed? When they do go wrong, where are the identifiable points of failure?

Identifying these likely points of failure and taking appropriate actions at each stage can help turn potential failure into success.  And when a project starts to wobble, it is vital to know what actions can be taken to help nudge it back on track.

This whitepaper looks into the causes of software project failure, and the steps needed to be taken in order to put them right. Download the whitepaper below to discover: More about the results of the Computing survey on IT projects How to identify the potential points of failure in an IT project How to take appropriate actions at each stage of your IT project in order to turn potential failure into success

If you are currently looking at ways to prevent failure in your own software projects, then read this whitepaper to find out more.

Charity IT buyers are under considerable pressures; they often lack the budgets of private organisations, yet still must ensure the organisation's software enables efficient business processes.

For an IT purchasing decision to be most effective, it requires blended business and technology considerations. Return on Investment (ROI) is used to define the business value of an IT investment, and can enable third sector organisations to demonstrate business value and financial impact.

The provision of an accurate representation of the value of an IT investment, and demonstration of the level of ROI the charity can expect, how soon and how certain the return is, will in turn help secure buy-in for the purchase from the senior management team.

Project failures are all too common when delivering an IT project; the risk is particularly within the charity sector charities where decisions involving the investment of large sums of money can often be complex, touching many departments and donors and beneficiaries as well as employees. Decisions made therefore require very careful consideration, a significant amount of time and research.  We contend that all charities need to use ROI as a key tool in the project armoury, like businesses do.

So what are the key considerations for third sector organisations looking to ensure an ROI for their IT budget?

Writing a business case

To deliver full ROI for your IT budget, it's important to consider the business case and long term function within the organisation. Without this strategic view, charities will fail to reap the rewards of building efficiencies into day-to-day operations.

A project is driven by its business case, which provides the most important set of information for the project and drives decision-making to ensure it is aligned to the overall not-for-profit objectives. The business case defines the benefits expected, as well as an understanding of the costs and risks of the project, and outlines the return you are likely to get for your investment.

 A common oversight of many charities is to focus too heavily on cost. Greater emphasis should be put on ROI, as this will provide a better idea of whether the project represents value for money. In the long-term any business case should also be put into the context of the overall strategy and goals of the charity. Without this clarification of the organisational benefits a project is unlikely to gain approval from decision makers.

Investment appraisal

To deliver real ROI for the IT budget, an appraisal of the proposed investment should be conducted in advance. This will balance the development, operational, maintenance and support costs against the projected return that will be gained from the project over time. 

 Providing metrics by which the project can be judged to be successful is also important. This will illustrate the level of accountability that decision makers will be looking for. By setting a baseline - the 'do nothing' option, will give an understanding of the costs and benefits if the project is not undertaken. This can then be compared against the expected outcome if the project is completed.

Software Requirements Specification

Putting together a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is key to understanding the software requirement needed. It should detail the function and capability required from the new development or system and is essentially a blueprint of what will be needed in the future.

The SRS document should consider what the software is supposed to do, how it should perform, its interaction with people within the organisation, the system's hardware and other software.

Alongside this the SRS should prioritise requirements and ensure they are quantifiable and measurable. Subjective and intangible requests need to be carefully considered to ensure that the solution meets the objectives of the project, and is considered a success after launch.

Managing project risk

Risk is a major factor to be considered during any project, particularly within the third sector, where budget is tight and success is therefore of even greater importance. To deliver effective ROI for the IT budget it is crucial that risks are identified, controlled and contained.

 By implementing a consistent approach to managing risk, and putting into place a process to monitor them, the right balance of control can be maintained to deal with risks, and reduce a charity's exposure to them.

Top tips to ensure a ROI on IT budget

1. Planning is critical so charities should think carefully and plan every element, including how it will be used and who will use it.

2. Consider how IT software will improve employee or volunteer productivity, and if it will make processes more efficient and improve fund allocation to beneficiaries. This will enable a charity to clearly understand and demonstrate the IT project ROI.

3. With all IT projects, as many risks are non-technical as are technical. Because of this the introduction of IT software to employees needs careful consideration. For example, considering training one team at a time up to speed with its capabilities. To maximise ROI a strategy must be in place to encourage or force adoption of the new solution.

4. To maximise IT ROI a strategy must be in place at the outset to determine if the IT solution is a cost effective option for the charity and how it will impact on the bottom line long-term.

5. Consider the timeline for ROI. Correct planning and preparation is crucial to understanding at what stage the organisation can expect to see a return on its IT investment. This sets realistic expectations, allows changes to be made if expectations are not being delivered, and acts as a helpful reminder to actually evaluate ROI after the event, something which is all too often forgotten.

This article was published in Civil Society on 6 September 2011.

MSM Software has been shortlisted as a finalist for three awards at this year's prestigious British Computer Society 2011 UK IT Industry Awards. 

• Community Project of the Year 
• IT Employer of the Year
• Systems Professional of the Year                                                          

This is the second year running MSM Software entered the awards and we're delighted that, once again, we have been shortlisted for each category we entered - a testament to the commitment and hard work of the MSM team.

The BCS & Computing UK IT Industry Awards are a platform for the entire profession to celebrate best practice, innovation and excellence.

	Community Project of the Year This award is presented to the most outstanding project that employs technology to bring benefits to a deserving group or the wider community. MSM Software developed a cloud based centralised data solution using SharePoint for The Prince's Trust. Hazel Mosienko, deputy director of finance for The Prince's Trust said 'The solution provides us with an accurate overview of all the grants available, which has helped generate additional funding. This has helped The Prince's Trust to better fulfil our core objective - getting young people back into education, training and work. In short, the solution has revolutionised the way we work.'
	IT Employer of the Year MSM has been recognised by the British Computing Society as a great place to work; that values the role of IT and the professionalism of our team that provide and support it.
	Systems Professional of the Year - Mike Medland Our philosophy is to 'cherish our team and clients - alongside profitable growth.' We're delighted that as well as IT Employer of the Year, one of our Technical consultants, Mike Medland has been nominated for Systems Professional of the Year for his outstanding work over the year.

The winners will be announced at the prize-giving ceremony taking place on Thursday 10 November 2011 at Battersea Park Events Arena, London.

Soaring RDR implementation costs and potentially falling revenue streams are among the biggest concerns for advisers in this respect. many advisers have signalled their intention to leave the industry rather than meet the RDR proposals, with Ernst & Young predicting the number of IFA firms will decline by 10,000 one year after RDR implementation[1].

RDR is going to represent a challenge and there are IFAs still in denial about the difficult business model transition that is required, but there are many more that will treat the RDR as an opportunity, and as it doesn't come into effect until 2012, advisers do have the time to begin to prepare for the transition.

IFAs will also need to reassess their business models and appraise what products they sell. There should be clarity over which area the business wants to operate in, and this process must be change managed effectively. Under RDR, advisers will be remunerated under four different areas, which include; independent, restricted and basic advice and non-advised services.

This is where the technology comes in: without the right software systems to support these business processes, IFAs are likely to struggle to come to terms with meeting the RDR requirements.  In fact technology will become a key differentiator for adviser firms' survival post-RDR, as investment in technology becomes necessary to cut admin overheads and streamline manual business processing.

At the top of the agenda: technology

While it has always been beneficial for advisers to invest in technology to improve on the bottom line, I believe the importance of doing so now is critical to survival in the market. Technology should be seen as an enabler for IFAs to be compliant with RDR for live date, and also an opportunity to reassess business models and look to develop competitive advantage.

The solutions that will move financial adviser firms forward are those which go to the core of what the RDR is about, that is, the needs of the consumer.  Technology can enable new interactions for advisers and consumers, meeting their needs by turning financial planning into a collaborative process, an experience that will involve the adviser and client working interactively.

Customers now have a world of information at their fingertips and so subsequently demand advice at a moment's notice. There may also be an expectation to receive investment advice via mobile phone, and so IFAs need to be prepared to meet these demands. If an IFA can't help them, they'll serve themselves. 

Limited choice

For most IFAs, a reliance on the software systems owned by organisations who supply software on their behalf, is the norm.  This makes perfect financial sense - but can also create a number of problems, for example around data. 

IFAs are potentially accessing a number of systems for a number of different reasons.  If all these systems aren't sufficiently joined up, data becomes duplicated.  Without a 'single view of the customer' IFAs could be accessing inaccurate, out of date or inconsistent information, which not only prevents them from doing their job well, but hinders their ability to up sell or cross sell and offers the potential for non-compliance. 

Thinking outside the box

So how will IFAs need to invest in technology? IFAs will need to change the way they manage fees as they prepare to move away from commission. The technology would need to allow for greater reporting in line with FSA requirements on profit and loss, fees data, complaints data, supplementary product sales data, training and competence and threshold conditions - data will need to be uniform and managed to maintain consistency and so that it can be used and analysed intelligently.

Out-of-the-box solutions will not meet these   requirements and so IFAs will need to look towards bespoke database development to integrate legacy policy systems with new requirements, or consider outsourcing.

The benefit of investment in a bespoke solution is this that the software will be fit specifically for your individual requirements and budget. IFAs will also find that a bespoke product can be a more cost-effective solution to their technology - but only with the right supplier. At a time of change it is tempting to keep costs to a minimum, but the long term value is what it most important; deploying the wrong solution at the outset will only lead to great costs in the future.

Outsourcing might seem like a risky move, particularly in terms of an offshore supplier. The key to this will be choosing the supplier which is the right fit for your individual needs, understands your business and can provide support when it is needed. Costs can be kept in control through a fixed-price based contract. Utilising an outsourced team can enable the IFAs to focus on its core activities, while an instructed team of skilled professionals act as the 'IT arm' of the IFA.

Legacy systems - out with the old?

Currently, legacy systems and in many cases paper-based systems, are still being called on to do a job which is far more complex than that which they are designed to handle.  If intermediaries are to meet the RDR requirements, they will need to better exploit the capability that technology can offer, and must therefore reassess the systems currently being relied upon.

For those already working with a legacy system there are a number of choices available: re-write the system in a new technology, migrate to a packaged application, maintain the existing system for the foreseeable future or decommission the system.  All of the above will require investment and a strong business case.

Losing the Trail

IFAs should also be aware that once RDR comes into effect, it will not be possible to generate new trail commission entitlements. IFA advisers will however be allowed to continue to receive existing trail commission post-2012. Even if an advisory business is sold, the new rules will not prevent entitlements to trail commission from being transferred to the new firm.

A golden opportunity

The FSA has described the RDR as 'a golden opportunity to re-build the confidence and trust of consumers at a crucial time'[2]. Whether or not IFAs view the new regulations in this way, they need to take the opportunity to get their house in order. Overcoming the technological barriers that so many IFAs are still facing will not only help them to prepare for December 2012, but also enable them to exploit efficiencies across the business. 

Technology provides the ability to better respond to customer needs - to provide investment advice which reflects the consumer's changing appetite for risk, and in doing so improve business performance. The aims of the RDR are worthwhile - it's essentially about improving public trust through improving professionalism and clarity. Increased consumer confidence will lead to growth in the industry - which can only be a good thing.

Thought leadership by Thomas Coles, managing director at MSM Software

This article was originally published in Investment Adviser on 29 August 2011.

[1] FT Adviser

[2] http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/About/What/rdr/index.shtml