Investment banks

For investment banks, the largest roadblock to profitability is a lack of predictability, accountability and visibility in regard to company performance. This comes from fragmented or siloed information that resides in disparate databases across the company. These silos of information have created blind spots that hinder decision-making and visibility at investment banks around the world.
IBM Cognos software unites data and provides a framework for performance management at your organization. With reports, scorecards, dashboards, analytics, plans, budgets and more you can:

• Identify, analyze and enhance customer, product and channel profitability.
• Quickly and effectively manage risk and turn compliance into competitive advantage.
• Demonstrate quality of execution and implement best practice client servicing.
• Identify processing bottlenecks and inefficiencies to squeeze costs out of the business.
• Understand and compete in new global markets.
• Analyze staffing and workforce issues.
• Exploit research to measure and capture increased order flow.
• Implement best practices for the consumption and dissemination of information to stakeholders worldwide.

With IBM Cognos software you get the business intelligence and planning software you need to:
Streamline corporate governance and risk management:

• Manage risk across the organization to deliver enterprise risk reporting to support a broad range of reporting requirements from a central, consistent source.
• Undertake “what-if” analysis to identify best use of capital, both on the basis of product and customer profitability and in the wider context of the customer relationship across the business as a whole.
• Implement best practices for fraud identification, asset liability management, rapid depreciation detection and a host of other risk factors.
• Analyze enterprise risk patterns, model risk events and proactively alert managers and senior executives to pre-determined risk events or breaches.
• Respond to external key influencers, such as rating agencies and supervisors, to ensure a lower cost of capital.

Insure brokerage efficiency:

• Identify, report on and analyze bottlenecks and cost excesses throughout trade execution—from the dealing room to settlement and allocation.
• Improve efficiency of front, middle and back-office functions by monitoring processes by trade type, instrument, market and asset classes.
• Take efficiency lessons learned into new markets.
• Accurately manage trade performance and total cost of trade.
• Provide the tools to demonstrate your execution capability to your clients in a dynamic and highly secure manner.
• Quantify the effectiveness of brokers, asset managers, partners and brokerage services provided.

Maximize research services:

• Correlate, report on and analyze the association between research services provided and the brokerage they generate.
• Automate the measurement of order flow by soft and bundled services in order to minimize hidden fixed costs.
• Measure and assess the profits generated by research and events.
• Model alternative mechanisms and new business models to finance the research function, or subsidize the production costs.
• Report and display research effectiveness to clients.
• Assign fair market value to research and commissions by contrasting it according to value received on the buy-side.