New report: financial services firms can cut costs, better manage risk using Mashups

Staff Writers
Monday, 02 February 2009 15:48

IT Industry - Market

A new report released today by the Aite Group has found that the financial services industry could cut costs and better manage risk by using Mashups to coordinate myriad business processes.

According to the report, with Mashups - described by Wikipedia as a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool - employees can improve labor-intensive manual processes by putting business processes and reports on-line in just minutes.

The December 2008 report, called "The Case for Mashups in Capital Markets," claims Mashup technology can support many top objectives in risk management, as well as multiple business processes deemed too small for a full-blown technology project. Although many firms will face budget constraints in the coming year, Aite Group predicts firms will spend $35 million on Mashup technology in 2009.

The Aite report says Mashups make it easy to combine multiple content sources and processes into a new, single view – all without writing any code – and can help tackle the backlog of applications that IT will never be able to build due to lack of time or funds.

Aite surveyed senior technology executives at 13 major capital market firms worldwide, with the report estimating that paper and e-mail accounted for 60 percent of the coordinated processes between business units in capital markets.

Adam Honoré, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of the report, said “this signifies tremendous potential for more streamlined processes. Moving business processes from paper or e-mail into a Mashup improves productivity and provides accountability and traceability as well as a means to measure and fix bottlenecks.

"In addition to better communication across departments, firms can use Mashups to simplify credit services, account openings, data management, research and many other areas in which small process improvements can reduce operational risk and cut costs by creating time efficiencies. Firms would be wise to explore this underutilised process improvement tool."

The report says that Serena Software, a U.S. firm profiled in the report, "has been working with engineering teams for more than 25 years to help automate and govern business processes. Leveraging that experience, Serena created a lean business process management (BPM) platform that uses Mashups technology to improve business processes and extend Web services infrastructures.”

It’s claimed in the report that “unlike traditional BPM, which relies on professional application developers and IT operations, these Mashups can be easily developed and rapidly deployed by business analysts.”