Governance is top issue for S'pore data professionals: survey

Governance is top issue for S'pore data professionals: survey

OF the risk, compliance and data specialists across three cities, those in Singapore appear the most sold on data governance being vitally important in the enterprise data management world.

They were among 200 professionals of this field, including their counterparts from Hong Kong and Sydney, polled recently by Bloomberg; the financial software, data and media company had hosted them at the recent Enterprise Solutions (ES17) Summits held in the three cities.

More than 40 per cent of the Singapore respondents - the highest number among respondents from the three cities - said they expect new technologies, such as web and cloud-based data or quant (quantitative) analysis tools to be the most significant drivers of change this year.

Gurkan Tasoren, Bloomberg Asia-Pacific's head of Enterprise Solutions, said a third of the Singapore respondents said that their companies will be devoting resources to organising data this year, given the vast amounts they consume from disparate sources.

Another third said their companies will focus on distributing data across the enterprise so that it can be used as a strategic asset, all the way from the front-end to the back office.

Speaking to The Business Times, Mr Tasoren said: "Data was referred by some as the new crude oil for the digital economy; governance is defined as the processes surrounding the monitoring and control of internal and external data usage."

He added that in today's data-driven world, data consumption is expected to rise, driven by regulation, business growth, increased automation, risk management, compliance and cost.

"Financial institutions are re-examining their data-management practices to ensure transparency, compliance, accessibility and security. Technology plays a critical role in alleviating the pain points of that process, which in turn can help drive profitability and mitigate risk."

Financial data management has evolved in the last few years. He noted that traditionally, financial-sector data management had focused on standard data needs for day-to-day risk management.

"The tremendous growth of financial data has meant that firms have needed to find ways to acquire, distribute and utilise data.

"The rise of quant-driven strategies is the next-generation trade that follows from high-frequency trading. This drives the demand for quality, event-driven news feeds and quant-data products as the industry looks to monetise the availability of data, which in turn bolsters the need for quant-tools solutions in managing the data."

Mr Tasoren said that, despite significant focus by Singaporean enterprises on integrating, connecting, analysing and distributing data, the cost of this exercise was a concern. In fact, more than a third of respondents cited this as 2017's biggest challenge.

This only points to the need for efficient platforms that can ease cost and profitability pressures.

The Bloomberg official added that users also expressed concern with data duplication and consistency, especially around data acquisition, a task which is typically not as coordinated across the department or the whole company.

"This could result in inconsistent usage, where the various departments could be utilising disparate sets of data, which leads to misalignment.

"We see a trend towards maintaining master-data content which is cleansed prior to distribution and usage, so the firm's users can access it with confidence. For example, we see a trend in clients looking to create master sets of historical data across data points of volatility."

There is a need to have proper processes in place to ensure that all the data that firms are consuming from disparate sources are of the "highest quality, and are collected, reported, stored, retrieved and processed in a timely and efficient manner", he said.

"It is not just about whether the systems companies have in place can meet their current needs; it is vital that firms implement technological solutions that can scale according to a continued increase in data consumption."

Once data is organised and distributed efficiently, "having a secured managed service that can store and archive the data, and enable information analytics and trade reconstruction across the enterprise, now or seven years later, is also an important piece of the puzzle".

Mr Tasoren added that optimising the data supply chain is becoming key for enterprises in Singapore and in Asia, with regulatory requirements and cost pressures. Firms that acquire, organise, distribute and utilise high-quality data will have a competitive advantage.


This article was first published on Apr 13, 2017.
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