Vendor selection

Vendor selection is a business critical as well as career defining challenge with many caveats. Praeceptio provides advisory on pre-scoping, scoring and assessment of functional, technical and commercial requirements for RFI/RFP processes, tailored to individual business needs and processes. After the initial shortlisting we provide guidance on orchestrating proof-of-concept sessions as well as establishing an objective baseline for comparison of vendor solutions encompassing functional requirements, technical requirements, as well as vendor competencies.

Operating model review

The operating model is the blueprint that defines the how, when and why an organisation is capable of creating the value it does. Sometimes the operating model has become fragmented due to legacy processes as well as (for the lack of a better word) “this is how we have always conducted our business”. Observing the key elements of the as-is state Praeceptio conducts a thorough analysis of the operating model, identifying areas where processes can be optimised without endangering what differentiates the model towards the fierce competition.

Usability health check

Trading floors are flooded with a myriad of systems. The systems deployed are typically business critical and contributing significantly to the operating cost. Sometimes systems are causing massive frustrations towards the end user and ultimately causing churn – both business wise and on human capital. We conduct what is referred to as a “floorwalk” where we collect information from the various business units and the daily usage of systems. We combine this with an assessment of production systems, how they perform (from an end users perspective) and advise on actionable tasks to potentially improve the situation. Sometimes the remedy involves IT infrastructure, sometimes implementation issues and sometimes its just bad habits or lack of end user training.

Implementation & upgrade advisory

Implementation and upgrade projects are some of the biggest drains on overall budgets. We provide on-the-ground advisory to mitigate common mistakes within such projects and to identify issues regarding insufficient competencies, scope creeping and opportunistic vendor licensing.

Regulatory compliance

We offer advisory on current and upcoming regulatory changes and requirements and support clients in creating roadmaps for adapting to regulatory changes and the impact they have on business processes and system requirements.

Current regulatory focus:

• BCBS/IOSCO
  
• SFTR
  
• FRTB
  
• IBOR Market reform

Calypso practice

We offer core Calypso consultancy on the following areas/modules:

• Pricing environments
  Derived market data, product implementation/Pricer configuration
• Frontoffice tools
  Frontoffice Workstation, Securities Finance Workstation, Pricing Sheet, Standard trade capture screens, Risk & PnL
• Middleoffice
  MtM and sensitivity views, Liquidity views, Official PnL
• Treasury
  
• Portfolio Workstation
  
• Collateral management
  Legal agreements, Collateral agreements / haircut schedules, Triparty
• Backoffice
  Workflows, Task station
• Regulatory
  FRTB (SA-MR), SFTR, IBOR transition