Microsoft Integrates Turrets

The platform brings together all front-, middle- and back-office activity into a single view of the customer, providing insight into a customer's trading positions across the various product silos and enabling firms to cross-sell additional suitable products, according to officials.

"The overall vision of the Institutional Client Platform is to try to enable all people in financial institutions who touch the customer to have visibility of what the customers are doing," explains Ian Warford, director of securities and capital markets at Microsoft EMEA. By having a single view of the customers across different product silos, firms can find out, for example, how often they trade different products, how profitable they are and classify them according to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid) requirements, he adds.

Today's launch phase of Microsoft ICP focuses on distribution and includes the following services: client on-boarding, event management, customer relationship management (CRM), client classification, client analytics and integrated communications, say officials. Microsoft officials plan to expand the service to areas such as trading services, post-trade services, middle-office and prime brokerage services, as well as the operations department, adds Warford.

The new offering utilizes Microsoft Dynamics for its CRM capabilities; Microsoft Office Communications Server for the integration of communications, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server; Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007; the Live Search application programming interface (API) and Microsoft SQL Server for client analytics functionality. The customizable platform can be used as a service and can be integrated into a firm's legacy systems , says Warford.

Microsoft has worked with a number of financial services technology providers in the six months it took to develop ICP. GaleForce Solutions, a provider of CRM software, provides support in the CRM area; Information Management Group (IMGroup), a provider of end-to-end business intelligence, data warehousing and collaborative solutions, is responsible for client analytics functionality; turret and networking services provider IPC is responsible for the integration of the communication infrastructure; and financial services technology applications developer Lab49 is responsible for the delivery, integration and customization of the platform for ICP customers.

The different components are tight up in a front end, explains Vivake Gupta, founder and managing director of Lab49. "The user doesn't know that with that piece of technology they are dealing with three, four or five different technologies," he says. The off-the-shelf software is easily integrated because it is part of the Windows environment, adds Microsoft's Warford.

"We've taken our software and embeded it into the Microsoft platform so, for example, if traders want to make a phone call they go into their customer record, into the ICP, click on a button and, instantly, there's a phone call," explains Colin Silvester, director of product management at IPC.

Over the last 18 months, the financial services industry has been focusing on collaboration and productivity, says Silvester.

The first implementation of ICP went live in September 2007 at London-headquartered agency brokerage Execution Ltd. Microsoft is initially focusing on the European market and plans to target the U.S. and other markets, says Warford, declining to reveal other customer names.