Business Support Team

Bridging the gap between End Users and System Capabilities

Is your business equipped to implement changes? A lot of organisations using investment management systems believe they are, but do they have the right skillsets in-house to actually analyse, design, and implement them without external support?

It is no secret that most organisations using investment management systems experience a knowledge gap between their business functions and the underlying software capabilities. This gap requires someone to assist in translating the industry language used by end users and the system-specific capabilities of the product.

This is not intended as a negative aspect but merely a fact. End users working in an investment management system are responsible for the daily operational tasks required within their given business function. They know these tasks well, but when it comes to changes and enhancements to existing business processes, they often come up short. This is because they lack the in-depth system knowledge required to analyse, design, and implement the changes.

IT is often called upon and expected to handle such requests. However, the reality is that IT resources tend to be highly technically skilled staff who focus more on integration between systems, accessing the backend via SQL, maintaining databases, infrastructure, and services. Like functional business end users, they often lack the in-depth system knowledge to make the required—and not least correct—changes to the configuration of the system.

Therefore, clients tend to revert to the system vendor for assistance. This includes not only analysing and determining how a given business request should be resolved but also implementing the changes and enhancements. While this approach gets the business over the line, it often leaves end users not much wiser and no better placed to handle similar requests in the future. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it can be expensive and does not make the organisation self-reliant. Rather than improving the ability to enable change, it is often seen as an obstacle, both from a monetary and timeline perspective.

What is the alternative?

The question to answer is what alternative organisations can consider to make themselves more self-reliant going forward. This would enable them to investigate and resolve most common day-to-day issues and business requests in what is often considered a complex system.

In my experience, the establishment of a business support team is essential. This team bridges the divide between operational business users and system capabilities, enabling change and providing a first line of support. The gap between client and vendor support is substantially diminished.

As the name suggests, the business support team is responsible for supporting the functional business teams in their day-to-day operational running of the system. This ensures the organisation is continuously getting the most out of the system. They investigate and resolve questions and requests raised internally. Anything they are unable to solve is qualified by the team before requesting assistance from the vendor. The team generally reports to the operational business part of the organisation rather than IT but maintains a dotted line as they work closely together in supporting the technical aspects of the daily maintenance and running of the system.

The linking within the organisation is illustrated in the diagram below.

Key Responsibilities of the Business Support Team

Examples of key responsibilities we see the business support team cover include:

• Daily business (BAU) support of end users, including IT where possible.

• Enhancements to business workflows, such as optimising workflows, developing new reports, extracts, imports, etc.

• Business development on a larger scale, including adding a new product/instrument, onboarding a new manager mandate, and integrating with a new custodian or data provider.

• Functional testing as part of system upgrades.

• Acting as a direct point of contact and liaison with the system vendor support desk and services subscribed to.

  
  

Team Composition and Competencies Required

The size and composition of the business support team depend on both the size of the organisation and its usage of the investment management system. The more business functions in use, the wider range of competencies required, and the more staff are generally needed.

We have seen teams ranging from 2-3 up to 8-12 business analysts to cover all functional competencies of the system. It is important to point out that you should be looking for people with a business analyst mindset rather than generic operational staff. You need someone who is inquisitive, willing to learn a new system, and not afraid to think outside the box. They should possess technical capabilities, enabling them to dissect a request, issue, or problem into smaller pieces and assemble the pieces of the puzzle to deliver optimal solutions to practical problems.

While some degree of business knowledge is obviously required and implied here, the point I am trying to make is that it is more important to find a candidate with a curious and analytical mindset. This is much harder to teach compared to any missing components of financial theory.

If you are starting from scratch, it is advisable to move a couple of SMEs from the business functions into the team as its core spine. This will help bridge the initial business knowledge gap, at least temporarily. This ensures the team has a head start in understanding existing business processes and workflows. Experience also shows it is favourable to match experienced SMEs with younger business analysts who have open minds, are adaptable to change, and are not afraid to take on new challenges. They tend to become knowledgeable quickly, adding value as they easily absorb and take on system knowledge.

Depending on size and complexity, establishing a business support team requires significant effort and buy-in from higher-ups to be successful. The time to reach a self-reliant stage can range from a couple of months for a small/simple setup to a year or possibly more for a large/complex usage of the application.

While establishing this requires an initial investment, a well-executed implementation can yield substantial long-term benefits for the organisation and its operations.

Value Adding to the Organisation

Having a well-functioning business support team in place drives continuous change, improvement, and optimisation within the organisation. It helps businesses increase their return on investments in several ways.

Firstly, by bringing forward backlogs and new initiatives. Secondly, by eliminating the need for workarounds, thereby possibly reducing headcount. Most importantly, it facilitates change.

With the right blend of business analysts complementing each other across system, business, and industry knowledge and experience, there are always projects underway—small or large—that will positively affect the team. They can witness firsthand small projects being executed, improving their sense of contribution and satisfaction in seeing projects through from start to finish. This creates loyal employees with energy, which rubs off on the business and organisation as a whole. Their business knowledge continues to grow with the projects, as does their efficiency. Management's trust in project timelines and execution capabilities is likely enhanced, along with improvements in budget accuracy.

How Can Dimensional Community Help?

Dimensional Community has worked with many clients globally using investment management systems. Our experience shows that organisations with a business support function in place, along the lines of the above, tend to be more self-reliant and adaptable to change compared to those without. We have observed a significant reduction in time to market for implementing changes, as well as reduced overall costs in the long term.

We assist in the process of establishing such a team. We provide advice on team size, composition, and competencies depending on the organisation's size and usage of the system. We help document business processes, write guidelines, and create FAQ documents for daily use by the team and when onboarding new staff. We also help train the team to meet the individual needs of each business function.

We offer a flexible approach, being onsite alongside team members during the early stages of the process when establishing the team. This ensures they build the required system knowledge and understand the business processes they support. Later on, we transition to a hybrid (partly or fully remote) model, providing ad-hoc guidance and support when needed. We also provide guidance and assistance on how to qualify defects and what should be provided when raising them with the vendor support desk. This ensures the issue is easily understood by the vendor, a process you can see in action in this client testimonial.

If you have questions or would like to discuss this in more detail, please get in touch with our team.