OpenLink/Maven Wave Partners Survey Found Technology Architecture and...

Open Link Financial, Inc. ("OpenLink"), a leading provider of cross-asset trading, risk management and operations processing software, today released the results of a survey conducted in conjunction with Maven Wave Partners, a strategy, process, and technology consulting solutions firm. The survey participants were senior operations professionals at investment firms involved in OTC derivatives valuations focused on valuations best practices, and how firms are trying to build transparency into their enterprise processes.

A majority of respondents (52%) indicated that the biggest hurdles to implementing valuations best practices were data and technology architecture. The breakdown of their responses to this issue was as follows:
    Technology Architecture (27.0%)    Data (24.3%)    Derivative Instrument/Product Complexity (21.6%)    Manual Operations (17.6%)    Regulatory Uncertainty (9.5%)

"The survey responses are congruent with what we are seeing in the industry. Firms are trying to adapt their management of both vanilla and exotic derivatives products in a market that is becoming increasingly regulated and complex," said Eric Gulbrandsen, Managing Director, Financial Services Practice, Maven Wave Partners. Mr. Gulbrandsen added that, “Firms are already implementing the known industry changes in the short-term, while actively interpreting and planning for the long-term changes.”

Other key findings highlighted the factors which were motivating firms to improve their valuations processes, with 45% stating compliance with industry best practices, 17% noted regulation, 26% said pressure from internal/external stakeholders, and 12% of respondents were driven in response to adverse events.

"These survey responses viewed together paint a picture of how firms must balance their appetite for more sophisticated and complex derivatives products, while managing the associated valuations and operational process challenges these trades present throughout the transaction lifecycle," said Ken Knowles, EVP, Financial and Risk Solutions, OpenLink. Mr. Knowles went on to comment, “Best practices for many firms will require a framework to manage multiple data sources for all aspects of their operations, trading and risk management, consolidated through a consistent enterprise technology vision.”

The survey was conducted at an OpenLink sponsored webinar entitled: Perspectives on OTC Derivatives Valuations Risks & Impacts. The webinar was designed for senior operations professionals at investment firms who were looking to understand the challenges around OTC derivatives valuations, including risks and impacts, and explored how firms can improve the valuations process and manage technology challenges to achieve more consistent pricing and reference data. To learn more about the webinar and OpenLink’s solutions for OTC derivatives valuations, please visit: http://www.olf.com.

About OpenLink

Founded in 1992, OpenLink is a provider of cross-asset trading, risk management, related operations processing and portfolio management software solutions for the commodity, energy and financial services markets globally.

OpenLink's client base of more than 350 customers worldwide includes 12 of the top 25 largest commodity and energy companies by market capitalization, eight of the largest financial institutions and 11 of the largest central banks, as well as major hedge funds, commodities companies and public utilities.

Headquartered on Long Island, New York and with offices in New York City, Houston, London, Berlin, Vienna, São Paulo, Sydney, Singapore, Moscow and Toronto, OpenLink has more than 900 employees worldwide.

Maven Wave Partners provides management consulting, technology leadership, and outsourcing services to companies seeking exceptional business advancement through transformation.

Creating and capitalizing on business change demands a Fusion-PoweredSM blend of strategic insight, management depth, and technology leadership. Our team has completed engagements for over 100 clients to produce over $1 billion in improved results across a range of industries.

Maven Wave’s Financial Services Practice provides full-service consulting to a wide range of retail and institutional financial firms. Our Financial Services Practice brings extensive consulting experience to firms in banking, consumer credit, insurance, asset management, investment banking, capital markets, hedge fund, proprietary trading and exchange markets. Maven Wave’s consultants are seasoned professionals with experience in leading complex and critical engagements for the world’s leading financial services firms.

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New 2011 Requirements Management Survey Now Open for Software...

Jama Software, the leader in collaborative requirements management solutions, and Ravenflow, a leading provider of visual requirements definition software, today announced that the 2011 State of Requirements Management Survey is now open for input. The survey will help create a benchmark study on the state of requirements management and identify the latest trends and strategies for managing requirements effectively and delivering better software.

Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/stateofrequirements
Learn more: http://www.jamasoftware.com/news-resources/state_rm_2011.php

“We are pleased to join Ravenflow and sponsor the second edition of the Requirements Management industry survey that allows practitioners to share their insights and experiences on managing software requirements,” said Eric Winquist, CEO of Jama Software. “As application development continues to become more complex, iterative and collaborative, the role of requirements management has evolved into a central point of quality assurance and innovation. This latest survey will shed light on the challenges and progress associated with the practice of requirements management to enable organizations to innovate faster, respond to change and delivery on commitments.”

The 20-question survey is open for input from now until Dec. 10, 2010. The survey data will be published in a report and live webinar available in January 2011. This is the second edition of the survey, with the initial research conducted in 2008. A copy of the original 2008 report: The State of Requirements Management, can be downloaded for free at:
http://www.jamasoftware.com/media/documents/State_of_RM_2008.pdf

“This requirements management survey is a great opportunity for a wide range of stakeholders, from product executives and project managers to business analysts, QA specialists and developers, to contribute to the continued improvement of software innovation,” said Susan Boers, president and CEO of Ravenflow. “We look forward to sharing the results of the survey with the software community as we collectively advance the practice of requirements definition and management.”

About Ravenflow
Ravenflow is the leading provider of visual requirements definition software that allows companies to gain better insight, clarity, and quality in their process improvement and application development projects. Leveraging a uniquely business-driven and process-based approach, Ravenflow transforms requirements definition by empowering business analysts to rapidly produce clear specifications of their business process workflows, business use cases, and business application needs. Ravenflow recently was named the fastest growing company in the requirements market, received the 2010 IBM Rational Jazz Innovator Finalist Award, 2009 Jolt Productivity Award, the 2009 IBM Rational ISV Partner of the Year Award, and was selected as a Gartner "Cool Vendor in Application Development." For more information, visit http://www.ravenflow.com

About Jama Software
Jama Software is the leader in collaborative requirements management solutions for improving enterprise collaboration and managing complex software development projects. Its Web application, Jama Contour, helps organizations manage the entire requirements management lifecycle through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that brings people, teams and ideas together to ensure software value is delivered as specified. Customers, from start-ups to the largest and most sophisticated technology and IT organizations in the world, turn to Jama to help drive innovation, improve the decision-making process and harness the collective genius of all stakeholders involved in building great software. For more information please visit http://www.jamasoftware.com

Media Contact:
Christie Denniston
Catapult PR-IR
Office: 303-581-7760, ext. 13
Mobile: 303-827-5164
cdenniston (at) catapultpr-ir.com

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How Email and Social Media Changed Our Lives -- The Complete Survey...

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 11, 2010

A new survey report released today, The New New Inbox--How Email and Social Media Changed Our Lives, by Pierre Khawand, founder and CEO of People-OnTheGo reveals that the overwhelming majority of workers today are struggling to keep up with an overload of email while grappling with the enormous challenge of monitoring and using Social Media. The use of Social Media is largely for personal reasons. Businesses have not yet harnessed the use of Social Media and employees are still using rudimentary tools.

According to the survey of more than 1000 business professionals, workers are spending more than half of their working day (4.45 hours) on corporate and personal email while also monitoring a wide range of Social Media. The majority of respondents (67.6%) said they monitor multiple inboxes on a daily basis. Email and social media also take up a huge amount of time -- 65.8% of participants reported interrupting their work constantly or too often just to check their inboxes.

However, only 18.2% responded that they have a clear strategy for dealing with their inboxes while the remaining 81.8% have little or no strategy for dealing with email or social media monitoring.

"These forces bring incredible challenges...but also tremendous opportunities," says Khawand. "With all the excitement about these channels of communication we are now suffering from serious challenges that are leaving our workforce scattered and dis-oriented, and shrinking the bottom line. However, the next generation of professionals and managers will redefine the tools, channels, platforms that we use to communicate."

As Khawand explains, inboxes were once solely used for internal corporate email. With the advent of the Internet, the "New" inbox connected workers externally beyond their offices and made email the dominant communication tool. Today, the "New" New Inbox includes e-mail and social media feeds together. This inbox brings exciting new opportunities and some rather unique challenges as well.

Some of the key findings revealed by The New New Inbox Survey include:

Email Outweighs Social Media by 3 to 1 -- Business professionals spend an average of 3.27 hours per day on e-mail and 1.18 hours on social media. Personal and corporate email dominate, followed by Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter has not gained as much traction among those surveyed, except for Generation Y users who use Twitter more so than others.

Social Media is on the Rise but is Widely Misused -- The majority of the survey participants (71.8%) use social media for both work and personal reasons. Social media seems to have significantly reduced the divide between what is work and what is personal, and enabled, or even encouraged, personal and business networks to merge during and after work hours. Use of social media in the workplace is developing rapidly with 58.5% of the survey participants checking Facebook regularly, 47.9% checking LinkedIn regularly, 22.6% checking Twitter, and 21.9% reading blogs. Younger generations lead the pack in their use of social media with Gen Y spending an average of 1.8 hours per day on it, compared to 1.21 hours for Gen X, 1 hour for Baby Boomers, and 0.59 hour for Seniors.

There are High Costs and Risks for HR and IT but also Opportunities -- The majority of participants (67.6%) monitor multiple inboxes. 40.6% of the participants believe that they could use significant improvement while 59.4% believe that they are managing and leveraging these inboxes reasonably well. There are tremendous consequences to this development on all fronts. For HR and IT departments, these platforms bring a myriad of risks that need to be managed while at the same time they bring unprecedented opportunities for reaching the workforce, educating and influencing their behavior. Pamela Evans, Director of Executive Programs at NetApp, suggested that companies need to "conduct training on the various communication platforms and educate the workplace on how to leverage those platforms effectively--both social media and email which can increase and expand communications pathways within a company."

The New New Inbox survey also includes information on what can be done to make better use of email and social media going forward including putting in place clear guidelines and educational programs relating to the use of e-mail and social media in the workplace, Declaring social media as an important initiative and formalizing the social media effort and seeking improved tools and technologies that can help streamline inboxes.

More than 1000 business professionals participated in the survey. The largest segment (49.7% of the participants) from organizations with 1000 or more employees, followed by participants from organizations with less than 1000 employees (28% of the participants), and then independent consultants and contractors (22.3% of the participants). The participants represented a broad range of industries. In terms of their functional areas within the organization, professional services, administrative, and marketing were the largest segments, followed by top management, product development, and sales. In terms of the generations, Gen X and Baby Boomers were the largest segments. See more about the survey and Pierre Khawand here http://www.people-onthego.com/

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