Feb 5th 2010
Elina's "Broking IT & Network Challenges" event was attended by the CIOs and IT Teams of some of the top broking houses in India, Anand Rathi, India Infoline, Angel Broking, Nirmal Bang, JRG Securities, and other mid-size firms.
Living up to its title, "Broking IT & Network Challenges", participants realized that many of their biggest problems were shared by the entire broking fraternity. Rima Srivastava, CTO of Way2Wealth remarked "The real learning for us is that the challenges we face everyday are not unique to our environment, and that there are solutions we can try." Sandeep Chandaliya, Director ANMI West Chapter, and Director Crown Securities, had a set of sobering statistics for the brokers. With declining income from broking due to competition, and challenges in surviving downturns due to their high fixed costs, Broking houses must expand their reach beyond the current tiny portion of retail equity investors. When China was adding 1 million broking accounts a month, India was adding just 1 million accounts a year.
Sandeep's talk also effectively reset the expectation of the broader broking community from their IT teams. With his background as an ACA and with his post-graduate degree in Securities Law, Sandeep had a customer's insight into what he wanted the Broking CIOs and IT teams to deliver. His calls for creating integrated software platforms, reducing broking downtime, reducing network downtime, reducing misuse of Internet at branches, creating uniform network setup at all branches, integrated real-time risk management systems, and the high costs of implement IT, were very well received.
Anand Rathi group CTO, Bhavesh Shah spoke about how they chose and implemented the Elina solution across their 185 branches. With a set of 17 requirements, which included network security (firewall, antivirus, VPN), robust connectivity (policy based routing, load-balancing, auto-failover) and management features (remote management, network, system monitoring, bandwidth graphs, centralized management) and integrated trading aggregator application, Anand Rathi ran a 4 month PoC where they tested stringently for a match with each of their requirements.
Bhavesh said, "After initial hiccups, the system has been performing very well for us. What is really important for any technology solution is end-user acceptance, and the Elina solution has been well accepted at our branches. Branch personnel can now easily check status, monitor services, and stop worrying about the network downtime."
Having been Elina's customer since mid-2008, Bhavesh added, "Elina has acted more like a partner to us than a vendor. Even though they initially knew little about broking, they had seriousness and took ownership, delivering an innovative and sound solution for our scenarios."
Elina CTO, Vivek Shenoy, shared his thought on "Technology solutions for trading networks". As a counter-point to Sandeep's challenge on IT cost, he observed "Elina's solution costs less than a bottle of beer a day, and has a very low capex component, keeping Broking houses lean and flexible during downturns and growing fast during upticks".
Starting with the oft-quoted management premise, "You can manage only what you measure", Vivek challenged the audience to use the Elina solution to measure their downtime and network status. The CIOs could then use the data to objectively fix their problems, instead of basing their decisions on best estimates which may not be accurate.
Overall, the event served as a platform for Broking CIOs and IT teams to evaluate their challenges against those of their peers. With insight from the customer side of the table, and the technology solutions that can help mitigate these issues, CIOs and IT teams should rise to meet these challenges.
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