The Rise of Workflow Automation on the Capital Markets Desktop

By Reena Raichura, Director, Head of Product Solutions, Glue42

In the past, when the capital markets industry talked about workflow automation, the assumption was that this was back-end process automation. However, with the rise of desktop integration platforms and interoperability this assumption has dissolved away and in 2022 we are now seeing an emergence for workflow automation on the capital markets desktop and specifically in the front office as firms realise the business value of this type of technology.

There are a number of key factors that are influencing the demand for workflow automation:

No Application is an Island

For years, there has been a complete mismatch between the way we have been developing applications and the way that end-users work. Users care about data and workflows to get their jobs done not applications. And they work across multiple applications. Yet for years our design thinking for the desktop has been centered around building applications in isolation which has meant that none of the applications have been made to talk to each other. This means users have to swivel-chair between their applications to access the data they need to make critical business decisions. Not only is this inefficient in a mission-critical environment such as front office trading but this type of design thinking doesn’t work for the digital age. Users want the type of effortless and frictionless experiences they have on their cell phones to be translated to their trading desktops.

The Emergence of NicheTechs

Digitisation has also seen the emergence of niche Fintechs coming to the market to fill the gaps in tools and data sets that firms now demand to stay competitive. This has led to further information fragmentation on the desktop and an even greater need to automate workflows and build seamless holistic integration so that users get the data they need at the point they need it. Essentially, we are seeing a massive push for data-driven desktops.

Effectiveness as well as Efficiency

When desktop integration platforms first came to the market, they were seen as a nice-to-have by the business to increase efficiency and save time by eliminating low-value tasks such as copying and pasting and rekeying the same data across multiple applications. While this remains the first step of what interoperability and workflow automation does, what the business has now realised is the positive impact this has had on the effectiveness of their sales, research, and trading teams. For example, just stitching up an OEMS with a pre-trade analytics platform enables traders to get the market impact of an order or basket in a single-click and that may cause them to trade differently. During a busy market, if that workflow is not automated, they may miss these insights and trade adversely. With the business benefits of desktop interoperability becoming apparent across the front office and beyond, this is also snowballing the demand for workflow automation.

The need for a Guiding Light

One of the biggest challenges to workflow automation is our current design thinking for the desktop and specifically with vendors.

While some vendors have embraced desktop interoperability and workflow automation, others are reluctant to ‘open up’ and still see a competitive threat if they do so. The result is a mixture of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ applications and even those that are ‘open’ only support basic workflow automation since they have not been designed with this in mind.

The problem is a typical capital markets desktop is made up of a mixture of in-house and 3rd party applications and this will only continue as firms reject the traditional build versus buy for something more blended to create a best of breed platform of choice. This means seamless workflow integration becomes essential for end-users and vendors need to be on board.

What we’ve now reached is a crossroads, a tipping point. The demand for workflow automation is outstripping supply and therefore a fresh approach is needed to push desktop interoperability firmly into the future.

Step in Straight-Through Workflows (STW)™…

Inspired by what Straight-Through Processing had done for equities trading and FIX in the 90s, Glue42 introduced the concept of Straight-Through Workflows™ (STW) to serve as a guiding light for the financial services community to come together and solve the desktop interop challenge properly.

In its literal form, Straight-Through Workflows™ is about allowing data to flow electronically and seamlessly from one application to others regardless of the underlying application technologies, on the desktop. However, it’s much bigger than that. Straight-Through Workflows™ is a momentous shift in design thinking for the desktop. It’s about blurring the boundaries of applications and looking at the desktop holistically by analysing end-to-end business processes, workflows, and user journeys first before designing an underlying solution. The result is a solution that matches the needs of end users, has significant business impact, and creates the type of seamless workflow experiences that the business is demanding.

There are a number of factors that are crucial to the success of STW:

1. A Shift in Mindset – Both in-house and vendor product teams must shift their mindsets and start seeing their applications as part of a larger ecosystem rather than islands.
2. Open API Economy – Vendors need to open up, embrace collaboration and provide rich workflow-centric, desktop integration ready APIs or fully embed desktop integration platforms to meet the needs of the business and end users.
3. Desktop Messaging Standardisation – The continuing development of the FDC3 standard will be important here, but we need to bring business experts into the discussions and adopt a workflow-led design approach to accelerate standardisation.
4. Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration – Collaboration is the ultimate key to success and particularly between business and technology teams and vendors.

The good news is that since it’s introduction, STW has had a profound impact on the community. The seed has been sown and this is generating more interest than ever before from both vendors and clients alike.

In today’s digital world, an application’s value increases by the workflows, data, and platforms it can be part of. Therefore, I fully expect workflow automation to continue growing in momentum with STW and desktop integration become a vital part of every digital transformation programme.