Cognito Europe
- Investment banks demand integrated, meaningful experiences from technology products
- Single-dealer platforms (SDPs) adopt new user experience (UX) visual displays to drive competitive advantage
LONDON – 31st July 2014 – New research from GreySpark Partners, a London-based capital markets consultancy, examines the evolving role of UX design as a competitive differentiator in the design of SDP trading systems. This comes at a time that investment bank clients demand UX to be a prerequisite to the systems that they use. The report, UX and Software Development in Banking, is published in partnership with London-based UX consultancy, Tobias & Tobias.
From 2000, SDPs began to transition from trade execution systems through a period of technological advancement by 2006 and into a period of user-centric design starting in 2011. By 2014, SDP user-centric principles are characterised by three factors: being increasingly multi-asset; supporting cross-trade lifecycle functionality; and ease of use. Ease of use emerged when banks began to apply stronger UX design principles to the development of their platforms to make them more similar to retail e-commerce platforms.
Looking ahead, increased productivity, convenience and value creation will become the competitive factors in SDPs within capital markets investment banking, and clients will increasingly expect to have access to their investment data at the time of and in the form of their choosing. In the long term, GreySpark and Tobias & Tobias believe that better SDP UX design will go on to actually alter e-trading activities as client demands for platform functionality are increasingly addressed in the initial stages of design and progressively in-depth throughout the process of SDP development.
The key findings in the report are based on the experience of both GreySpark and Tobias & Tobias working with the clients of Tier I and Tier II banks to build SDPs that are e-commerce tools – technology solutions for complex business problems and a user interface for a trading system. This report also presents crucial components for strong user design in the context of banking: strategy, concept, structure, information, interaction and sensory application. When correctly adhered to and utilised, these parts can create desirable tools that improve user performance within a system, transforming the overall business processes of an institution.
Frederic Ponzo, GreySpark managing partner said: “Frequently, in recent interviews with the buyside users of SDPs, we hear that intuitive and comprehensive workflow is one of the differentiators between banking platforms. The reliability, learnability, usability and simplicity of a system directly impact a user’s ability to perform their job.”
Ofer Deshe, Tobias & Tobias COO, added: “To stay at least within the competitive curve, banks must take up UX practices now. User expectations of the systems, applications and devices required at work are directly influenced by the constellation of digital products and services used in their personal lives for everything from shopping to gaming..”
The report sees the synthesis of GreySpark’s strategy advisory, project management, software development and business analysis experience with Tobias & Tobias’ UX consulting experience to examine and expound best practices when implementing UX design into SDP development
For further information on GreySpark’s research, please e-mail: press@greyspark.com
