Innovation in Analytics
Andrew Philbrick, StatPro, Development Director,
Analytics
The end of September marks an important milestone for the
Analytics Development team, which sees the last of our version 5
series (StatPro Performance & Attribution 5.60) going into Beta
release. The version 5 series of our product suite was launched in
2007, under the "animal" brands and characterized by fully flexible
analysis across our Performance, Attribution, GIPS (Composites),
Portfolio Control and Risk product line in new Microsoft .NET
architecture. The version 5 series has proven a key driver for our
clients in achieving accurate and unified analysis across any
investment style coupled with a unified reporting platform in the
form of StatPro Interactive.
As the version 5 series comes to a close, we are innovating once
again with Version 7, so named to roll up our Composites V5 and V6
product range into a single Version 7 merging the best technology
and functionality. If unification of analysis and reporting
characterized V5, unification of experience will characterize
Version 7. Our architecture team has employed leading-edge design
patterns to build an Analytics Portal wherein our entire
product range sits and works seamlessly together, supported by
shared services such as:
- Messaging to inform the user and the StatPro
support team of events that occur both online and
during batch processing;
- Views to save any analysis or reporting
configuration set up across any of the products;
- Security to allow a single point of entry and
entitlement across the product line;
- Feature innovations, for example Instant
Reporting whereby an existing analysis defined on screen
can render a report instantly with no additional setup
Innovation extends beyond product development; on the process
side the development team has implemented a global Application
Lifecycle Management system and the agile development process.
Agile development promotes collaboration, velocity and the
completion of working software as early as possible in the
development cycle. Implemented correctly the agile process focuses
the entire team on the most business-critical issue at hand,
ensuring it translates into a working solution for clients before
the second priority is tackled. Increased velocity and product
quality occur naturally as half-done tasks stop hindering future
development and technical debt is minimized.
At StatPro becoming truly agile has allowed the development team
to double its work rate and ensure that at all times we are able
ship the system in development. For Version 7 this will provide
more frequent, less pervasive enhancements to our product line,
meaning far less disruption during upgrades and much earlier
availability of new features to our clients.
Previous
Next
