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Andrew Rafalaf
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INDATA Enhances Portfolio Modeling and Report Generating Features in IMS

Company seeks to provide IMS users with a more seamless integration of the system’s various functions.

INDATA is set to release version 5.1 of IMS, its front- to back-office investment management system, which includes enhanced functionality for portfolio modeling and report generation. Looking to provide for the needs of its clients, INDATA has sought to provide IMS users with a more seamless integration of the system’s various functions. Dave Csiki, vice president of sales and marketing, explains that INDATA has found that portfolio managers are using IMS less for its trading functionality and more for its portfolio-modeling and pre-allocation capabilities. The next step, as the firm saw it, was to provide these money managers with integrated analytical functions in the IMS front end. Typically, portfolio managers would have to go out to a separate system for more complex portfolio-modeling and performance-attribution capabilities, and then re-enter that data into IMS. Now, with Intelligent Portfolio Modeling integrated in the IMS Paramount for Managers module, users will have a single interface for both portfolio management and trading.

"The reason we’ve been able to do this is because we have typically done all this in our back-office performance system, and since we use one single SQL database for the entire suite, we’ve been able to integrate these functions into one system," explains Csiki. "Performance has always been our strong suit, and now we're making it available to the people who need it directly within the application."

The vendor is also providing an enhanced report-generating system in version 5.1. With some portfolio management systems, the manager is required to use a separate report-writing system, which requires uploading the portfolio information. IMS feeds the proper data into a number of pre-defined reports, which can then be parsed automatically and sent to the proper clients via fax or e-mail, or posted to the firm’s Web site.

"A lot of systems allow you to dump all the reports out to the Web site, but we’ve gone beyond that by providing a customized reporting function," Csiki explains. "An institutional client is going to have different needs than a high net-worth client, and is going to want to see the information in different ways. The next step is to be able to paginate those reports and then also to be able to put them together into meaningful client statements for the many different types of clients."

As a certified Microsoft developer, INDATA relied on Access as its report-generating engine. "Using Access, we have given the user the ability to create totally customized client statements based on different reports that are contained within the system," he adds. "You can conceivably have customized output for each client, which is obviously going to enhance your client services."

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