Janus Capital Group Strengthens Workflows, Reporting and Access to Information
Janus Capital Group 151 Detroit St. Denver, CO 80206
SIZE OF FIRM:
$148.5 billion in assets under management as of Dec. 31, 2005.
PREVIOUS POSITIONS:
Kroh Brothers Real Estate, telecommunications engineer; McGraw Hill/S&P, telecommunications and database manager; ConferTech International, product management/project director.
EDUCATION:
B.S. in information systems from University of Phoenix.
WHO WAS YOUR MENTOR?
Tim Hudner, the former CTO at Janus, with whom I worked for six years. He had a great mind for strategy and running a professional technology organization.
WHAT WORK EXPERIENCE HAS HAD THE MOST LASTING IMPRESSION ON YOUR CAREER?
Early in my career, there was a lot of downsizing, then we were in hypergrowth mode in the late '90s, and now we're in a settling-out phase. These experiences have taught me about having to retool and keep things going at the same time.
Top 3 Current Projects
Management Reporting Solution
Objective:
Build financial metrics and reporting systems to streamline access to information that supports critical decision making across the firm. The focus now is on building infrastructure and designing actual reports with push-button functionality to decrease manual operations.
Improve Investment Operations
Objective:
Strengthen our control of compliance as well as create an exception-based environment that increases automation, eliminating redundant data entry and maintenance. Last year, we were in the early stages; now we're in the implementation phase of streamlining two trade order management systems and two accounting systems into one system.
CRM Upgrade and Replacement
Objective:
Lower TCO while increasing flexibility. Our current CRM software will be retired by the first quarter of 2007. We are evaluating new platforms now and expect to be up and running by then.
2007 Initiatives
Enterprise Software Applications
We are looking into enterprise software applications to provide improved collaboration, document management and workflow. There also will be work to optimize our current ERP environment. Because of the amount of "bolt-on" application integration we have done with off-the-shelf solutions into our SAP environment, we will be looking to reduce complexity.
Virtualization
Evaluating virtualization opportunities for desktop computing, server environments and storage management for increasing economies on many fronts.
Compliance and Transparency
As a result of the investments in management reporting, we will be looking to leverage that build-out for 22c-2 compliance and gaining greater third-party transparency.
Vitals
IT Budget:
IT expenses are 8 percent of Janus' total revenue; new investments in technology constitute 3 percent of total revenue.
Key Technology Management:
- Alan Findley, VP, Business Applications,
- Mike Wade, VP, Technology Architecture, Integration and Security,
- Steve Flores, AVP, IT Operations
Size of Technology Team:
140 employees.
Percent of IT Projects Outsourced:
20 percent to 30 percent.
Key Technology Partners:
DST for shareholder record keeping, SAP for enterprise software, EMC for storage infrastructure, Hewlett-Packard for server environment and laptops, and Sapient for consulting around e-commerce applications.
Success Metrics:
The key is how well the technology investment achieves the stated value and objectives. We conduct an audit process six to 12 months after the project has gone live to evaluate achievements post-implementation.
Would your firm consider partnering with other IM firms?
We're always looking to ... provide the right solutions and value for investors.
One of the biggest challenges in the industry is that the inflows of assets are more concentrated in the intermediary channel and less so in direct retail. What that implies is having to work more with other firms to get transactional information and activity associated with the funds and tie it back into our overall assets and flows. We need to be able to better exchange information with the intermediary channel in a way that minimizes the complexity of the environment. We don't have any standardization of that data today in the industry.
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