Data Management Services - Managed Data Research Services

What is it?

Our managed data research services provide our clients with the precise information needed to support their existing business processes.  Built on a legacy of cleansing and enhancing reference data and engineering optimized processes, managed data research services serves as a custom option vs. buying additional data feeds or licensing new information tools.

How does it work?

To understand how it works, here are examples of how firms have approached us.

“I want to send you 500 requests a month and have you follow these 8 steps and then send me back the resulting information.”

“We have 10,000 client records; can you keep the data up to date?”

“Our database is a mess.  We’ve added new securities to our database for eight years but we never maintained it.  Can you find all of the duplicates?”

We begin by working with the client to determine the exact information needs, validate the data sources, and develop a process specifically designed to produce the level of detail and quality necessary for any given data need.  Since we began outsourced data research work in 2003, we have developed hundreds of proprietary data research processes and sources that support large financial institutions and global audit firms from around the world that we leverage in new services.  Additionally, we leverage our suite of Data Management Software to execute the processes, manage the workflow and maintain quality control.  Finally, our inclusive services include building a new information solution; complete staffing of the operation from analysts to execute the processes, managers to manage the results, and engineers to modify and optimize the process and software.

Our research organization is located in Ames, Iowa, adjacent to the Iowa State University (ISU) campus.  We leverage our relationship with the University to help staff our research organization, allowing us to staff to specific needs, including dual language skills for language-specific research when necessary.  Additionally, this on-shore facility allows us to provide high quality work at costs that rival off-shore outsourcing, but without the headaches associated with off-shore management.  We occupy a flexible facility to support scalable, compartmentalized data research work. 

Because each clients’ needs are different, we are flexible in the services we offer.  However, most of the research is reference data related, pertaining to customer data, account data, client/counterparty data, and often, financial instrument data. 

Specific processes we use regularly as a part of our managed data research services are:

Corporate Hierarchies

Expanding one entity or an existing corporate family tree into all available subsidiaries and parents, configurable down to 50% ownership, 20% ownership, or less than 20% ownership

Data Cleansing

Performing a series of comparisons within a data set and across multiple data sets to identify and remediate errors and duplication

Data Augmentation

Adding additional attributes to a record to make it more useful for the client

Data Validation

Performing a series of comparisons within a data set and across multiple data sets to identify information and research to determine the accuracy of specific fields of a database

Risk Management Conflicts of Interest

Researching global entities to confirm specific information related to their ownership structure, locations, and accuracy of system data and applying client-specific rules to determine if a conflict of interest exits

Exception Resolution

Determining the appropriate resolution follow-on business rules based upon an automated procedure throwing an exception

Business Process Outsourcing

Refining and following procedures to manage data or execute manual, repetitive processes

Who uses it?

Data produced by our research staff is used by a wide variety of companies, from global audit organizations to private brokerage or legal firms.  Our ability to process a range of data operations allows us to be utilized by any company for their data needs.  Currently our data is primarily used by global audit firms in their offices around the world, and by clients in the financial markets here in the U.S. 

How will it impact your business?

All business decisions carry risk.  Making business decisions based solely on publicly available data vendors, sold to everyone and updated only as the vendor is made aware of changes is risky.  Augmenting that data with currently researched and validated data reduces those risks.  Whether it is research to fill gaps in vendor-delivered data, or researching for current data, our Managed Research Services are exactly the kinds of things necessary to differentiate your risk from those of others.
Import of data from data vendors inevitably results in gaps and aged information – information latency and inaccuracies which will invariably increase your risk and could damage your business.