The 3 Phase Evolution of Buy-Side Mobile Apps
First Published Tuesday, 13th December 2011 02:26 pm from Xand : pcurley
The opinions expressed by this blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone, this does not reflect the opinion of Automated Trader or any employee thereof. Automated Trader is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by this article.
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/>There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a
technological sea change as the world moves from an Internet that
was tethered to PCs, to a world where the Internet can be
accessed from anywhere, through a wide array of always-on
smartphones and tablets. We've all heard the impressive
statistics that support this trend with just over 400 million
smartphones expected to be sold globally in 2011, and Gartner
forecasting that the mobile web will grow to 1 billion
smartphones and 320 million tablets sold in 2015.
A Consumer-Driven Revolution
To
date this has been very much a consumer-driven revolution with
the vast majority of Apple's 1 billion monthly app downloads
being aimed at the consumer. This, however, is beginning to
change with more and more consumers demanding the convenience of
mobile devices and mobile apps inside the enterprise. We are now
seeing growing enterprise adoption with Apple reporting just this
week that 92% of Fortune 500 companies are either testing or
deploying the iPad. This is an astounding number especially since
the iPad product itself did not exist 2 years ago. Closer to
home, according to Good Technology, a firm that manages mobile
devices for large companies, financial services firms accounted
for almost half of all new iPad activations in the second quarter
of 2011.
So as this mobile app revolution
inexorably makes its way to the buy-side there are a number of
questions to be answered: How will buy-side mobile apps affect
the technology landscape? How will buy-side mobile apps change
the way people do their jobs? How will buy-side mobile apps allow
firms to better serve their clients?
Monolithic Management Systems Meet Buy-Side Mobile
Apps
Today, when we look at the applications
used by the buy-side we can see that it is still dominated by the
same trading, order management, and portfolio management systems,
that have been around for the last 20 years. It could be argued
that not much has changed. Buy-side employees are still spending
most of their day working with these large monolithic management
systems. Of course, there have been advances particularly in the
areas of trading, workflow, integration,
and Software-as-a-Service, but the components that make up the
software infrastructure of the buy-side have essentially remained
the same.
We believe that the arrival of
mobile apps to the buy-side will have a profound impact on the
buy-side's technology, employees, and ultimately the
way clients are serviced. This revolution is different than other
over-hyped technology fads because it is being driven by the
end-user rather than by some easily-ignored top-down management
dictum. Buy-side employees have already experienced the power of
mobile apps as consumers and will begin using them at work,
whether they are approved by their IT department or
not.
We see the impact of buy-side mobile apps
evolving in three distinct phases:
Phase 1
- View-Only Buy-Side Mobile Apps
Most of today's buy-side mobile apps build on
the anywhere capability of mobile devices and are strictly
view-only type offerings, that display the same data that users
see on their trading, order management, and portfolio management
systems. These research, P&L, and client information apps
augment the existing monolithic management systems and are many
times used by employees outside of work during commutes or client
visits. The apps are frequently designed to look like dashboards
with the ability to drill-down to more detailed information.
There are many examples out there but some of the most widely
used are Bloomberg Anywhere for iPad, Merlin's Compass for iPad,
and Fidelity's WealthCentral Android/iPhone Mobile
Apps.
Phase 2 - Action-Oriented
Buy-Side Mobile Apps
This phase goes beyond
the view-only capabilities of Phase 1 and allows the user to act
on the information presented by their mobile app. Users for
example may be alerted to a trading opportunity or a back-office
reconciliation issue that they can then immediately act-on, just
as if they were sitting in front of their office PC. Again this
phase really just serves to augment or duplicate the existing
monolithic management system functionality. Many of the
above-named firms are now in the process of releasing these newer
more action-oriented Phase 2 buy-side mobile apps.
Phase 3 - Proliferation of Buy-side Mobile
Apps/Decomposition of Monolithic Management Systems
The final phase is when mobile apps will really come
into their own and we will see them begin to replace rather than
just augment pieces of monolithic management systems. This phase
will produce buy-side mobile apps that combine the
anywhere/view-only nature of Phase 1, the action-oriented ability
of Phase 2, with other unique qualities that only mobile apps can
offer. A hint of this future is the StockTouch app
(www.stocktouch.com), that is powered by Xignite market data.
StockTouch uses the touchscreen interface of the iPhone and iPad
to bring to life a visualization of the stock market. Their
mobile app offers functionality that no traditional buy-side
application can emulate.
Over time we will see
a proliferation of these smaller buy-side mobile apps that focus
in on specific functionality. This will lead to a fragmented app
market just like in the consumer world. As users spend more and
more of their time using these mobile buy-side apps we will see
the monolithic management systems become less relevant,
ultimately leading to the their decomposition.
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