Data Automation Solution
In the summer of 2002, a major mutual fund company issued an RFP for a mutual fund data automation system. This organization was spending five man-weeks every month collecting spreadsheet and PDF based data from various sources and hand-coding it into formats suitable for their database facilities. The goal of the RFP was to find a vendor capable of automating this extremely diverse flow of information.

Because this situation is not atypical within the financial services sector, Synthesis was already equipped with an appropriate and extensive set of tools capable of importing such raw data as XML, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, CSV files, database .tar and .bk files, webpages, e-mails, and third party feeds (i.e., Vestec, Bysis, StateStreet, Lipper, Morningstar, FundStation).

The solution Synthesis deployed to support this project is currently handling more than 35 source files in Excel format, plus e-mail and website data feeds. Each month, the client provides the source data file-set to the Synthesis team and, within a few hours, 100% of the data is loaded, validated, and ready for client review.

Once checked, the system batch-builds the data files particular to the website database and transfers the data in a ready-to-load format to the website database team. The results of this SPA implementation are a 70% reduction in client labor and a 50- 60% improvement in time to market for the data.