For many years, enterprise systems have been used successfully by a wide range of industrial companies to integrate their production, inventory, order management, distribution and financial reporting process challenges. Dramatically new levels of integration, efficiency, and control have been realized. In fact, for many organizations, an enterprise system is a prerequisite to remaining globally competitive.

Enterprise systems have been slower to penetrate the world of financial services, particularly the wholesale side of the industry. We, at Centerprise, believe this is primarily due to two factors: 1) capital market services are a materially different kind of business than the manufacturing of physical goods—thus, it is not easy to move systems laterally from one to the other; and 2) the diversity and complexity of financial products and the processes and systems that support them make enterprise integration a challenging goal.

Increased system and product complexity within financial services firms have had a direct and adverse impact on both costs and controls. Typically, control weaknesses and risks tend to rise proportionately (if not exponentially) with the number of a firm's systems and disparate functions. In particular, problems arise wherever system interfaces are numerous, poor, or nonexistent. Spreadsheet solutions used to provide daily aggregated views of balance sheet, daily P&L and risk summaries inevitably are symptomatic of fundamental cost inefficiencies and control gaps.

State-of-the-art workflow and process management functionality is threaded throughout our system to tie the various domains more closely together. CenterSphere thus becomes a framework that tightens the control gaps that typically occur between various front office, risk management, and control functions.

CenterSphere is also designed to provide your clients, partners, suppliers, and external auditors with system access rights that can be granted and customized by role of user, subject matter and data type. Combined with our integrated content services through our data and analytic model partners, this leads to a solution that efficiently extends beyond the boundaries of your organization.

We encourage you to take a close look at CenterSphere and investigate its potential for streamlining your systems and processes—and thereby simultaneously strengthening your controls and reducing operating costs.

With CenterSphere, the benefits of enterprise systems are now achievable for capital market organizations.