Tier 1 Investment Bank - Automated Research Document Production System - Document Management News

The client is a Tier 1 Investment Bank and one of the largest investment banks in the world, with over 81,000 employees and some 2,000 branches in 72 countries offering financial products and services for corporate and institutional clients along with private banking and business services.

The bank's market research division provides investment research services to clients and institutions around the world - a process that requires the generation of high frequency, high volume reports, available both electronically and as hard copy. Many of the Bank Research products contain large amounts of equity and investment market data, including charts and tables. The document production system provides automated document building through Microsoft Word automation.

Both the bank and their technology outsource partner partnered with Ballard Chalmers to assist in the redesign of the document build processes. Although both had considerable in-house expertise, neither had the specialist consultancy and best-practice implementation expertise that Ballard Chalmers was able to provide. BC specialist consultants reviewed the document build process and the in-hand implementation of Office 2007 and identified a number of areas where the adoption of industry best-practice processes, enhancements and refinements would streamline productivity, reduce document build time, and improve flexibility, stability and performance.

Working against tight deadlines, the specialists undertook a thorough evaluation of the immediate and long-term objectives of the bank's redesign of its document build processes and Microsoft Office upgrade, following up its recommendations by assisting the in-house IT teams in:

• Rationalisation of the various document styles and structure to encourage content reuse
• Redesign of the automated document build process utilising Microsoft Open XML SDK in order to achieve reduced document build times and increased document build flexibility
• Providing hands on technical guidance for the internal Microsoft .NET developers

Ballard Chalmers also produced a detailed report that provided recommendations for future enhancements to improve the reporting system's performance, stability and flexibility.

Microsoft Word continues to be the choice for research publishing as it provides the business-critical balance between usability and flexibility. Introducing Open XML to the automated build process can also reduce the need for heavy Microsoft Office automation, increasing stability and flexibility.

To find out more about custom management systems developed on the Microsoft Application Platform, please email us or please call Daniel Jones on 01342 410223.

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