They say time is money, but during the holiday season, it’s more than that. Taking back your time during this period means more time to spend with family and friends, making memories, and recharging.
However, for many investment managers, the holiday season can also be stressful and full of anxiety. With benchmarks to meet, year-end reporting to complete, and investor reviews to conduct, finding time for yourself and your family can be difficult.
But it doesn't have to be this way. By leveraging the power of investment technology, you can take back your time and enjoy a more stress-free holiday season.
In this blog post, we'll explore some of the ways investment technology can help you optimize and automate your processes, free up your time to focus on what matters most and give you peace of mind about your firm’s operations so you and your team can enjoy your time away.
Co-sourcing and Outsourcing to Alleviate Resource Constraints
As you take time off to be with family and friends over the holidays, the last thing you want to worry about is whether that report was run or if those trades were reconciled.
Working with a co-sourced or outsourced provider can help manage these essential, routine daily and monthly processes so you can step away without stressing.
These types of resources can also be scaled up or down as needed to meet changing business demands. For example, you can enlist the help of your managed services provider to take on some of the operational burden experienced throughout the end of the year when resources may be stretched thin.
Working with an experienced outsourcing team also eliminates the key person risk associated with critical personnel being out of the office. This support ensures continuity in operations and protects the business from costly interruptions regardless of team time off.
Enlisting the help of a co-sourcing or outsourcing provider allows you and your team to better disconnect when you’re out of the office and improves efficiencies, freeing up more time for strategic initiatives.
Learn how one firm saves 4 to 5 hours each day with managed services.
Leverage Vendor Expertise to Optimize Systems and Workflows
Another way to free up time for you and your teams for the holidays and beyond is to ensure all systems and processes are optimized.
Start by ensuring you’re operating on the latest iteration of your technology. Once you’re up to date, check in to see what features or solutions have been released that you may have missed.
Now, you can begin strategizing how best to employ these tools to free up your firm’s time and resources.
However, when confronted with all these opportunities, it can be hard to know where to begin.
How can you ensure you’re adequately using all the resources available to you to achieve the most streamlined workflows possible?
Check with your vendor to see if they can conduct a workflow review.
Through this process, they should be able to identify workflows in need of optimization and propose the best course of action for configuring your system for maximum efficiency.
Engaging your vendor in this process can be doubly valuable. The representatives you work with likely have experience working with hundreds of other firms, consultants, and industry leaders. They’ve seen what works, and they know how to achieve it.
For Eze solutions, we have a service team dedicated to this process. Any client-first organization should be ready and willing to do what you need to optimize your workflows and take back your time.
By partnering with a trusted technology and service provider, firms can ensure that their systems and workflows are optimized to meet the challenges and opportunities of the holiday season and beyond as efficiently as possible.
Maximize Employee Effectiveness with AI and Automation
To take a meaningful, well-deserved break over the holidays, you must ensure that your time and attention are dedicated to the highest-impact tasks while in the office.
By leveraging AI and automation to streamline processes and reduce manual intervention, you can free up time and resources to focus on more strategic and higher-value tasks.
With these tools, you can automate routine tasks, such as:
- Data entry
- Reporting
- Low-touch trade orders
- Client onboarding
- Compliance checks
By taking these more manual, repetitive tasks off your plate, you can redirect your attention to more impactful activities, like generating returns, managing risk, and delivering positive client experiences.
This allows you to step away for well-deserved time off with the confidence that your work throughout the year made a meaningful contribution to the firm’s success.
Take a Break, Stay Connected with Mobile Access
The Harvard Business Review reports that statistically, taking more vacation time results in greater success at work. With this tie to performance, it is clear that it’s necessary for employees to take some time to unplug and recharge.
However, completely detaching from what’s going on at their firm can be anxiety-inducing for some and, for others, impossible.
Mobile access to your investment technology can give you peace of mind, as you can review and execute crucial investment activities with security and precision if you need to—no matter where you are.
The Eze app gives you the option to view a high-level, customized summary of your positions and performance and sort, filter, and reorganize your portfolio information to see what matters most.
If you need to take action while out of the office, preconfigured ‘quicksend’ buttons let you act on what you see, empowering you to execute the trades you want to when you need to directly from the Eze app.
Recent updates to the Eze app build on these features, giving you greater insights and the ability to act more efficiently if you need to check in when you are OOO: View and access all the fields available in the desktop version of your application, review and act on pre-trade compliance alerts remotely, and leverage more app real estate on-the-go with tablet access.
With mobile access to your investment technology, you can take time away from the office with the confidence that if an issue arises, you’re never far from the information and tools you need to keep your business on track.
Learn more about the Eze app or download the app for iPhone or Android.
Optimize Your Operations, Maximize Your Holiday
The holiday season should be a time for relaxation, celebration, and spending quality time with loved ones.
By leveraging investment technology to optimize and automate processes, you can free up time to focus on what matters most and ensure peace of mind about your firm's operations. Take back your time and ensure your firm is well-prepared for the holiday season and beyond.
From all of us at SS&C, we hope you and your team have a relaxing and enjoyable time off this holiday season.
