We understand that our Back Office Support Solution (BOSS) for post-trade management is only as good as our customers say it is. We therefore recently sat down with one of our first clients, Rosemary Heaphy from Concept Capital, to understand her experience with BOSS and how BOSS is bringing value to her company:
What were you using for post-trade management before BOSS?
Prior to using BOSS, we used an outside vendor. It was okay, but not very flexible. It was also very expensive. Anytime there was a change required, we had to go outside to a third party, and there was always a lot of red tape to get things updated. It was more of a stock product, and it wasn’t tailored to suit our business. For instance, when we started, we didn’t do foreign currency commissions and international trades. When we wanted to add that on, they pushed back and told us they could not handle foreign currency trades instead of adapting to meet our needs.
Before that, we used an external vendor that was just a reporting system, which was no where near what BOSS is because it wasn’t web-based. It did the job and was a good basic commission package, but you couldn’t log on from different locations and view it. Because we were growing to new locations, that was one thing that made us want to move to a different vendor because with the old system, you basically had to deal with hard copies and PDFs.
What led you to look into BOSS as a solution?
They really understand the dynamic nature of the business. They were a company that was flexible and not afraid to make the changes that we needed, which was a big plus. The cost was also a factor—almost half of what we were paying before.
What was it like to get started?
It was pretty seamless. There was a lot of testing and fine-tuning, but there was never a point where we flew out of control or couldn’t do our work. We ran parallel with the old system while we set up the initial coding of all the accounts and got the feeds from the different custodians. The beauty of BOSS is that every morning, we can do a reconciliation of BOSS to the custodians, so we would know if there is a problem on day one.
Can you name the top three ways BOSS makes your life easier?
First would be Broker Payouts, which is a monthly function. We have so many brokers and have to get payroll done within a week; and we wouldn’t be able to do it without a system like BOSS. We would be doing it in Excel. Now, the brokers can log on and look at their commissions daily, so it is not a big fire drill at month’s end when payroll comes around. We don’t have a big staff here and with BOSS, we are really able to do a lot with little staffing.
Next would have to be Soft$ reporting, which is a daily function. With BOSS, now all of our clients can log on remotely and post their payment requests and get their reports directly. Previously, I was doing that in Excel and emailing them reports. BOSS especially helps with the compliance end of Soft$. Now, there is an approval process where I go in and approve each request, and my senior manager goes in and approves the invoice, The person responsible for actually making the payment also has access, and you can track the invoicing, the status and the balances. The auditors were in here, the SEC, and we didn’t have any issues with it.
Last would be the reconciliations, which is daily and month end. The daily reconciliation gives us comfort that the numbers are correct, through gross commissions to the calculations on the payouts and the soft$ credits. So it’s twofold—BOSS enables us to make sure the numbers are flowing in correctly and then that the final calculations are accurate as well.
How satisfied are you with BOSS?
Very satisfied.
We hope this has been helpful in understanding how our clients are using the BOSS platform to streamline and increase efficiency of their post-trade management process. To learn more about BOSS, you can watch our brief introductory video here.
