[ S U R V E Y
|
E X E C U T I O N
M A N A G E M E N T
S Y S T E M S ]
Figure 1: Overall Scores
Aspect of Service
Weighted Average Score
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Reliability and Availability 5.86 5.95 5.93 5.92 5.91
Latency 5.33 5.57 5.69 5.62 5.62
Client Service Personnel 5.52 5.49 5.58 5.53 5.53
Ease-of-Use 5.58 5.54 5.60 5.54 5.53
Handling of New Versions/Releases 5.01 5.18 5.26 5.19 5.29
Breadth of Broker Algorithms 5.45 5.70 5.59 5.62 5.85
Timeliness of Updates for Broker Changes 5.12 5.29 5.48 5.42 5.50
FIX Capabilities 5.32 5.75 5.72 5.78 5.86
Breadth of Asset Class Coverage 5.11 5.15 5.35 5.45 5.52
Breadth of Direct Connections to Venues 5.14 5.30 5.41 5.54 5.65
Product Development 4.80 4.92 5.21 4.98 5.15
Ease of Integration to Internal Systems 4.78 5.45 5.36 5.35 5.40
Overall Cost of Operation 5.13 5.35 5.33 5.24 5.48
of responses to this year’s survey came from traders
or head traders, as shown in Figure 2, accounting for
60.7% of submissions; hardly surprising given this
group are the primary users of the system. There were
fewer responses from portfolio managers or C-level
executives this year compared to 2017, possibly due to
attention being diverted towards compliance obliga-
tions.
When it comes to the most important features of
an EMS, consistency is the name of the game, with
the majority of features considered by respondents
maintaining similar numbers to those recorded in
last year’s survey. Respondents were asked to cite
four of their most important features relating to EMS
functionality. The most noticeable movement was a
10.2% decrease in respondents citing connectivity with
internal systems as one of the most important features,
perhaps due to the increasing sophistication of tech-
nology interoperability, or because systems have been
in place for long enough to have truly bedded in to the
technology infrastructure.
There were two new features included for review in
this year’s survey – ease of use and integration with
OMS (order management systems) – for respondents
to consider. Ease of use was clearly the most important
Figure 2: Respondent Profile
Job Title
% of Total Responses
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
Head of Trading 23.6 22.9 18.6 18.1 21.1
Trader 35.0 35.6 37.7 40.7 39.6
CEO, CRO, CTO 16.6 13.6 10.2 11.7 10.7
Portfolio Manager 8.9 9.3 9.8 13.5 11.5
Other (Technology, Operations,
Support) 15.9 18.6 23.7 15.9 17.0
element for respondents, with 70.1% selecting it as a
crucial element, indicating that trading desk personnel
just want to work with systems that work.
Meanwhile, just under 30% of respondents said
integration with OMS was a key feature, although due
to the burgeoning trend for integrated order and ex-
ecution management systems that can offer a holistic
workflow, it is hard to gauge the significance of this
result – it may simply be those firms using separate
Issue 57 // TheTradeNews.com // 67