Visualization Tools Opening Eyes
Firms look to tame unruly data with graphic presentations
April 21, 2008
Wall Street is swimming in data--good news for providers of data visualization software who are seeking to help firms better and more quickly understand a sea of information that is only getting deeper.
Vendors that specialize in the area, along with giants like Google and Microsoft Corp., who are relatively new on the scene, are capitalizing on the vast quantity of real-time data that traders and portfolio managers must review and process on a daily basis. Thanks in part to the proliferation of visually sophisticated consumer Web sites--YouTube is often cited--technology providers are seeing increased interest in graphically rich business intelligence tools.
Among the sought-after systems are state-of-the-art, interactive visualization products that let users--often without assistance from IT staff--view data in colorful, easy-to-comprehend presentations, enabling them to more quickly identify significant shifts, patterns, anomalies and investment opportunities.
"It's well known that your brain is able to process information in a visual format much faster than any other way of learning," explained Brian O'Keefe, director of product management at Stockholm-based visualization software provider Panopticon, which was founded in 1999 by sales traders at Swedish brokerage firm Brunswick Direct who had been grappling with the challenge of tracking thousands of investment instruments in over 30 markets every day.
Panopticon, which was spun off in 2002, counts Citigroup, Deutsche Bank's DWS Investment mutual fund business, Fortis and JP Morgan Chase & Co. as clients and is partnered with data providers Bloomberg and Reuters. According to O'Keefe, "many professional traders and portfolio managers are only now starting to realize that if you hook up data to visual applications, it allows you to get a heck of a lot more value out of all that data."
Heightened volatility and shifting markets have spurred interest in visualization tools, noted O'Keefe, because they help managers see and understand their risk exposures far faster. "Using our tools, they can take timely action based on clear, informed views of the risk associated with their holdings across large numbers and instruments and portfolios," he said. "No one has time to wait for reports anymore; the market is changing too quickly." Panopticon reports a 400 percent increase in inquiries and requests for proposals over the past six months, with a corresponding increase in sales.
"Traders are starting to use new visualization capabilities as a way to intuit more data more quickly, particularly when they have to analyze a great deal of real-time information over the course of the day," said Vivake Gupta, co-founder and managing director of London- and New York-based Lab49, which works with investment banks and hedge funds to build applications to improve workflow. The consultancy often uses Microsoft Corp. development tools such as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight 2, the latest iteration of its plug-in technology for rich multimedia applications.
More Receptive Audience
In the past, say vendors, daunting training times and integration challenges stalled adoption, but firms are now more receptive to the efficiency benefits.
"At least three tier-one investment banks have launched user experience assessment teams in the last six months which will include an assessment of the trading desk's visual capabilities," Gupta said. "Similarly, on the buy side we are seeing growing interest in new trading systems that have significant visualization capabilities already built into them." Lab49's advanced data visualization practice, launched about a year ago, has been responsible for nearly a third of the company's growth over the past six months, according to Gupta.
