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Time is money for fee earners in the financial services industry. With the right hardware and software, companies can save a surprising amount of time, leaving your fee earners free to generate more income for your company.
Every company relies on the basic requirements of technology, i.e. security, confidentiality, speed, performance etc. On top of that, different industries have different technology needs. IT support for Financial Services Firms needs to deal mainly with case management platforms and tax platforms like CCH Axcess. The industry needs to be able to safely share large amounts of data in an environment where confidentiality is crucial.
When it comes to private equity, wealth management, hedge funds and investment, even fractions of seconds count. We have heard of one of the big investment houses that spent millions on the installation of its own fibre link to the New York Stock Exchange, just to get its information one-hundredth of a second before its competitors. It was worth it for them because that tiny time advantage has enabled the company to do much better business on the trading floor.
A closer look at the sums
Time is of the essence, but in most industries, chasing speed when it comes to IT is a bit of a fool’s errand. Not so in the financial services industry. With fractions of seconds, it could mean the difference between making and losing millions. Having technology that is fit for purpose is therefore vital, and even if your computers are taking a few minutes to boot up in the morning, your company will be losing money.
We have done some calculations about how a slower system can affect your bottom line, and the potential losses are shocking. What if, for instance, you are billing £200 for one fee earner’s time, yet the speed of your IT means they lose a minute’s earning capacity per day. That is £3.33 per minute, which does not sound too bad at all. However, if you have 50 fee earners all losing just one billable minute per day, your company will be out by £166 across the company. If, instead of one minute, your technology is slowing your 50 staff down by 10 minutes a day, that equates to £1,666. That’s £8,330 per working week, which adds up to a massive £433,160 per year!
Even if you upgrade just enough to regain one extra minute of billing time per day per fee earner, you will save £43,316 per year. Compare that to the cost of 50 workstations – around £30,000 – and you begin to realise the importance of keeping your IT system in good order. As we typically recommend you replace hardware every three years, the extra revenue would more than pay for the upgrade in year 1, and generate an extra £40-50k per year in years 2 and 3.This underlines the serious point that there’s a direct correlation between your IT performance and your ability to invoice for work done.
If you would like to find out more, contact us to discuss the services we offer.