Opposite Day – yaD etisoppO

Opposite Day is an unofficial holiday observed each year by doing things in the opposite way than is normal. To celebrate the holiday, you might have breakfast for dinner, speak backwards, or wear your clothes back-to-front. While the origin of Opposite Day seems to be based on a children’s game, it can provide an opportunity for improving operations by walking through processes from end to the beginning.

In the category of performance measurement, for example, the desired result is the accurate calculation and reporting of portfolio performance. Among the antecedent practices whose inputs affect this result are:

6. Proactive review of performance anomalies in advance of month-end
5. Completeness of each accounting transaction record, including receive/deliver transactions
4. Timeliness and completeness of pricing and corporate action data
3. Interim management of portfolio drift from model (where applicable)
2. Assignment of indexes to portfolios, accounts, and strategies
1. Assignment of investor accounts to properly designated strategies or models

Similarly, model implementation teams wishing to ensure that model subscribers maintain reasonably equivalent holdings can think backward about in-situ practices for:

6. Consistent model application across all distribution partners
5. Delivery and / or receipt of model change affirmations and confirmations
4. Alignment of model change decision-making and communication tools
3. Initial affirmation of distribution destinations
2. Establishment of model subscriber rulesets
1. Initial model set-up parameters

The Archer platform’s interconnected functionality unifies all layers of portfolio transactions and calculations to provide a single-source view of investment accounts and firmwide activity. And because of this interconnection, each step along the operations continuum impacts the end result. Ultimately, this interconnection of data across the investment management process simplifies operations. And, when operations practices are well aligned with data inflection points, consistently achieving defect-free results becomes routine.

So, go ahead and celebrate Opposite Day! Start with the end in mind and you just may improve the accuracy and efficiency of your investment management operations.