Interop.io, the leading interoperability provider for the finance industry, today released its desktop interoperability maturity model.
The framework helps capital markets participants, wealth managers, and the broader ecosystem assess and progress desktop interoperability through workflow and UI integration.
For end users, the model defines a clear pathway to optimising business processes, uncovering data-driven insights, and reducing operational risk to be more effective in their day-to-day roles.
Developers can expect to reduce development, testing, and release times by 50%, as demonstrated by teams following the model.
The roadmap to interop success comes with a lexicon to spark industry debate. It presents firms and the entire ecosystem with an opportunity to impact the successful outcome of digital transformation projects.
Independent research commissioned to validate the model and reset potential bias shows that nearly 70% see interop as a significant element of digital transformation. It also confirmed that while most firms and vendors got the big picture, many still needed clarification on the details of desktop interop and how these concepts could be used to achieve effective digital transformation.
More so, 57% of the same group of respondents agreed that the lack of collaboration was the biggest obstacle to successful interop projects. Other common setbacks include old-school design thinking, insufficient desktop interop vendor evaluation, lack of governance, and the belief that one must modernize its entire technology stack to web before embarking on desktop interop.
“In times of economic uncertainty and shrinking margins, it’s essential for industry participants to optimize their processes and gain the most from their existing and new technology investments – even when they have to cut costs. A successful interop implementation can help achieve exactly that,” said Dan Schleifer, president, interop.io.
“With the interoperability maturity model, we want to open the discussion for interop best practices, journey mapping, and evaluation,” Schleifer continued. “Along with helping firms realize where in the interop process they are, we also want to help them anticipate the most common setbacks and increase the chance for a timely and successful interoperability project completion.”
Practical benefits include better client service, better user experience, and demonstrable ROI from improved efficiency and effectiveness and reduced error rates. And respondents agreed. 41% of leaders in capital markets stated that interop would result in fewer errors due to rekeying and copy/paste. Others noted a 20% improvement in trading performance.
In addition to evaluating their own interop maturity, firms can select the most suitable application provider based on their interop maturity level. Software vendors can better understand their customers’ interop goals, empowering them to make their applications sticky. One vendor calculated that using interop and guided by the maturity model, they will save over ten person-years of development effort as they modernize their technology stack—finally, system integrators can rely on the model for a clear path and milestones for their clients’ digital transformation projects.
As for the future, interop.io sees an industry shift towards building workflows, the ability of desktop interop to bring together different views from different applications in ingenious ways, and the capability to harness artificial intelligence.
“Future generations of industry participants will look at fragmented desktops with puzzlement. They will wonder how firms managed client interactions, mitigated operational risk, and responded to changing business dynamics,” said Leslie Spiro, CEO, interop.io. “What does the future of our industry hold if we cannot translate everyday technology experience from our personal lives into the workplace or empower the next generations of employees.”
For more details, you can refer to the maturity model ebook.