TRG Screen Melds FITS, InfoMatch for Next-Gen Data Cost Management Platform

​TRG Screen, the market data cost and inventory management software vendor created by the merger of TRG (formerly The Roberts Group) and the InfoMatch business of Dutch vendor Screen Consultants, has outlined its plans to create a new service that will handle end-to-end data spend and demand requirements, consolidating features from existing but separate product lines into a single platform.

Dubbed Optimize, the new platform is based on the best features of each vendor’s current platforms, FITS and InfoMatch, with newly-added features. It will also incorporate pieces of other monitoring and compliance tools either acquired or licensed by TRG over the years, such as Axon Financial Systems’ PEAR database, Priory Solutions’ ResearchMonitor and Quest solutions, as well as Xpansion FTS’ Xmon tool, and Vela’s DART terminal analytics service.

The first service available on the Optimize platform is Optimize Spend, which officials say will deliver next-generation market data spend-management controls. Existing clients of FITS and InfoMatch will automatically receive Optimize Spend when it rolls out early next year. The vendor will use data transfer tools to ensure data is seamlessly loaded from clients’ systems into Optimize Spend, after which clients can acclimatize to the new platform before fully cutting over and turning off their existing system. TRG Screen will move some of its experienced staff from their current customer-facing roles into a client upgrade and support team.

The move has been part of the company’s plan since merging at the start of 2018, and the vendor has been working with clients over the past 18 months “to really understand how they use the system, and what business challenges they’re trying to use it to address,” says TRG Screen chief product officer Richard Mundell (pictured). “We could have just stuck the best bits together, but we wanted this to be truly next-generation, and to be able to provide insights. … So we’re building it on a new technology stack.”

That stack draws features and expertise from both sides of the business. For example, TRG built FITS with large US-based banks and asset managers in mind, whereas InfoMatch was developed with regional European firms in mind. So because InfoMatch did not need to handle the same volumes of data as FITS, its interface evolved differently, and is simpler to use.

“Our clients love the depth and richness of functionality that FITS has, and the ease of use of InfoMatch, and Optimize delivers the best of both worlds,” Mundell says. “It’s not about saying that one system is better than the other; it’s about looking at the business requirements that each serves, and seeing which does those best with minimal effort.”

Another example of a specific feature taken from one of the existing platforms is the ability to edit historical information in the system—for example, to support specific accounting requirements, or to update vendor price changes after they occur—which InfoMatch supported but FITS did not. Meanwhile, a notable feature carried over from FITS is its contractual rights management feature, which automates a lot of the information-capture process.

Optimize will feature a full read-write web services API to integrate with other system and allow programmatic input and export of data to and from other systems, as well as RPA (robotic process automation) tools for firms seeking to automate their own processes by which they transfer data between different systems.

Another module of the Optimize platform will be Optimize Insights, a dedicated analytics and reporting tool that provides insights into a firm’s data spend and usage. The offering is tailored for different types of individuals within a firm who may want to understand their data costs from the perspective of their specific job profile. For example, a data manager may want to look at different datasets in a different way from a financial controller, which might also be different from how the head of a trading desk would want to look at their data spend.

Optimize Insights will also allow users to add their own metrics to the system, such as proprietary analytics and calculations like the ratio of trader revenue compared to their data consumption and spend. “There might be data sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere, and because in the past, they haven’t been able to put that into FITS or InfoMatch, they have instead taken the data out of FITS or InfoMatch and put it all into that spreadsheet and integrated the data manually outside of our platform. Now, they’ll be able to upload that into Optimize Insights and cross-pollinate it with the data they have in our platform,” Mundell says.

TRG Screen will release the first versions of Optimize Spend and Optimize Insights in the first quarter of 2021, and already plans two major releases of Optimize Spend for next year. The vendor will make its other tools—such as ResearchMonitor, PEAR, and its Quest email-based inquiry management system, and those licensed from partners, such as Xmon and DART—available via Optimize, as well as feeding data from those tools into Optimize Insights.

The vendor also plans to expand Optimize to other subscription-based services used by financial firms and other sectors, and other content types beyond market data. “Optimize is a joined-up platform that is more than the sum of the parts from these acquisitions and partnerships,” Mundell says. “So, depending on what clients want to optimize, it’s there in Optimize, and they don’t have to use a different system. So you can manage terminal usage in DART, and monitor reference data usage in Xmon, all in one place.”