Voice-Data Integration In A Fishbowl: CIBC Pilot Links Turret To Data Systems

Despite indeterminate benefits and formidable obstacles, technologists continue to pursue the integration of voice and data delivery systems.

Both voice and data systems terminate at the trading desk where they are now integrated by traders. It's reasonable to expect that productivity might be increased by automating some aspects of the trader's modus operandi. Call initiation, call screening, and combination of customer or counterparty data with both functions is an obvious starting point.

It also seems reasonable to expect that integrating the delivery of voice and data transmissions might result in some economies. But achieving economies is often synonymous with cutting jobs. Convincing the telecommunications and data systems factions to work together to eliminate each others' jobs is an undertaking on a par with achieving lasting peace in the Middle East.

"Before we integrate voice and data systems," says Steve Steinberg, senior vice president of Prudential-Bache Securities, "we may have to integrate ourselves." Until that happens, integration at the turret is the only game in town.

But the current focus on cost control means that customers are unlikely to accept a technology trade-up without proven benefits or proven savings. "It has to work the first time and it has to be a home run," says Steinberg.

One of the hardier souls to venture into this particular snake pit is Anthony Paxton, vice president of global trading facilities for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

CIBC's trading activities include foreign exchange, international money markets, corporate bonds and equities. The bank's trading rooms tend to be dominated by large sales groups serving corporate and institutional clients that are supported by smaller wholesale trading desks.

Paxton oversees CIBC's trading room expansion program, which includes a 213-position Rich/Wyatt installation in London, a 150-desk room in Toronto using Rich and Tie, and another Rich/Wyatt room of 104 positions in New York.

"If you can save the trader doing some work, he'll be able to work faster and make more money," says Paxton, "it's all geared toward generation of additional revenue. If your trader's not crawling around on the floor looking for his Rolodex, or flipping through a printout trying to find out what a guy's limit is, that improves productivity and risk control."

CIBC will undertake a two-phase beta test to assess the benefits of voice-data integration at the turret. Phase one will link the touch screens and pushbutton panels of a Wyatt turret system with a Rich TRIARCH data system in CIBC's New York trading room.

As the trader selects a counterparty, a preconfigured composite page is pulled up. Data sources can be video or digital, internal or external. When each call is terminated, the data screen returns to a predetermined source.

Paxton sees particular benefit accruing to his sales staff, some of whom deal with as many as 200 different accounts. Traders will also benefit by accessing pages of interbank rates offered by counterparties, although Paxton concedes "that's going to become more useful as the rates from external information sources become more accurate."

If phase one of the CIBC beta test is a hit, phase two will link the turret system directly to internal computer systems. "It will be possible, under the phase one scenario, to access internal computer systems from the turret through the data delivery system," says Paxton, "however that may not be fast enough, particularly for in- house data."

Phase two will operate only from touch-screens initially. The touch-screens are driven by PCs linked by Ethernet to file servers which download counterparty and customer data directly from an IBM System 36 running MIDAS from BIS.

When automatic calling party identification becomes available via ISDN, Paxton hopes to provide automatic data analysis for incoming calls.

Call selection on the basis of automated internal data analysis will allow the system to prioritize incoming calls on the basis of transactional histories. The same sort of analysis might be used to reconfigure counterparties on touch screen displays, according to Paxton.

Improved evaluation of trader productivity is another potential benefit. "Every year we go through the process of trying to figure out what people did and whether we should pay them more or less," he says, "Of course, it's all mass bloodshed.

"Right now we have some statistics. We know how many trades they've done and how many calls they've done but we don't know which calls generated trades," Paxton says. By correlating these statistics, trader performance can be measured more accurately.

CIBC plans to do the programming for phase two and the more advanced applications in-house, based on facilities provided by the vendor. That's good for Rich/Wyatt but bad for competitive vendors. Limited software development resources mean that once a customer adapts to one particular system, he will be unlikely to consider other suppliers.

In addition to Reuters, which has approached integration from the data side, two suppliers on the voice side, V Band Corp. and Contel IPC, are also fielding voice data integration products.