Managing Big Data: Challenges and Best Practices

Riley ThomasInvestment Management Solutions Specialist

Image: 15th Century

• Does anyone have any idea what century these characters are from.

• Hint: this is the century that engineered the printing press and the parachute

Polling Question #1

Imagery: Binary Code

• All the data processing we have done in the last two years is more than the data processing done in the last 3000 years.

Last 3,000 Years

Last 2 Years

Imagery: Ink Blot

• Does anyone know what this image is? Good because I sure don’t. This is a Rorshach test.

• Before we thought of things and we wrote it down, “Big Data” is the opposite we have a pile of data that is not knowledge and we shift it this way, and shift it this way to try and find knowledge.

Imagery: Data Visualization

• In recent years, tools helping to visualize this data allow us to see complex systems function, see patterns and meaning in ways they were previously impossible, almost everything is measurable and quantifiable. What data scientist find exciting is decontextualizing that data and taking it and putting it back in a form we can perceive and talk about.

Imagery: What todo with all this data? If there is so much of it how do I focus on what makes an impact.• The data is worthless unless you can use it to impact your businesses

bottom line. I very smart person once told me the best job security is adding actual value to your firm. Now you may be saying to yourself, I am in no position to do this. Well I challenge you to start to ask yourself hard questions… For example

• 1. If you are an asset manager, ask yourself, How can I help my firm grow assets?

• 2. If you are are a insurer or a corporate, How can I help my firm better understand their portfolio? Again focusing on wow you can help my firms bottom line?

• How much revenue we make, is what people care about. Ask yourself does this data help me report or understand the bottom line impact?

Imagery: Stock Index

• An increasingly important business initiative for investment managers and their clients is maintaining and interpreting vast quantities of data to make strategic investment decisions.

• Data driven culture

• 1. Focus on the outcomes-either for yourself or the company.

» Solve for outcomes and you will create a culture that will demand data!

» Get skin in the game from constituents.

» And remember people have a deep distrust for data.

• 2. Depersonalize decision making!

» If people think it is your opinion, and people don’t think you are a very nice person. They won’t trust you, even if you are the nicest person they still might not trust you. Does this reporting pass the criteria, ask yourself, is the data

Imagery: Google Flue Trends on Computer

• “Google trends the flu being spread in real time feedback.”

Imagery: Cherry Picking - Big Data

• Now the counter argument to this new found data gold… “There are always two sides to every coin.”

• We’re more fooled by noise than ever before, and it’s because of a nasty phenomenon called “big data.” With big data, researchers have brought cherry-picking to an industrial level.

• Modernity provides too many variables, but too little data per variable. So the spurious relationships grow much, much faster than real information.

• In other words: Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information.

• “Playing with your data until you find something that statistically significant but probably meaningless is also fatal flaw.

Clearwater’s Data Landscape

Imagery: Connected Buildings

• It all starts with building a data centric culture. Big data is not going anywhere it is only getting bigger and more expensive to maintain and manage.

• Firms should focus on ensuring data is available, accurate, timely, and accessible so that critical business decisions can be made swiftly using insights gained from that data.

Cargo Ship

Imagery: Red Tape

• However, the reality is that these programs end up rolling out onerous committees, layers of policies, complex decision workflows, and convoluted data issue resolution paths. This administrative overhead is imposed onto a sea of disengaged data stewards who’ve likely been “voluntold” of their stewardship responsibilities.

Pathways to a Data-Centric Culture

1. Buy high-quality, vetted data sources

2. Buy multiple high-quality data sources for data with variability — what we refer to as “different data dialects”

3. Leverage software tools to scrub massive quantities of data to search for inaccurate data points (“find and fix”)

4. Have data experts for each individual data point who actually understand what and how data should interact

5. Have a constant, ever-evolving data strategy

6. Realize there are cases where one size does not fit all

7. Get your own opinion out of the equation

How Clearwater Built a Data Culture

1. Accuracy is stressed in every department, “accuracy impacts our bottom-line”

2. Clearwater has established specific product experts who sit on asset class teams to understand the best data possible, “analysts are able to analyze”

3. Go directly to the source, skip the middle man, “depersonalize decision making”

HINT #1: Automate wherever possible to avoid manual entry and manipulation

HINT #2: Add reporting flexibility when one size does not fit all

How Clearwater Built a Data Culture

6. Challenge data suppliers when accuracy is in question

7. Create a culture of getting it right the first time, because you won’t have time to fix it a second time

8. Reconciliation is performed as a frequent interval and is as thorough as possible

9. Constantly looking to improve — perfection is unattainable

10. Clearwater invests heavily into developing a better product

The Power is in the Network

The Electrical Grid

Software-as-a-ServiceMultiple Locations for Redundancy

and Global Performance

Robust Security

Daily FunctionalityReleases

Dedicated IT andServicing Teams

DataEncryption

Available Anywhereon Any Device

Data Warehouse

“If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business.”

Marc BenioffFounder, CEO and ChairmanSalesforce

Reminders

• Take the post-session survey in the Clearwater Events app

• Take the Clearwater Client Benchmark Survey in room 440 and earn Clearwater swag.

• Don’t miss the Monday networking reception from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

• Session presentations are available in the app