Pioneer Investments, the asset management division of pan-European banking organization Unicredit Group, has rolled out the INFOmatch data usage and cost monitoring product from Dutch vendor Screen INFOmatch, to standardize use of the tool across the group's European divisions.
The move, which replaces the FITS platform from US-based vendor The Roberts Group, brings the Irish asset manager's market data inventory management system into line with other business divisions of UniCredit, which have already deployed INFOmatch to manage cost allocation, contract administration, invoice reconciliation and permissioning.
Pioneer's decision to overhaul its master data management system was primarily based on potential cost savings that could be gained by leveraging INFOmatch's existing presence within the group's data operations, according to Michael Barton, global market data coordinator at Pioneer Investments. "INFOmatch was already in use inside Unicredit, which meant they were able to offer us a quote that was more favourable than our previous system", he says.
In addition to cost considerations, Peter Fruitema, managing director of INFOmatch, says that as a global asset manager with multiple offices around the world, Pioneer required the flexibility to tailor a data management system to its individual needs-in particular, the ability to add user-defined fields to handle local and global vendors.
As such, Pioneer will also use INFOmatch's Contract Module, a component of the system that links invoices to the original agreement that an organization signed with a vendor - to reconcile whether products and the quality of delivery match what was originally contracted, and whether agreed discounts have been properly applied - rather than just checking invoices against the amounts paid in previous bills, Fruitema says.
The firm began migrating to INFOmatch at the start of this year, and had fully installed the system by Feb. 1, only requiring a few small changes to its invoice module to accommodate the specific way that Pioneer manages the information, Fruitema says. However, the full rollout is still underway. "Entering the data and setting up the information in the system takes a lot of time and is quite a lot of work, but is something you have to do," says Barton, adding that it will be a couple more months before the configuration process is fully complete.
So far, Pioneer has deployed INFOmatch at its head office in Dublin, Ireland, though Barton says the firm plans to roll the system out to other global offices, should they wish to use it.