The Customer
A full-service, independent, global valuation firm (the Company*) hired dbSeer to deliver custom valuation report data in a digital format to one of their high-profile clients. The Company provides objective, supportable conclusions of value to domestic and international clients. The Company focuses exclusively on valuations and advisory services to provide an accurate and customized view of the value of a business. Their in-house valuation capabilities include businesses, equity and debt securities, loans, derivative instruments, structured products, intangible assets, fixed assets, and real estate.
The Opportunity
The Company provides valuation reports to aid their clients in determining the fair value of their subject securities. Based on a variety of data sources, each Valuation Report contains data related to the valuation of an investment at a specific point in time. The report also provides enterprise level inputs, assumptions, calculations, and metrics, as well as information used to assess the value of a variety of financial instruments. The Company completes around 12,000 of such reports per year.
One of the Company’s high-profile clients requested valuation reports in a standardized, digitized format. Further, the client wanted a report that included a subset of specific data points, consumable by their own data systems. Previously, the client had to review summarized PDF reports, identify specific key data of interest, map data for use in their own databases, manually enter that data into their systems, and then perform data validation. This manual data extraction and entry process was time-consuming and potentially error-prone.
The Company’s immediate goal was to deliver a solution that met the client’s specific needs. At the same time, the Company wanted to build a data warehouse to consolidate data, enabling a repeatable process to provide the same value in the future to other clients. The solution would support additional analytics (such as trending analysis, competitive information, and so on) possibly required by clients in the future. The solution would also need to provide a way to review reports and check for errors more efficiently.
The Solutions
dbSeer designed a secure, cost-effective data transformation platform to meet the Company’s needs. Providing an efficient way to extract market data analytics, the solution improves both efficiency and quality of market data used to support valuations. It also provides a competitive source of proprietary market data, which someday could be monetized.
Using serverless artchitecture, the dbSeer solution was designed to automatically and securely transform and transfer the Company’s valuation report data across the network, sending it to the client in the required digital format. Starting with the source complex spreadsheets from the Company’s analysts, dbSeer engineers applied conditional logic to map and distill source data fields to the client’s requested output.
The platform extracts data from reports to a consolidated cloud-based data repository using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. The client’s subset of data is output and sent securely on a periodic basis throughout the day. Same-day electronic access to report results is provided with no need for manual transformation. The data platform is configurable so that different output formats or delivery mechanisms can easily be defined for different clients as needed.
Advantages of AWS Cloud
- Security and Data Protection – Encrypts and protects all data at rest, including when stored in the database. Amazon’s VPC extends the Company’s private network in the cloud. Amazon VPC is a private network with no public internet access.
- Traceability – Ensures data is accessed only by authorized users.
- Scalability – Provides the ability to easily scale as the Company grows and as more clients are added to the AWS environment.
The Results
As a result of dbSeer’s thoughtfully engineered solution, the Company has moved from sending out complex PDF spreadsheets to delivering sophisticated reporting from a cloud-based analytics database. The new data platform solution enables comprehensive, focused, and custom analysis for clients and enables the Company to deliver high-value service tailored to client needs.
Increased Productivity with Time and Cost Savings, while Ensuring Data Quality
The solution helps clients to eliminate time spent on manual data entry, which can be error-prone and time-consuming. Clients can now focus on actual data analysis rather than administrative tasks.
Business Value for Future Client Needs
The data platform can be extended to support additional clients’ electronic reporting requirements.
More Extensive Analysis for Valuations and Market Competitiveness
Client and market data can be mined across reports more easily, while the Company can increase market competitiveness with digital delivery capabilities.
dbSeer clearly understood our challenge and were knowledgeable and reasonably priced. By keeping the project organized, offering advice and recommendations, and staying on top of deadlines, dbSeer has kept the project moving forward and has delivered the database solution we needed.
~Chairman of the Board & Senior Managing Director
