Thomson Reuters gets relevant messaging service

xMatters' technology will enable Thomson Reuters to send relevant messages to individuals working in financial markets

Thomson Reuters has enlisted the services of xMatters to implement a relevance engine that will allow it to send out critical business information to its clients in the financial sector, in a timely and accurate fashion.

“A relevance engine is almost the inverse of a search engine,” explained Troy McAlpin, CEO at xMatters. “When information is available for something that you’ve asked for, something that matters to you, it finds you in a way that you expect or need it.”

The engine will be used in Thomson Reuters messaging and web services. It will send relevant and timely messages to the appropriate members of the company’s 25,000 user base.

“These are critical messages,” explained Roger Read, service alert product owner at Thomson Reuters. “Timeliness in financial markets is absolutely critical, so we must get our messages to users in an incredibly timely fashion so they can take relevant preventative action that they may need to take.”

Thomson Reuters had previously relied on a system that was developed in-house seven years ago. xMatters’ relevance engine will allow the firm to interface with a variety of different standards of third party systems that its current infrastructure doesn’t allow it to.

“Our current system was built by us and it was fit for purpose when it was built. But now things have evolved and we require focus and expertise in that narrow field,” added Read.

xMatters will maintain and provide support for the engine, which enables Thomson Reuters to attribute a known management cost to the system, a luxury it cannot currently afford using its current internal system.

The companies say the technology will also place Thomson Reuters as a technological leader in its field, although they refused to divulge the magnitude of the investment in the relevance engine.

“The impact it will have on the perception of the customer is that Thomson Reuters is a leading edge technology firm,” said xMatters’ McAlpin.

“They’re not going to know that its our relevance engine under the cover, but it will change their perception. The personalised interaction that they will have when an incident does occur is different to anything else they might have with any other provider.”

The firm is still in the process of rolling out the system, and has been implementing the first phase of the project over the past nine months. Phase one is expected to be completed by September 2010.