LSE sharpens trading updates
Information-retrieving system is part of IT transformation process
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has equipped staff with a real-time dashboard system to retrieve accurate trading data and improve services to clients.
The front-end browser-based system enables staff to respond rapidly to client enquiries with current and historical market and transactional data straight from the LSE’s back-end data warehouse.
LSE chief information officer Robin Paine told Computing the real-time view of all the trade information in each sector provides a competitive advantage.
‘We have 20 million price updates going out every day, several hundred thousand trades, and 300 or so clients wanting to know how much of the trading has been done by them,’ he said.
‘When a member wants to know the volume they have put through our trading system in a certain sector, our staff can use this simple web interface to get the information from the data warehouse immediately. Previously they would have had to hang up the phone and email the answer an hour or two later after a complex query on our huge database.’
The LSE is reaching the end of an IT infrastructure transformation that has formed the basis for projects such as the dashboard system, says Paine.
An information distribution system, called Infolect, has been installed, and there are plans to replace the core trading platform with TradeElect, to speed up the trading process.
The SharePoint dashboard system, developed by Microsoft in close conjunction with LSE, went live two months ago.
Paine says Microsoft Excel can run as a server process at the heart of LSE’s data centre using data cubes in a web browser.
‘If they know Excel our staff do not have to learn another package, and it has all the compute power of server capability presented via an internet browser,’ he said.
LSE is now considering giving members access to a custom view of the system, enabling them to conduct self-service transactional enquiries.
What do you think? Email [email protected]
Further reading: