How Using Database Query Can Speed Up Financial Reporting & Reduce Errors

A database query is a simple yet fantastic way of avoiding mistakes, duplicate data, and double the work… Yet it’s something most companies still don’t use... So, if you’re an investment manager that doesn’t either, we’re here to tell you why you should implement this into your strategy.

The Importance of a Database

As in many other industries, people who work in financial services are absolutely inundated with data: data from exchanges, data from the markets, data from banks and brokers, data from clients, data from external providers, internal company data, data from past market events, forecast data… 

It’s exhausting just thinking about how much data we need to compile and analyse just to conduct our investment management daily work, be compliant with the regulation, and execute investment strategies, especially in the age of electronic trading.

Isn’t there Excel for That?

We know what you’re thinking: I use Excel to help me with this. And, sure, Excel can be great for making some computations or to store large amounts of data, but you still need people to compile that data for you.

You still need employees to spend lots of hours copying and pasting data from multiple sources into a variety of fields, resulting in some obvious pitfalls.

Let’s talk about multiple copies, shall we?

But as if that weren’t bad enough, most companies have multiple copies of a lot of their data. And we don’t mean stored copies in case something goes wrong, or the server gets hacked. We mean numerous copies on the same company computer network across multiple teams.

• Copies that sometimes get updated and sometimes don’t.
• Copies that take up a lot of storage space.
• Copies that make it challenging to keep up with who is changing what, where, why, and when.
• Copies that can cause you to miss important updates, deletions, and additions.
• Copies that just make working with data harder than it has to be.

Surely we can all agree that having all the data you need in one place makes it more accessible!

That’s Where a Database Query Comes In

Having all your information in one local database or in the cloud can undoubtedly help with data management.

Just image it:

• You, or anyone else who is authorised to do so, can access this investment data from any device and at any time. 
• You can always be sure that the data you are working with is the latest version, as any changes are done on the same central data repository.

But, the best part is that you can efficiently conduct one of the two database queries, 

• Select Query: Where you ask the software to retrieve the data you need, which, as we’ve seen, would always be the latest version; or
• Action Query: Where you instruct the software to conduct a type of modification to the data (add, delete, update, etc.). And, since all the data is centralised, everyone’s version gets updated instantaneously.

But there’s more you can do with a database, making a database query even more powerful

The most important and impressive part of having a centralised database is that you can use multiple data sources connectivity with it via a data processing tool such as AUTOMAN. 

What this means is that you use robot process automation (RPA) software to:

• automatically collect data from multiple sources over the internet (websites, FIX, emails, files, etc.);
• automatically normalise that data into your system (ensuring the information is stored in the right data field, etc.)
• automatically export in multiple file formats, including in Excel or XML (for the regulator).

Data Query Conclusion

You can read more about that in our benefits of faster financial reporting article, but in essence, what it means is that you’ll save loads of time and reduce errors while also being in full control of all your data!

Sound interesting? Hit us up to find out how we can help you!

P.S. Join us next week as we explain how using software that enables you to create different types of reports can save you lots of time!