Parameta Solutions Gains a Single Source of Truth To Boost Its Client Relationships

Parameta Solutions is the data and analytics division of TP ICAP Group PLC, the world’s leading wholesale market intermediary. It has a portfolio of businesses providing several financial information services, including over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives broking services, which give its clients access to a vast pool of rare and invaluable market data.

Parameta clients are among some of the world’s biggest and most influential investment banks and brokers. They rely on the company’s data to make the right decisions, minimize risk and comply with ever-changing global financial regulations. 

But as Roland Anderson, Chief Information Officer at Parameta Solutions, explains, a combination of global offices and several mergers and acquisitions had left the company with a disparate data estate in need of overhaul: “I came to the company from a firm that managed data well in one place using proprietary technology — so I was aware of what’s possible. Parameta used multiple data environments, had data in lots of different places and relied on several legacy on-premises systems.”

The company even had competing data businesses within the company, creating significant inefficiencies and effort duplication. These challenges all prevented it from unlocking additional commercial value streams to help it evolve beyond just being a data provider. 

“The company wanted to expand beyond basic data supply to unlock greater value,” explains Anderson. “But to truly ideate, you first need to know what data you have at your disposal. I wanted to empower our product and engineering people with a single source of truth for data and unlock Agile development.”

Following a recommendation from an old colleague, Anderson and his team created a proof of concept (POC) on Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to explore whether they could combine all the company’s data in one place, interrogate it and run analytics quickly. Anderson also had one eye on Snowflake’s data sharing capabilities, with the view to using the platform for greater client integration in the future. 

While Parameta conducted several POCs with other vendors, including dedicated financial market data platforms, Anderson says the decision to choose Snowflake came when one of the company’s engineers explained the AI Data Cloud’s separation between compute and storage. “Compared to when I’ve run complex queries on previous systems and had to compete for resources, Snowflake is a game-changer,” he says. “It means we can run complicated loads in parallel and not worry about performance or cost.”

The first insight the company had into the state of its data was after it loaded its bond transactional data to the platform. “Snowflake enabled us to establish where the opportunities and challenges within our data were. This is because we spun up new data pipelines in Snowflake moving across our archived, structured and unstructured data,” says Anderson. “The ability to join our data sets either in experimentation or production means we can offer insights outside our clients’ normal visibility, helping them make more informed decisions.”

The ability to share data with its clients in a seamless and secure way allows the company to deliver fresh insights right when they’re needed and new services that distinguish its market offering.. 

The company uses data sharing features in Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to create direct data feeds with its clients, giving both Parameta and its clients a closer relationship. 

“Snowflake is very adaptable,” says Anderson. “It allows us to update datasets quickly based upon client demand and lower the barrier to entry for our high consumption clients. We can observe opportunities for optimization which helps us continue to improve the offering. Snowflake also allows our clients to create POCs on our data to prove its value — which also means our sales cycle moves quicker.” 

Direct data sharing also means that the company can cater for any client’s security requirements, such as individual table-level governance, and deliver its services in any region.

And while direct connections have changed how Parameta serves its clients, Anderson explains that new-found agility allows it to be extremely adaptable to client requirements. “Some of our clients prefer not to use direct connections with their data environments,” he says. “Snowflake gives us more than one way of working with them, creating extraction processes on top of the platform, allowing us to adapt to and meet multiple demands.”

The company has restructured its teams around Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, allowing it to reframe its culture for data consumption. “We’ve been on a half-decade journey with Snowflake so far — and all our new tooling and product roadmap is centered around the platform,” says Anderson. “Snowflake has impacted everything in our division, even down to the people we attract as an employer. New employees want to work in Snowflake. Snowflake has helped us to move to a cloud mindset. In terms of investment, what we’ve put into the platform has paid us back over our journey.”

While Anderson admits a lot has changed since the company started working with Snowflake in 2019, he believes the platform has grown with the company’s needs. “We originally chose Snowflake for its separate compute and storage because no one really offered that at the time,” explains Anderson. “While this is still important, features like Snowflake Secure Data Sharing, automation and the ability to process unstructured data quickly keep the platform relevant for us. Many of our clients now also use Snowflake, which is a real benefit. Snowflake also allows us to experiment with new workloads alongside our live environment.”

Having built a unified data ecosystem on Snowflake that’s brought the company closer to its clients, Anderson has advice for similar organizations looking to gain greater control over their data environments: “Do a POC to get the most value from the platform. Understand and prove value quickly and allow yourself room to fail fast. Also consider Snowflake Professional Services. While we didn’t use them, we would have got to where we are now much faster with their support.”

With the company’s external services now well embedded in Snowflake, Anderson has turned his attention to its internal processes. Specifically, how he can make people’s lives easier and create greater efficiency. 

For this, he’s experimenting with AI and automation to transform how the company processes and analyzes information. For example, his team is looking at how to use Snowflake to automatically convert PDF documents into data that can be analyzed at scale to gain contract insights. The team also intends to integrate its Salesforce CRM and client billing data with the AI Data Cloud — giving the company an end-to-end data ecosystem.