London Stock Exchange: Data-X Foundation Service

Working together, Accenture and the Exchange created an infrastructure that enables the Exchange to more aggressively pursue the sale of market information to its customers.

The London Stock Exchange is the most international equities exchange in the world and Europe's largest pool of liquidity, listing more than 2,100 UK equities with a combined market cap of more than £1.3 trillion, as well as international equities, covered warrants and Eurobonds. In 2000, the Exchange entered a new era as a public company, which listed on its own market in 2001. Now judged by different criteria, the Exchange needed to take the next step in its development as a high-performance commercial enterprise.

As part of this change, the Exchange teamed with Accenture to quickly and successfully launch several new services that leverage one of its core competencies—providing real-time and historical information about stock price and movements to such customers as broker dealers, asset managers and hedge funds.

The Exchange generates more than 40 percent of its revenues through the sale of market information to its customers. Management viewed this business as a natural area for expansion. Working together, Accenture and the Exchange created an infrastructure that enables the Exchange to more aggressively pursue such opportunities. The Data-X Platform enables the creation and dissemination of new real-time price intelligence messages along with Internet access to historical trading data and internal reporting functionality. Accenture's involvement spanned from conception through design, build, test, implementation and running of the solution—and included all aspects of service delivery.

To deliver the solution quickly and cost effectively, the team leveraged the Accenture Development Methodology. This innovative approach, combined with the choice of leading-edge development tools, lowered development costs and reduced time-to-market by 40 percent. Also, the team's Microsoft Windows 2003 Server application platform, integrated with the .NET framework, delivers maximum flexibility and reduces operating costs by 50 percent over a traditional solution.

With Accenture's help, the Exchange launched Data-X in only nine months from board approval to going live. Data-X has also improved time to market for new products. Since the Data-X implementation, many key information vendors and other market participants have subscribed to the service, with more in the pipeline. The new, 100 percent reliable, information platform provides a single source of in-depth data to its customers, at a lower cost, while providing the Exchange with a growing revenue stream. Also, by addressing previously unfulfilled information needs, the Exchange is building better relationships with its customers.

The new service has helped the Exchange establish itself as a high-performance business—and has solidified its position as one of the world's leading exchanges.