ICAP: Application Outsourcing and Quality Assurance

ICAP is the world’s largest voice and electronic Inter Dealer Broker, with a strong presence in the three major financial markets: New York, London and Tokyo.

It has a daily average transaction volume in excess of $1 trillion, 50 percent of which is electronic. Accenture is helping ICAP address its near-term technology challenges while striving for long-term goals. The application development and quality assurance services improved ICAP’s speed to market, increased efficiencies, enhanced service and saved money.

Accenture’s relationship with ICAP goes back to 2002 when Random Walk Computing, a company acquired by Accenture in 2006, developed a new, Java-based, feature-rich, front-end trading system for Brokertec. ICAP acquired Brokertec in 2004, by which time Brokertec had surpassed Cantor Fitzgerald to become the leading Inter Dealer Broker in the United States, due in large part to the superior user interface that Accenture had built and that traders preferred.

Over the years, Random Walk has developed many of the features that have helped ICAP continue to dominate its market segment. This includes its Cross-Connected Marketplace, which tied together the liquidity of their Brokertec and Garban marketplaces into a single user interface, and its Credit Default Swap and Securities Lending systems. Through Random Walk, Accenture had a deep understanding of ICAP’s history and long-term strategic goals.

In 2006, ICAP acquired another company and merged the new company’s IT department with its own. This merger resulted in a dramatic change for the department and also impacted its strategic partners. During this merger integration period, the Credit Products group was confronting a swiftly changing marketplace driven by both competitors’ innovations and increasing trade volumes due to market volatility. This group felt they needed a focused, delivery team to develop new features and functionalities so that it could go to market faster while maintaining system integrity.

To help meet these challenges, Accenture proposed taking on the application development and quality assurance for one year to demonstrate our ability to improve speed-to-market and deliver at lower costs.

Leveraging our success with the one-year agreement, Accenture developed a more robust solution that would provide full life cycle support of ICAP’s front-end trading system for five years. A key element of the long-term proposal was the ability to use the Accenture Delivery Center in Riga, Latvia, which helped reduce costs while improving production support.

Accenture is now providing:

• Production support and quality assurance of the running system during both United Kingdom business and after hours.

• Rolling releases with fixes and application enhancements.

• Evaluation of business requirements.

• All related application maintenance activities, such as development reporting, resources planning, IT governance dashboard and project management office services.

Accenture is helping ICAP addresss its near-term technology challenges while striving to meet long-term goals.

The application development and quality assurance services improved ICAP’s speed to market by increasing the number of releases from four per year to greater than eight. Using Accenture’s proven IT Governance model, process improvement methodologies and other asset tools, ICAP is expected to drive further efficiencies in development and run support with more strategic consulting—all enhancing the appeal of the system to ICAP’s clients.

Leveraging the Accenture Delivery Center in Riga to deliver most of the work can save ICAP as much as 20 percent and provide almost round-the-clock service.