Company : Press Release
New IT Tools Pays Off For Franklin Templeton Investments EDINBURGH - May 25th, 2001
With a requirement to produce more than 1800 monthly fact sheets for 40 funds in 10 different languages for 12 European countries, Franklin Templeton Investments quickly realised it needed to automate and turned to Electrum (Multimedia) Ltd. for help.
Franklin Templeton Investments, is one of the world's leading suppliers of financial investment products, with over $250bn under management.
'Every month Franklin Templeton produces and distributes approx. 1800 fund specific factsheets and other documents, such as performance overviews, for individual and institutional investors in Europe,' explained Martin MHartmann, program manager - international e-business for Franklin Templeton Investments. 'The factsheets are distributed on paper and electronically via Franklin Templeton's web site, delivering up-to-date information on the performance of all the funds sold by Franklin Templeton throughout Europe.'
'Factsheets are produced for 12 different countries, in 10 different languages and distributed in four formats: as documents, spreadsheets, web pages and PDF files for downloading from the web. In the past, it was extremely labour intensive, taking 40 man-days every month, and we hoped there was a way of automating the process.'
Factsheets Generator
'The system we created generates factsheets from a funds database - in the client's case the data is automatically entered into the database from existing data sources and spreadsheets, but the system could use an existing database,' explains Stuart Harper, Electrum's managing director. 'Using a central database ensures that all the data in the factsheets is consistent and correct. It also enables historical information to be collected, used and analysed.'
The generation phase takes a matter of minutes to move the data from the database and incorporate it into the factsheets for every country in Europe. It uses Word, Excel and HTML templates that enable each country to customize the factsheets to meet their own needs. The templates make maintenance easy and enable the content of the factsheets to be quickly changed and checked by anyone in the company using familiar tools.
The factsheets contain text, tables and charts. The charts are created using Excel templates. This enables data in the funds database to be included in the factsheets, other documents or web pages, in a variety of attractive styles that are easy to change.
Results
'The new system means much shorter production cycles and is accurate and consistent in supplying data in all languages,' said Hartmann. 'We have received very positive feedback from our customers and it has greatly reduced the manual intervention needed, saving valuable time.'
The Factsheets Generator created by Electrum has resulted in initial cost savings to Templeton of £5,000 per month and a return on investment within eight months. The flexibility of the new system means that new services, such as HTML factsheets for Templeton web sites, have been added with no recurring monthly costs.
'The factsheets system is not only used by Franklin Templeton in Europe, but it has also been slightly amended to meet other business requirements,' adds Hartmann. 'We are currently thinking about using it for other global regions such as Asia and Southern America.'
Key Features System
In addition, Electrum has designed an extranet for Franklin Templeton that instantly provides Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) with information about key features tailored to a client's investments.
In order to provide clients and brokers with information about their products Franklin Templeton used to distribute a paper prospectus for each fund which included 'Key Features' information - information that must be disclosed by law. In this paper prospectus a standard investment amount was assumed, as well as a standard 10-year term.
If a broker wanted an illustration of a particular client's investment Franklin Templeton would provide this by post or fax. This was a labour intensive process involving a member of staff generating numeric information using a spreadsheet and cutting and pasting it into a word-processor file for printing.
Now, via the Internet, a broker can instantly see the performance information when typing in a client's investment details and obtain a printed version with the same high quality with a branded style and layout just as with the paper prospectus. The system works with Franklin Templeton's existing spreadsheets based system and requires little or no maintenance.
The system is now used not only by brokers but also by Franklin Templeton's in-house staff to generate client specific illustrations for those brokers who do not have access to the Internet. An illustration can be generated in less than a minute, then printed out and faxed directly to the broker.
The most difficult aspect of this project was producing a high-quality printout. Electrum developed a unique system which allows dynamic information to be added to Adobe's Acrobat (PDF) format, which is normally only used for static documents. The new inbuilt mechanism enables 'dynamic' content such as client specific information in the key features document to be added to produce the high quality output required.
The Future
Not only is Franklin Templeton looking at other ways of utilising the Factsheets Generator, its success has encouraged Electrum to look at marketing the product internationally.
'We have retained ownership of the intellectual property associated with the Generator and there is no reason why other companies could not benefit from it,' explained Harper. 'Electrum is currently searching for a partner capable of making the most of the Generator's potential.'
Stuart Harper, Electrum Multimedia, 0131 555 4241, stuart@electrum.co.uk
