Innovative data advisory Solutions for Your Business

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As the financial services industry has grown in complexity, managing data licenses has increasingly required highly specialized experience that few investment managers, FinTech and other consumers of data can reasonably be expected to maintain in house. 

Internally, centralized procurement teams may be able to negotiate a contract terms and conditions but lack the appropriate acumen to make meaningful judgements on vendors, data or technology selection required. Likewise, IT teams may have the technical knowhow to implement, but lack the tools and knowledge to create appropriate frameworks for managing risk. 

And when seeking outside help, traditional data consulting firms focus primarily on eliminating immediate data costs and often lack the negotiation skills, experience, and industry knowledge to properly recommend a data licensing approach that can lead to more sustainable cost savings and improved vendor relationships. 

Buyers of data now have a completely new set of questions they need answered, such as:

1. Do you have guardrails/policies in place to manage and monitor the use of data licenses? 
2. Are you accessing the most valuable data in the most efficient and cost-effective way? 
3. How are you monitoring and tracking changes to commercial policies?
4. Do you have a framework in place to ensure your team will pass a vendor audit or usage assessment without penalty?
5. Do you have any meaningful structured data quality or service metrics for evaluating vendors or your program?
6. Are you engaging your key suppliers with an eye on improving the relationship for the long-term?

Watchdog Data Services was formed to provide investment managers, exchanges and FinTechs with a comprehensive, yet bespoke data solution programs that mitigates data usage risk, reduces cost, and importantly, improves vendor relationships. At the core of our offerings, we leverage a proprietary 12-point data licensing checklist that was developed in consultation with the top 10 market data and index data suppliers.