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Case study · Asset manager

Transparency and control
within four months of a major merger.

A Tier-1 US investment manager faced a market data environment that no longer matched its operational reality. Two legacy organizations, overlapping vendor contracts, no single view of usage. The Paraxis practitioners, in prior senior roles, were engaged to right-size the data environment for the combined firm.

  • ClientTier-1 US investment manager
  • ContextPost-merger integration
  • Engagement4 months
  • OutcomeConsolidated data stack, rationalized entitlements, unified operating model

The challenge

A leading investment management firm, focused on helping clients manage assets across a global marketplace, reached a critical inflection point. Following a major merger, staffing, workflows and business requirements had shifted faster than the market data environment supporting them. The result: a data environment sized for an organization that no longer existed.

  • A recent merger had fundamentally changed the firm’s staffing, workflows, and business requirements.
  • The existing market data environment was built for the pre-merger organization and no longer matched operational reality.
  • No clear view of which market data services were still needed, which were redundant, and which were missing across the combined entity.
  • Urgent need to consolidate, replace, reduce, and augment services with an overall objective of cost optimization.
  • Vendor contracts inherited from both legacy organizations ran in parallel, with overlapping coverage and inconsistent terms.

How we approached it

A requirements-first reset.

The senior practitioners conducted a comprehensive assessment of user-based requirements and applied that analysis to the existing market data environment. The engagement focused on understanding what the merged firm actually needed and re-aligning the data infrastructure to it.

  • User requirements assessment

    Detailed analysis of the user base across the merged organization. Individual and team-level data requirements mapped to actual business functions and workflows — not to the headcount the contracts assumed.

  • Market data environment audit

    Cataloged every active market data service across both legacy organizations. Surfaced the overlaps, gaps, and redundancies in the combined data environment, line by line.

  • Content consolidation

    Mapped the inventory to the requirements analysis. Determined which services to retain, replace, reduce, or augment for the merged firm and sequenced the changes.

  • Procurement negotiation

    Ran the renewal cycle on behalf of the firm. Right-sized contracts against actual consumption and leveraged the combined entity’s scale for improved commercial terms.

The result

Optimized — with full coverage and control.

Within four months, the team identified every market data service in the combined firm and delivered a target operating model for the modified data environment. Through the requirements-based assessment and vendor negotiation cycle, users were mapped to the tier each actually needed, duplicate entitlements across the legacy stacks were retired, and contracts were re-sized against the merged consumption profile — with material cost taken out of the environment while the firm retained the coverage it needed to support evolving business demand. The combined entity exited the engagement with a documented inventory, an entitlement book that keeps up with the org chart, and the operating cadence to keep the gains in place.

  • ConsolidatedTwo firms' overlapping data stack
  • RationalizedEntitlements across the merged org
  • FullServices identified and cataloged
  • NewTarget operating model delivered