Leading funds manager in the Philippines ATRAM achieves faster data processing with Azure Synapse Analytics

The ATR Asset Management Group (ATRAM) is the leading independent asset and wealth manager in the Philippines today. Since 2009, ATRAM has stayed true to its focus on asset management, serving top-tier local and global institutions and expanding to retail clients. It successfully does this by distributing a wide range of products via multiple channels and digital platforms. “We believe that people will need to transcend from becoming a depositor to an investor eventually,” says Andrew Caw, Chief Marketing Officer at ATRAM. “Our aim is to see all Filipinos investing towards achieving their dreams and aspirations.”

Need to manage data

As an asset and wealth manager for customers from a range of segments, effectively understanding and using data to tailor-fit products, services, solutions, and advice to clients is critical for ATRAM. However, it was finding it difficult to manage data that are scattered, siloed, and difficult to access. "We encountered data quality issues and were looking for data governance,” said Bea Charmelyn Lambitco, Head of Data and Analytics at ATRAM.

Meanwhile, ATRAM continued to build capabilities and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to scale and meet the demands of its expanding customer base. This allowed the firm to build apps faster and deliver immediate value to its customers.  

ATRAM aims to connect its data and applications and scale seamlessly to its potential partners, improving go-to-market time for its offerings as it develops diverse customer products and services. For this, ATRAM needed to securely maintain, integrate, and monitor its APIs as efficiently as possible. “We needed to bring technology that could help us deliver the desired end-to-end experience, both internally and as we move to integrating our partners,” said Cyrus Salvador, Head of Digital Solutions at ATRAM. 

Faster data processing

“We were using Power BI for reporting and analytics. However, creating a weekly report took most of our Fridays, as data had to be gathered from Excel files from different teams. In addition to that, not everyone had access to all the data,” says Lambitco. “For this reason, we opted for Azure Synapse Analytics to automate data entry from Azure Data Lake, followed by ingesting and processing data before moving it to Power BI and creating a dashboard.”

With Azure Synapse Analytics, ATRAM built a vision for a unified platform that enabled it to leverage sensitive and critical data efficiently, safely, and cost-effectively.

Because Power BI was already in use, Azure Synapse Analytics seamlessly integrated into its existing reporting infrastructure and allowed wider use of Power BI capabilities. With this, ATRAM helped its teams speed up reporting while ensuring data quality across the organization. “Running the weekly report thread through the Synapse-powered pipeline now only takes five minutes, while data preparation, updating, and editing only takes less than an hour,” shares Lambitco. Additionally, the firm can now tap into other data capabilities and go beyond descriptive functions. It can move towards predictive and prescriptive functions, such as forecasting future events or optimizing actions.

Besides analytics and reporting abilities, ATRAM is also refining data warehousing. “Azure data warehouse is an important initiative for us because this allows us to manage many different types of data: data from our clients, different investment products, and markets,” observes Deanno Basas, Chief Executive Officer of Digital at ATRAM. “It's quite complex because it's not just about knowing your clients and how to advise a specific type of client, but we have to know everything that's going on and the products available in the investment world. So, for us, the roadmap is to enhance the value that we give to our customers. For this, data management is crucial because we cannot advise our clients on an appropriate product without the right information.”

Creating and automating APIs

ATRAM also leverages Azure API Management to smoothen processes between ATRAM’s APIs, which builds connectivity that strengthens the group’s relationships with fund distribution partners. “For example, the digital banks we’re partners with want up-to-date ATRAM funds to be available on their platforms—a well-managed API allows that. We also provide institutions with an API-powered platform where they can see their accounts and portfolios,” shares Salvador.

Azure API Management works by securing and monitoring ATRAM’s APIs and their usage as well as creating new business models for ATRAM out of it. “The idea is to achieve a microservice or a service-oriented architecture that would help us achieve the open finance framework,” adds Rowan de Chavez, Application Development Manager at ATRAM.

Transforming customer services

Digital transformation is not new to ATRAM. From its inception, it has been focused on its three core businesses: serving institutions while growing retail clients, offering a wide range of products through multiple channels, and enabling these capabilities through technology. Even with more than a decade of operating in the industry, ATRAM finds ways to innovate, and its partnership with Microsoft enables it to help more Filipinos invest in achieving their dreams—servicing 2.5 million clients to date.

“When we created our digital strategy, our goal was to be known as a digital investment management company,” said Salvador. “We are achieving that with Azure Synapse Analytics and API Management, both of which are helping us to deliver the engagement and experience that we want to provide our customers.”