From an Aladdin Enterprise implementation to business-wide value

One of Asia’s largest insurers, with an internal asset-management arm, was well underway with its implementation of BlackRock’s Aladdin® Enterprise platform. The programme had built a solid foundation focused on going live. The client’s next priority was to uplift the effectiveness of day-to-day platform use and realise greater value for investment teams across the business.

Drawing on our deep delivery methodology, Strata designed and delivered a reporting model built around Gold Copy workspaces: best-practice, platform-native reporting, one for each investment team, built around how each team actually works. The result was consistent oversight for senior leaders and reporting that individual desks could own and evolve themselves.

The client’s Aladdin Enterprise implementation had put in place a solid baseline. The next step was to make the platform work for the specifics of a large, diverse investment business – one spanning multiple regions, asset classes and investment teams, each with its own established reporting views and ways of working.

Meeting that need across a business of this scale and breadth called for a partner who could see the problem from both senior and end-user perspectives, work across numerous teams to build a clear plan and deliver a reporting model that held together across the entire business. With timing a critical factor too, that partner needed deep Aladdin practitioner expertise and the ability to seamlessly bridge advice and delivery – aligning teams around a common view and turning recommendations into outcomes.

We took a hybrid advisory-plus-delivery approach, pairing Aladdin specialism with APAC-based regional expertise. An assessment phase came first to understand the problem, followed by Strata’s design, build, deploy delivery methodology.

We met with senior leaders, from the CIO office to heads of desk, to define what effective reporting looked like and which teams were in scope. Those sessions produced an agreed enterprise and team-level reporting design, giving each investment team a consistent plan to work from, alongside a project tracker and delivery schedule.
 
We paired that top-down view with detailed bottom-up work. Portfolio managers and platform super-users walked our consultants through their daily reporting needs and where those needs had yet to be reflected in the new platform’s reporting setup. We reviewed the reporting inputs available, the workspaces teams were using and any views end users had built themselves – establishing what was working effectively, where reporting needs remained unmet, and opportunities for further improvement. 
 
By the end of this phase, the client had a clear picture of the state of play and a practical plan for how to build on the core implementation.

Those insights shaped each team’s reporting workspace. Each investment team received its own Gold Copy workspace, a best-practice, platform-native reporting environment built for its specific needs.

Together, the workspaces unified reporting across the business while still reflecting the granular realities of regional and portfolio-level reporting, giving senior leaders a consistent view that preserves the distinctions that matter to each desk.

Each workspace underwent multiple rounds of review and refinement with its investment team, ensuring the final output was aligned to end-user needs. We complemented this with training and handover sessions, empowering workspace owners to maintain and evolve their Gold Copy workspaces as reporting requirements changed. 
 
Delivery was run in step with the client’s broader implementation. Rather than waiting for a single rollout at the end, we synchronised our work to the go-live milestones of key business units, so teams felt the uplift as soon as they went live. That cadence let the client build on its Aladdin foundation without adding to the pressure of the core implementation.
 
Throughout the engagement, the goal was to ensure Aladdin continued delivering value long after the project was complete.  By the time we stepped away, the workspaces were fully in the client’s hands, and reporting had become something teams could shape and grow themselves.

We designed and delivered comprehensive strategic investment reports that strengthened adherence to investment targets, improved transparency and data integrity, and gave investment teams the tools and insights needed to manage portfolios and meet stakeholder expectations. The project put in place a reporting system that delivered value straight away and left a strong foundation for future growth.

Key Achievements:

Do you want the same clarity from your Aladdin Enterprise platform?

Get in touch with Strata to talk through what your investment teams could be seeing.

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