IPC Information Services, the largest seller of turrets to the world's trading rooms, is betting a redesign will keep users from dropping its flagship model as well as attract new users. The communications technology vendor is in the process of beta testing the new version with a number of large asset management clients and will begin shipping it out in June. The new turret follows a 15-month redesign effort in which IPC canvassed hundreds of traders about their likes and dislikes.
The result is a sleeker offering with a more sophisticated user interface, making it easier for traders to operate. "The end users were expecting different things than we were offering," concedes Michael Speranza, IPC's vice president of product management, about the need for a makeover.
Adds Lance Boxer, IPC's chief executive officer: "With the advent of cell phones, iPods and Xboxes, the new generation of traders has been weaned on consumer technology. This has had a profound influence on expectations of tools in the workplace."
Gadgets
Today's traders are spoiled for choice: cell phones, Blackberrys, turrets-at work and at home, hoot n' hollers, web cams, pagers. They can stay in touch with their clients, their sales traders and brokers at the touch of a button or a voice command. Customer relationship management information is available on most of the devices, so they can look up client information anywhere, anytime.
This wealth of gadgets, plus the proliferation of electronic video games and MP3 players such as the iPod, has changed the at-work technology expectations of today's traders.
Turret makers have had to take the look, feel and functionality of a wide range of gadgets, as well as traders' habits, into consideration in order to maintain or grow their market share in dealing rooms.
Command Center
Turrets are the communications consoles on a trader's desk that bring together multiple voice phone lines, conference lines, open speaker lines from brokers, video phone lines and customer-related software. They are considered the "command center" for active traders.
Major suppliers include IPC, BT Radianz and Etrali, all of whom have customers ranging from the smallest asset management firms to the largest investment banks.
Users of these devices tend to be front office traders, whose demographics (mainly male, 28-40 years old) are the same as those who are the key consumers of Blackberrys and video game technology.
"We made an aggressive effort to understand what our users were looking for and were expecting from the technology that surrounds them," says Speranza.
To effect its transformation, IPC teamed up with Frog Design, a consulting and industrial design firm, to "start with a clean sheet of paper," says Speranza. Together they went to see 50 IPC customer trading floors globally, interviewing 300 users-from traders to sales traders to researchers, from FX to equities and derivatives players.
What they discovered was that traders were having trouble learning to use the turrets-and traders are very short on time as well as patience.
"We saw they were not using the full scope of tools, they were using less of our product than they would a typical product such as a Blackberry. Blackberrys seldom require training and people are deriving a tremendous amount of value from them. We wanted an intuitive product that required little training," says Speranza.
MAX
Frog married its experience in financial services work (with market data interfaces) and its design experience, and came up with IQ/MAX, or just MAX, IPC's state-of-the-art "trader cockpit".
MAX is not only better looking and easier to use, Speranza says, but it also has new features. One feature offers an instant one-button recall of the last 20 seconds of any speaker channel, or intercom-like open speakers from brokers.
"On a large sell-side floor when something is said over the speaker, its value is transient," says Speranza. Now traders can catch some of it, at least.
Also, a new technology framework allows for interfaces to critical software such as customer relationship management software (CRM) or market data interfaces.
Touch screen capabilities, colors and soft keys (or function keys), add to the user friendliness, says Speranza.
MAX is much more touchy-feely than IPC's existing turrets, says Speranza. "Before users didn't have any emotion' in their relationship with their turret, now it disarms them. It is slightly curved, there is a sense of flow to the end user and they instantly want to touch it."
Emotion aside, MAX vies with competitors such as BT, says Speranza, in that it has a modular design comprised of individual units that attach to the back of the system, which allows for easy upgrades and repairs.
IPC's redesign is being met with yawns from its competitors. Peter Skoglund, director of product management and systems engineering for BT Trading Systems, says: "IPC is playing catch-up. We launched ITS.Netrix two years ago, a multi-media device designed after consultation with all of our customers."
Skoglund cites Calamos Investments as a recent BT client win. Calamos took ITS.Netrix turrets, plus ITS Anywhere, an application that offers integrated trading via remote devices. ITS Anywhere is a Blackberry-like, Cisco phone that is used by support staff, sales traders and home traders to monitor their calls, says Skoglund.
Onward!
Skoglund is not concerned about losing business to IPC: "We're taking market share, and we are taking it from competitors. The market is growing, and clients are looking at a wider range of devices that are not core turret technology, like ITS Anywhere."
"Netrix is all about desk space. It has an eight-by-eight inch base unit, and modules for speakers, touch screen etc. It was designed for the trading environment in general, and is all about integration," says Skoglund.
Skoglund says many traders don't want IM boxes popping up over their electronic trading programs, so Netrix offers instant messaging notification on a button on the turret-this flashes like an incoming call so the trader can see it, but it doesn't interrupt his trading.
"If the trader hits the button, the IM moves onto his PC screen. If he wants to call the messenger, he goes back to the key, hits it and it calls the guy," says Skoglund.
Marie Anguera, Head of Global Products at Etrali, the smallest of the three major turret sellers in the US, says she is not surprised IPC overhauled its offering.
"Our customers are saying it's about time IPC is interested in updating their turrets. They are pretty old looking with little intelligence, and limited flexibility for traders' needs," says Anguera.
IPC denies it is playing catch-up. "We have conducted the most extensive research ever done, with over 300 traders observed, and consulted with many on a one-to-one basis. MAX offers the most technologically superior trading experience in the market today," says an IPC spokeswoman.
Anguera says Etrali has had touch screen, soft keys and colors since 1986. "Etrali is heavily responsive to the European and Asian markets, where we had to adapt to traders specializing in different instruments and different languages in the same trading room," Anguera says. "They need to know the status of the market at a quick glance, and colors help."
Programmable
Etrali also has hard keys that can be correlated to specific functions: "Our soft keys and hard keys are highly programmable by the users," Anguera says. This gives Etrali a competitive advantage, she adds.
Is there anything about IPC's new turret that the competition likes?
"IPC's 20-second playback on speaker lines is a nice capability, we don't have that. But then we haven't had a requirement for it. I like the modularity of their turret," says Anguera. "It is a good point for them."
