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Janus Capital: Managing Risk and Process Innovation in Financial Service Operations

Staff, Appian
May 2, 2014

In the financial services arena, the success of the client experience rests on how well they trust their advisors to mitigate any risk in financial security. While managing a large number of customer portfolios, trading errors can occur. As one can image, business processes must perform at the highest level to alleviatethe worries of investors.

Janus Capital Group, a global investment firm with dedicated investment solutions, oversees $173 billion in financial subsidiaries and has more than 1,200 employees. With impressive finances involved, managing risk is always a challenge between the organization and its trusted customers.According to Josh Seeman, Director of Process and Software Quality at Janus Capital Group, the organization knew it needed to adopt a business platform that would eliminate trading errors, improve legacy processes and document high risk records in the most efficient and modernized workflow.

Enhancing user control and reducing risk is the most essential piece of Janus Capital's financial management process improvement. Using the Appian platform, investment and compliance monitoring was documented through rapid delivery of audit trail records that could be accessed and shared with customers at any time, according to Seeman. Legacy systems relied heavily on manual auditing, and the Portfolio Case Management application reduces manual steps by almost 99 percent.

"It's important to have our customers invested in our governance processes," said Seeman. "Appian has allowed us to ensure everyone involved in our improvements is invested in modern technology solutions."

While leveraging modern technologies of their Appian solution, Janus Capital needed to process higher volumes of financial records and more complex processes with greater accuracy. Non-value added work steps were eliminated to create a more agile delivery of a standardized workflow, with an emphasis on time-to-business outcome. According to Seeman, customers needed to feel that the new workflows were being designed to guarantee the highest level of service. Enhanced communication through Appian social collaborations provided greater visibility into project statuses, helping to break down inefficiencies created by functional silos.

"Going forward, case management is going to be big for us," said Seeman. "We will look to make improvements to workflows at Janus that involve a number of employees and departments. We continue to expand our governance committee and internal support of Appian applications."

Janus Capital Group BPM Model & Methodology:

    • Solve: Review opportunity; Align resources; Determine critical success factors and dependencies

    • Deploy: Multiple review meetings; Design review; User acceptance testing

    • Execute: Run the business; Perform the work

    • Manage: Measure, analyze, process performance metrics

    • Optimize: Continuous improvement exercises; Process optimization discussions

Mike Ingrisano

Media Relations Manager

Mike Ingrisano