Did you know that with a bit of TLC, your datafeeds can become your competitive advantage rather than your nemesis? And it all begins with appointing a dedicated Datafeed Administrator.
Most of us want datafeeds to be "set and forget" but they need regular attention to stay accurate. When each adviser tries to manage their own, you often get duplicated effort and missed error patterns. Centralising this role means one person oversees the audit logs, links new accounts, and catches "out of balance" warnings before they impact your reporting or client reviews.
If your datafeeds have been unloved for a little while, you’ll need to know where to begin:
- Start with the basics: Check out Datafeed Fundamentals and Datafeed Administration: Daily checks in The Iress Learning Centre then jump into the Getting Started guide from the Iress Community.
- Pick a "quick win": Choose one provider that is almost 100% accurate. Use the Platform Summaries - APAC Region List to check the overall health of that specific feed first.
- Review the summaries: Use the Platform Summary and Adviser Summary screens for a high-level view of data quality. The Reconciliation Summary allows you to drill into the detail of individual holdings.Â
- Check your mappings: Do all advisers have valid credentials? Are all adviser codes and client accounts mapped correctly?
- Watch for date locks: Be careful overriding these if you aren't familiar with the history of that account.
- Identify patterns: When troubleshooting, look for common threads. Are the errors all on the same date, for the same holding, or linked to one particular adviser?
- Follow the trouble shooting guide.
Focusing on one provider at a time keeps things manageable. By starting with those quick wins, you'll soon have a list of feeds you can actually trust. From there, simple routine checks will help you catch and fix any new issues as they happen.
How’s the quality of your datafeeds?
