Moscow-based management company, Partner, has completed the first stage of implementing reporting and accounting software from domestic vendor, Diasoft (the product is part of Diasoft’s treasury offering, Diasoft FA# Treasury). The system has been deployed on site and the vendor is now fine-tuning it, says Andrei Mordavchenkov, deputy head of financial markets operations at Partner. He expects it to be live by August/September, and the completion of the entire project is scheduled for October. ‘Regulatory and client reporting are priorities for us now. Once they are done, we’ll move onto internal reports,’ he says.

Partner’s main customer base consists of non-state pension funds, which is a ‘very heavily regulated market’ in Russia, says Mordavchenkov. The amount of reports to various regulatory authorities is ‘mind-boggling’, he adds. The company, which is a relatively new organisation (it’s been in the market since 2008), needed to move away from manual processes and Excel to an automated reporting system. Mordavchenkov and his colleagues have worked with Diasoft’s software in the past, and their collective view, he says, is that at present the vendor’s offering is the best in this field in Russia. ‘It has a wide, comprehensive set of preconfigured reports and is easy to operate,’ he explains. The team at Partner also liked the system’s ready interface to domestic vendor, 1C’s self-titled accounting solution (it is one of the most widely spread systems of its kind in the country and used by Partner). The software will also be interfaced to the front office trading solution from a local vendor, QUIK (Quickly Updateable Information Kit). Diasoft will form ‘the backbone’ of Partner’s IT infrastructure.  

Mordavchenkov notes that cost was a consideration during the selection, but adds that the financial crisis pushed all domestic vendors towards a ‘flexible price policy’. The team did not consider any foreign offerings. They come with a considerably higher price tag, he explains, plus there is concern over their adaptability to the specifics of the Russian market. Also, Partner’s volumes of operations are modest (up to 2000 transactions per day worth up to $30 million maximum), so the company ‘does not need, and physically can’t take on, a huge system suitable for the likes of UBS’. For now, Partner ‘feels comfortable’ with Diasoft’s team and the technology it supplies.