“Operations need to be viewed as a “client” of the IT group”

Energy trading companies as with all companies in general want to ensure they have the right business model in order to be successful, and knowing how to put certain strategies in place especially whilst dealing with the back office and IT department is crucial. 

We recently had a chat with Julie Carruthers, Global Head of Operations & Chief of Staff at TP ICAP about collaboration between the back office and IT department, the dealings and relationship with exchanges and clearing partners and lastly the management of recent mergers and acquisitions.

Join us in the interview below with Julie: 

You talk about how IT and Back Office should work in a partnership. Could you give a glimpse at what you implemented to reach that level of collaboration?

I think the key word here is collaboration. Operations need to be viewed as a “client” of the IT group and their requirements need to be prioritised alongside the revenue generating projects. This also requires a partnership with the business. Everyone needs to be working towards the same goals and efficiencies for it to be a successful model.

Being the global head of operations, you supervise the group’s relationship with the exchanges and the clearing partners. What would you say is the top challenge when dealing with these entities?

Being an Inter Dealer Broker (IDB) we are in a unique situation as we don’t perform a lot of the activities that a client or FCM would do yet we are critical to the smooth running of the energy markets. The top challenge for us is, because we are in that Market Infrastructure role, we are under increasing scrutiny from the Clearers and Exchanges and so the overhead on us as brokers is growing. By overhead I mean the technical changes we need to make to support demonstrating orderly markets, reporting obligations and more importantly helping our clients meet their obligations also. 

Your company has been involved in several mergers and acquisitions in the past few years. How have you been ensuring proper integration of both operations functions.

Most companies have a history of acquisition and with that comes different sets of technology and operational processes. The key to ensuring proper integration of the operations functions is to ensure that the standards don’t drop so constant monitoring of the key KRI’s and KPI’s is key. When migrating to new systems then the vital element for me is disciplined project management to ensure that all scenarios and stakeholders have been covered and are involved in testing and sign off.

Julie will be speaking at the upcoming ETOT Summit this October in London! 

Click here to view the Agenda