The financial sector is often one of the biggest and most demanding customers of the software development profession.
We are experienced developers of financial applications of all kinds, from demanding and data-intensive trading systems to back office transaction management and accounting systems. We are able to integrate all kinds of data sources, and to provide output exported in a variety of formats for filing, official reporting or any other purpose.
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Financial data demands
The financial sector presents its own set of challenges to software developers, because data often tends to come in a variety of formats, often inconsistent with each other, and systems have to be able to "talk" to each other, despite the lack of an agreed standard form in many cases. For example, a system may need to take information from a pricing data feed, run algorithms and business logic, and then submit a quote to a client, while maintaining a record of that quote for accounting purposes. When dealing with such a wide variety of formats, it is easy to get confused. This is why so many important IT functions in finance end up being dealt with by spreadsheets, with an expensive and error-prone human being reconciling the data by hand.
Dealing with your financial data issues by putting them into a spreadsheet is, obviously, not the best way to handle them. If you can eliminate that spreadsheet by sitting down with a consultant and working on a clear and rigorous definition of the data and process which you need, not only are you on your way to getting a stable and reliable application which can automate the task, you are also likely to be improving your understanding of the business itself.
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Robustness, security and speed
It goes without saying that in an application which is dealing with financial transactions, reliability and security are of the utmost importance. Stehlik's philosophy is that reliability and security are in many cases the same thing, and that both are driven by the integrity of the underlying design and its execution. A system which has been designed from the ground up has fewer things which can go wrong with it, because it maintains a single concept of the data and its control all the way through. The weaknesses in a piece of software tend to arise in places where different components have to work together; not only are these the flaws which can lead to crashes and data corruption, they are also the vulnerabilities which hackers try to exploit. Our design methods and principles minimise the number of potential weaknesses, leading to end products which are more reliable and therefore more secure.
A bespoke application also runs more quickly, given the same hardware. In some financial applications, this can be critical, particularly when dealing with data which itself arrives at high frequency. Even for systems which do not have to deal with the microsecond speeds of modern stock exchanges, it is always better to have an application which works quickly and provides feedback to the users immediately, giving them confidence that the transaction has been processed correctly.
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Accounting, tax and legal
One of the few cases in which we work with outside vendors and off-the-shelf software at Stehlik is when producing applications which have to interact with accounting, tax and legal systems. The rules in these areas change all the time, and the tax system, sadly, cannot be relied upon to respect sound principles of systems design! The largest providers of tax and accounting solutions are able to invest the specialist time and expertise in keeping their products up-to-date for changes in the law, but this comes at the expense of flexibility and performance in the systems themselves.
Stehlik's experienced professional developers and consultants are able to work with existing packages and integrate our applications with Sage, SAP and similar systems, allowing you to use an efficient bespoke application for the parts of your business where performance is critical, and a vendor solution to ensure compliance with legal and accounting requirements. Integrating systems in this way is often a challenging task for developers, but it is best carried out by understanding the end requirement from the first step of the design process.
Contact us to find out how we can make your systems work better
We believe that our approach to bespoke systems development is capable of reliably delivering superior systems. If you do not have a custom built application to streamline your management processes, it is our belief that your business is likely to not be operating as efficiently as it could be. Contact us at sales@stehlik.co.uk for an initial discussion, and you can find out more about the ways in which bespoke software development can lead to tangible improvements in planning and production, and the ways in which Stehlik has the skill and commitment to deliver the best software systems.
