Case Study – Compensation System

Case Study

© 2014 Vichara Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved


At a Glance
Client
 Multi-strategy alternative investment
management firm
 $83billion+ AuM across multiple asset
classes
Challenges
 Lack of a system to keep track of
incentives and compensation information
 Manually maintained in a set of
spreadsheets
 Inability to view high level view of the
grants in particular fund or group of funds
 Considerable work to gather consolidated
data through spreadsheets
 Lack of reports to show high level as well
as detailed view of the data
 Spreadsheets not tied to any legal
documents
Solution
 Created compensation system portal to
create, view and update grants and
compensation information
 Developed reports to view and export data
of the grants and compensation.
 Technology stack used – .Net, Silverlight,
WCF, Prism Framework, Entity
Framework, Sql Server 2008, Telerik,
Syncfusion
Benefits
 Rapid prototyping and agile development
due to Vichara’s expertise in web based
systems
 Different role based workflow allowed
segregation of duties
 Detailed audit functionality enabled
regulatory compliance
www.vichara.com
Compensation System
Client Profile
The client is a US based investment
management and advisory firm with over
$83billion of investments in less efficient
markets and alternative investments.
Business Challenges
Client has historically kept track of grants of
both points and equity in a set of
spreadsheets. As the number of employees
grew, and the complexity of accounting for
these grants increased, these spreadsheets
became unwieldy.
It was especially difficult for senior managers
to get a high-level view of all the points
granted in a particular fund, or in a particular
group of funds with similar investment
characteristics (called “strategies”), or to see
what a particular employee owned in terms of
both points and equity. While this
information was available through the
spreadsheets, it took considerable work to
gather it and report it to its users. Moreover,
the spreadsheets were not tied to legal
documents that defined the grants, resulting
in inaccuracy of grant information.
Our Solution
Vichara worked with the client to analyze
their existing tools and developed a
specification for the compensation system.
We then started development of a Silverlight
enabled web application using PRISM
framework. We divided the project into
different modules and independently
developed, tested and deployed these modules
to carry out the development parallelly.
We added different themes and controls to
provide a uniform look and feel of the

application and to provide a smooth and
enriched user experience.
The system had various user roles that could
read, create, update, delete or approve various
grant and compensation information. We
created an Admin screen that was used to
create custom complex user roles that had
different levels of access to different modules
of the system. These user roles enabled
segregation of duties.
The system had audit fuctionality that
tracked user activity in great detail.
We created a security architecture that
restricted the visibility of the highly sensitive
compensation data. Every user role was
approved by the client management. The data
was encrypted and the system was only
accessible using SSL. Every report that was
exported by the system was protected using a
random password which was available only to
the user.
We had an offshore development team lead by
an onsite project manager. The team
continuously accommodated business
feedback during its development cycle which
led to improvement in system specification
and design.
www.vichara.com
Compensation System
Results
Vichara has delivered a major release of the
compensation system catering to the client’s
need of a web based application that also
provides comprehensive reporting
functionality. Vichara continues to develop
future enhancements.
Some of the features provided in the system
are: consolidated view of the grants made to
employees that could be visualized across
various categories; compensation given to
employees with an option to see and compare
historical information; generate excel and pdf
reports as per the user’s requirement by
changing filters.
In order to achieve segregation of duties the
client leveraged the user roles feature and
created over twenty five different user roles to
access the system.
The firm’s HR is currently reliant on this
system for all compensation related business
needs.
 Compensation System

About Vichara Technologies

Vichara Technologies is a specialized technology services and solutions firm focused on solving
complex Capital Markets challenges.

Vichara has built enterprise systems for trading, portfolio management, securitization, risk
management, e-finance and financial operations for many of the world's leading financial
institutions. Vichara’s V* structured finance platform focuses on valuation, analysis and risk
management for RMBS, CMBS, CLOs, CDOs, Whole Loans etc. Vichara also provides technology
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