Speed and efficiency really are important in the business of making money out of money

Data entry in foreign exchange dealing by KATHY LAWRENCE

T o most of us the ins and outs of the money markets are a com- plete mystery. Take the foreign

exchange room of the European Banking Company in the City of London. When you first enter the dealer room, the atmosphere seems fairly calm. Suddenly without notice, shouting starts, then dies down just as

quickly. Some of the hubbub comes from the people sitting or standing at their stations around the edge of the room, but the attention is focused on those in the middle.

Here half a dozen young people are

grouped together, each at a desk, with four telephones, a console with two

screens, a keyboard, more speakers

and a datapad. They pick up the phones, say a few unintelligible words, then lead across to each other and say some more, at the same time referring to the Reuters’ screen through the keyboard, and entering

Abstract: In the money dealing markets a computerized data enttl)! system needs to be

very easy to handle and vety quick. One group of dealers found that a datapad used with an electronic pen proved efficient in recording transactions and keeping track of

the day’s trading.

Keywords: data processing, banking, data

entry.

data through the datapad. It’s diffi- cult to tell, but these people are buying and selling large quantities of

currency very rapidly, and aiming to make a profit on every deal.

Director David Mitchem reckons the group make a total number of about a thousand transactions a day - that’s 100 deals each, daily. Keep-

ing track of all these deals means keeping note of a lot of information:

who the deal was with, how much for, buy or sell, and Mitchem calls his dealers ‘very expensive bookkeepers’.

The dealers work in this way: each dealer has a currency to deal in, such as Yen. Some share a currency, where there is a lot of dealing in that area. For each transaction the dealer has to record the deal information, and he or she wants to know what profit has

been made and what position they are in overall. Previously the dealers

would scribble on purchase or sell orders, illegibly and probably incom- pletely - depending on how hectic the market was at the time. Now the European Banking Company has in- stalled electronic datapads and the whole data recording system has be- come much more efficient.

Electronic datapad

The pad the dealers use is similar to the ones you see in fast food shops,

but contains many more options, about 750. The configuration of the

pad is decided by the system, which also produced the overlay to fit over the top, mapping the squares onto the relevant options. With such small option squares, touch technology is inappropriate, so the dealers pick out their choices with electronic pens. This has the added bonus of avoiding

the problem of dealers leaning on their pads to write on other papers, and producing exotic entries as a result.

Computerizing this operation has been a problem because of the speed needed in response and the large number of variables. The database used here holds 1200 counterparties (other banks with whom the Euro-

pean Banking Company frequently does business) on penpoint selection, by name and country, and a further 200 which can be picked more labo- riously from the database. For the really unusual deal, the dealer can input the name of the counterparty one letter at a time.

As the dealer goes through the stages of making a deal, he or she can pick out the counterparty, the coun- try it’s in, and whether the deal is by phone, telex, Reuters, verbal or writ- ten. They can then fill in the details of the deal. This information immediate- ly appears on a 16 line screen in front

42 0011-684X/841070042-02$03.00 0 1984 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd data processing

applications

Datapads help zn the hectic business O,

bu_ying and selling foreign exchange.

f

of the dealer, as the bottom line of the last 10 deals made. The screen also shows an updated present position,

profit, buy and sell rates and the amount traded, all of which are vitally

important to the dealer in doing a

good job.

If the dealer has trme to complete all the details of the transaction then and there, pressing ‘Ticket OK’ pro-

duces a deal ticket on preprinted

stationery. These deal tickets are cur-

rently used to input the data to the DEC PDP- 11 accounting machine

elsewhere in the building. When this is replaced by a DEC Vax later in the year the deal data will be communi- cated directly to the accounting sys-

tem. If dealing is hectic, and the dealer

doesn’t have time to fill in all the details on the screen, he or she can pick ‘Done, not complete’ and then

go back later to fill it in. Or if the dealer realises a mistake from earlier

in the dealing, he or she can scroll back through the entries, and edit the appropriate entry. All these trans- actions and corrected transactions are

logged, and printed out at each dealer position, thus providing a complete audit trail.

Training A further problem with computeri-

zing the dealer system is that when dealers’ incomes depend on making

good, fast deals, they will not be interested in equipment that is cum- bersome and slow. David Mitchem was surprised at the speed the dealers took to the datapads. There had been a training machine available, but as

Bob Fawcett, managing director of

supplying company Tantus Micro- systems Ltd explained, it was difficult

Who are we dealing with now?

~0126 no 7 septemher 1984

to get a dealer to sit there for more than 15 minutes at a time. Even then they were making deals over their shoulders. So training was pretty minimal, but the dealers now use the system with ease. Even the parallel

run only lasted a couple of days. Speedy response time was arranged

by using one controller for four dealer

positions (each comprising a screen. datapad and printer’). The controller

is custom-built, based on a North Star processor. Tantus is a.bout to upgrade the controller so that it can control eight positions. Now that tile spot dealing side is just about complete, Tantus will be implementing a for-

ward dealing system for the bank as

well. Putting the datapad system in has

eliminated errors to a large extent, and allows the dealers to concentrate on the important part of their job -

making money. It has meant the loss of some clerical jobs, :hut t.hesc people are being relocated within the bank.

This is not the first keyboardless system that Tantu:; has installed.

William Hill, the UK bookmakers, has a system in its credit betting room for filling in betting slips. There are

32 terminals with datapads, and the options are the horses running in

every race that day. The European Banking Cc bmpany

has been sufficiently impresst.d with Tantus to have broug,ht a 5% share in

the company. Now Tantus wants to sell this type of system III City mar- kets. The system costs lrom ilSOO0 with &7000 for each additional dealer

position. Costs are dependent of the amount of customization needed

though. As far as the European Banking

Company is concerned, the system has helped it cope ,with its busiest quarter year yet, with fewer staff. As long as the greater volume of business leads to greater profit - and that is really up to the dealers themselves - this keyboardless data entry system will prove to be worthwhile by cutting error costs and improving efficiency.

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