TCS Aspire Service
Business Process Outsourcing
TCS Aspire Service - outsourced
best practice reconciliations
It is a constant challenge to improve reconciliation
performance against a backdrop of new and increasingly
complex financial instruments and escalating transaction
volumes. Processing reconciliations efficiently represents
a significant back office workload, in many cases requiring
a large workforce with correspondingly high overheads.
Scaling up to meet demand when business volumes rise
can prove expensive and slow, and it is difficult to reduce
costs when market activity declines.
An inflexible cost base wears away at profitability. The
TCS Aspire Service offers fully outsourced reconciliations,
purchased according to the precise business needs of
each client – users only pay for the resources they need
to meet the processing requirements at that particular
time. As a result, the TCS Aspire Service is a flexible,
results-led offering focused on increasing performance
and reducing costs through the application of industry
best practice, market-leading technology and an
on-demand supply of skilled staff.
Introducing the TCS Aspire Service
Ideally, a fully straight-through-processing (STP)
environment would deliver matched trades at every
step, minimising business risk and complying with
global financial regulations. In practice, even operations
with high STP rates still require significant costly manual
intervention to repair failing transactions and resolve
exceptions.
Skilled personnel are recruited and retained to cope
with the workload. However, the highly volatile nature of
transaction volumes often means that teams are either
overloaded or under utilised. By eliminating the cost and
time expended on reconciliations – a function that should
be a standardised, automated business process – people
and resources may be released for more productive and
profitable work.
The TCS Aspire Service offers industry best practice
approach to reconciliations, using the very best in
automation technology, and introduces rigorous,
measurable standards and business processes. The TCS
Aspire Service enables reconciliations to be treated as a
true service. Through the reconciliation of transactions
at all stages of their lifecycle, the service provides the
opportunity to identify areas for process improvement
and cost reduction.
Seeking best practice
Internal reconciliation services are often fragmented into
many operations units dispersed throughout the organisation.
The physical separation of teams is frequently mirrored by
the existence of multiple reconciliation processes and
infrastructure, making it difficult to gain an accurate view
of transactions, positions, risk and liabilities.
Even where reconciliation match rates are very high, the
volume and value of transactions mean that even a small
variation in these rates can impact the manual workload
requirements enormously. In the worst case, an inability
to identify and resolve exceptions could breach internal
standards and threaten compliance with the relevant
regulatory control.
The TCS Aspire Service is based on shared service provision
of SmartStream’s TLM® Reconciliations software, delivering
intelligent automation and standardisation to reconciliations
management. The market-leading reconciliations vendor and
the world-class TCS management services form a complete
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solution.
This approach enables financial institutions to access a centre
of excellence that offers best practice processes and very high
reconciliation match rates. As a result, the TCS Aspire Service can
help institutions save up to 40% of their current reconciliation
processing cost.
The TCS Aspire Service also ensures that institutions can meet
the changing demands for best practice as instrument types,
markets and regulations continue to evolve.
New reconciliations can be efficiently created to processes new
instruments types as they are required by customers, removing
the onerous and expensive task of in-house upgrades. The TCS
Aspire Service offers a suite of pre-packaged reconciliations
based on proven processes for those institutions looking to
quickly automate certain instrument types.
This is possible because its best practice processes have been
developed through exposure to the stringent requirements of
demanding clients. The TCS Aspire Service is available as a fully
scalable service, without the cost and delay of capital expenditure
and skills acquisition, at very attractive fixed rates.

• Industry-leading reconciliations
• Complex Investigations
and exceptions management Components of the TCS Aspire Service • External party liaison for
platform
resolution/closure
• Highly efficient and secure web
• Escalation
based application
• SME Support
• Configurable MIS dashboards
• MI Reporting
• Includes most advanced
• Performance Management/
matching algorithms, supports
KPI Review
widest range of asset classes
O
S Aspire peration
TC s
• Identification of re-engineering
opportunities
• Compliance to global data
• Identification & analysis of
protection laws, regulatory
N
Value

reconciliation synergies and

requirements
ing

et

consolidation of reconciliations
wo

• Comprehensive DR/BCP
Host
Migration

Added Service
r ks

• Support of reconciliation
through multi-centre TLM® simplification and accelerated
operations
development of new
reconciliation types
Hardware
s

• Offshore processing of Core

and Client specific product • Onsite analysis of reconciliation
Clie s types and population
reconciliations nt O peration
• Customized reconciliation • Conversion of reconciliations
service driven by flexible from current platform to TLM
business rules helping in • Transition Management
achieving highest STP rate • Knowledge transfer from
• On-shore/near-shore client and preparation of
investigation teams integrated process documents
to client business
 TCS Aspire Operating Model

Client 1 Client 2
Thin Client browser interface

Onshore / Nearshore Operations

• Mirror offshore operations for BCP • Technology site functions
• Complex Investigations • Client site functions
Process re-engineering/Consulting

Transition Management
Client Specific Recs Offshore Factory Client Specific Recs

Functions
Core Reconciliation Team Mode of Operation
• Allocation Functions Mode of Operation • Workflow driven
investigation • Control Administration (file upload/ • 24x7 operation communication
• Propose matches monitoring, Access Control, etc) • Standard processes for all with Core Recs
• Client liaison • Auto Matching clients on same platform • Access to
• Exception • Manual Matching • Focus on matching data sets proprietary
Management • Allocation & Reallocations without reference to the systems and data
/MIS and reporting • Proposed Matches Validation underlying trade system
• Exception Management & Reporting • Shared Service model
partitioned multi-entity system

Technology Platform: SmartStream’s TLM

The Global Relationship of the TCS Aspire Service and it’s clients

SmartStream: Market leadership

TLM® Reconciliations from SmartStream has been designed to available by reporting tools enables reconciliation processes to
reduce operational risk and cost through industry-leading match be scrutinised, contributing further to continuous match rate
rates, with the inherent flexibility to support new instrument improvement and cost reduction.
types and business models. Using the analysis and reporting
For smaller reconciliation operations and volumes the TCS
tools within TLM, organisations can overcome barriers to STP,
Aspire Service offers on-demand access to software and highly
reducing costs and accelerating the flow of business
skilled resources that might otherwise be out of reach.
information.
For larger financial institutions with intensive reconciliations
The TCS Aspire Service offers the ability to examine and re-
activities, the TCS Aspire Service opens up the opportunity to
engineer workflows, discover the root causes of transaction
transfer operations to a more cost-effective model, removing
failures, and take corrective action to reduce costs and improve
capital expenditure and introducing a fully flexible service-
match rates. Exceptions can be inspected, investigated, analysed
oriented solution.
and resolved using thin-client access technologies, regardless of
location. Consolidated business reports can be generated
rapidly without the need for manual intervention and viewed
through the browser interface. The detailed information made
Advantages of reconciliations
outsourcing with TCS
The TCS Aspire Service is based principally on the highly successful
on-site/off-shore TCS Global Network Delivery Model™. TCS offers
firm commitments to agreed service levels at specific rates.
TCS offers the dual advantages of a low-cost operational model
and the elimination of the capital investment required to build,
deploy and manage a reconciliations service. By standardising the
reconciliations service as a processing, exceptions and analysis
service, financial institutions are free to redeploy valuable staff to
better effect elsewhere in the organisation.
www.tcs.com
Contact TCS Aspire for reconciliations
excellence
To find out more about the extensive benefits offered by TCS
Aspire Service, contact TCS at uk.info@tcs.com www.tcs.com/bpo
SmartStream Technologies
To find out more about SmartStream Technologies,
contact marketing@smartstream-stp.com
www.smartstream-stp.com
About Tata Consultancy Services
Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, business solutions
and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global
businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match.
TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and
IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network
Delivery Model™, and recognized as a benchmark of excellence
in software development.
A part of the Tata Group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate,
TCS has over 100,000 of the world's best trained IT consultants
in 41 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues
of US $5.7 billion for fiscal year ended 31 March 2008 and is listed
on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in
India. For more information, visit us at www.tcs.com