Toronto-based Dundee Securities Corp. has traded up in its telephony infrastructure while keeping a close eye on the future.
The brokerage investment dealer has recently completed the integration of Syntegra’s voice trading technology to outfit its new facility, the company announced this week.
Syntegra’s solution for Dundee Securities, designed specifically for the financial trading industry, includes its ITS voice trading platform, a modular solution designed to grow with the company. This platform includes PBX integration, multi-user administration and customization as well as the physical speakers, handsets and integrated intercoms.
Paul Stapleton, Dundee Securities’ vice-president of systems and its CTO, said the voice trading technology is crucial to the industry, as many the transactions are conducted and completed over the telephone.
“A good voice system is very important to the business,” Stapleton said.
The company’s last telephony upgrade was in 1995, so the decision to rip and replace its existing infrastructure was based on necessity as well as on changing needs.
“We reached the point where the technology was at the end of its life,” he said, noting that the Syntegra system’s benefits outweighed its cost.
According to Syntegra America’s New York-based general manager and vice-president of trading systems, the solution can be described as a telephone system “kicked up a few notches.” Jim Kern said that unlike telephone systems in most organizations, the voice trading technology has increased redundancy, which is imperative in the trading sector.
“The phone is the lifeblood of the trader. If the front system is down, you’re not trading and if you’re not trading, you’re not making money,” he said.
With the Syntegra solution, if half a switch goes down, the other half will pick it up, and customers will never experience a busy signal, Kern explained.
For Dundee Securities, customers didn’t have to experience a busy signal during the system’s rollout either. According to Stapleton, the infrastructure was put in place and the phones cut over during a weekend.
“This was one of the reasons we chose what we did. It was a planned approach with no downtime,” he said.
While Dundee Securities opted for a solution without all of the bells and whistles that Syntegra’s platform has to offer, Stapleton said that the organization is already looking ahead on the upgrade path.
The current system includes features such as call display, but is not tied into the CRM capabilities that Syntegra is able to deliver. Kern described some of the features that Dundee Securities might decide to incorporate down the road.
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