If you have a problem – we can fix it

. . . . A brief review of some SSS Projects . . . .

Taxpoint - Corporate

Taxpoint - Corporate is one of the market leading PC based corporation tax packages. The project started in the early eighties as a PC project written for NatWest’s Centre file Ltd. and chartered accountants Ernst Whinney. Now, after passing through many corporate hands, the software is developed and marketed by FDS Taxpoint Ltd / CCH Software Ltd.

SSS has played a leading and central role in the evolution of the product from its inception to its market position today. Together with tax professionals SSS produced the system specification. Two of our consultants, designed and wrote a proprietory applications development tool so that the bulk of the system could be 'written' at Centre-file by non-programmer tax experts. SSS has provided advice and direction over the whole range of strategic and technical issues typically associated with such products and been retained by every owner of the product.

The Amalgamated Metal Corporation's Treasury Management System.

This system also started out in the early eighties as a single user foreign exchange position keeping system running on an eight bit CP/M micro computer.

Over the years it has evolved into a dual domain multi-user networked system; handling a wide range of financial instruments. The system covers everything from deal entry through to a fully compliant, multi-currency, back office accounting module.

During this evolution, the system became one of the first (NetBIOS driven) implementations of true client/server design, long before this topography became the fashion in the computer press.

Today the system remains the backbone of AMC’s financial systems.

FXFA

This is a foreign exchange and commodity futures package written for the Swiss Finance Corporation Ltd. It enables SFC to monitor their clients' margin trading activities; from deal entry (including position monitoring for dealer support) to client statements and back office reports. SSS implemented the whole project, from planning and design through coding to testing and installation. SSS is retained to provide support and ongoing development for FXFA.

SSS has also built a link so that FXFA could transfer information into a multi-currency ledger package provided by another supplier.

SSS has built an asynchronous serial port communications module that enables direct transfer of trade tickets from the Reuters 3000 trader's network into the back office systems; without the need to re-key ticket data.

Most recently, SSS has added another major module to FXFA that enables SFC to send statements to their counterparties via email and or fax.

An adaptation of FXFA has also been installed in CIBC Geneva.

Exchange Direct

Until recently Exchange Direct Plc was the UK's largest specialist foreign exchange provider of physical currency to the corporate and private sectors. Sadly the company is now in liquidation resulting from suspected fraud. However, this is not to distract from the successful major back office accounting and trading support system designed and installed by SSS on behalf of Exchange direct.

Once again, SSS proved able to implement the whole project; that started as a sketch on the back of an envelope and ended up supporting four branches spread across Europe and web site integration.

The Trader Module

This was a trade capture module developed for a number of Korean equity houses in London. The module acted as an integrator supporting:

Customisable capture of trade details over a range of financial instruments from 'vanilla' equities to OTC derivatives.

Interaction with the clients' favoured core ledger package to transmit real time, unrealised position keeping ledger entries.

Serial communications transfer of transaction information to clearing houses and regulatory authorities.

As usual, SSS designed and built the system from scratch.

Insurance Products - Fact Finds and Quotation systems

SSS has extensive knowledge of the structure and special needs of systems to support insurance professionals, having worked on well known PFA support programs such as Finale. Typically, SSS was called in to do additional, specialist enhancements such as extensions to the fact find for Alliance and Leicester and proprietary commission structures for Berkeley Morgan.

SSS has designed and written quotation systems for brokers operating in the Home, Contents and Mortgage insurance sectors. The systems provide:

Modern interfaces for the capture of information with ‘what if’ functionality

Quotations using the full set of applicable rules and windows displaying rules in use

High quality completed proposal forms, letters and quick quotes

Ever alert to the impact of new technologies on our clients’ sectors, SSS is investigating the true relevance of XML, and revolutionary new databases, to the field of quotation systems.

Credit Cards

Nothing illustrates SSS’s “we will not be beaten” attitude more than this project for 3C Communications Ltd.

Credit card transactions stored in a number of devices such as telephones and parking payment machines were transmitted to 3C’s central computer in Europe. However, there were business critical delays and inaccuracies in distributing the consolidated results back out to 3C’s national subsidiaries; although enquiries via on line terminals were reliable.

SSS devised a program to force a client terminal to loop through its relevant transactions displaying them on screen one after the other. As each transaction was displayed, the transaction information was extracted from the screen’s video buffer (the original ‘screen scraper’?) and transferred to a local database. SSS then wrote a program to translate this database and copy it up onto a magnetic tape for transfer to the credit card transaction processing companies.

Each credit card company had its own tape format and SSS was the first organisation to ‘pass’ its submission tests first time by all of the processing companies.

We could go on! However, the above should suffice to illustrate the problem solving aptitude of

SSS Consultants