Steve Matthews is CEO of The Roberts Group.

What were the major themes for your business in 2015?

Cost savings, enhanced transparency, and doing more with less…

In 2015 we saw the continued need for the identification of cost savings opportunities, and enhanced levels of detail in reporting and analysis to business users to give full transparency to their cost base. To that end, TRG released the FITS Analytics Suite providing advanced reporting, graphical visualizations and interactive dashboarding, allowing market data managers to easily navigate and analyze their market data expense data in a simple drag/drop interface and share data with management and business sponsors.

We’ve also seen significant increases in demand for fully managed market data services, both from smaller firms without dedicated market data functions, and new demand from larger firms in both the sell- and buy-sides. This is driven by the pressure to reduce market data management resource levels, leading organizations to outsource business-as-usual administrative functions such as invoice reconciliation so their core staff can focus on value add and realizing cost saving opportunities for their business.

What are your expectations for 2016?

A total view across all enterprise subscriptions & expenses, and demand for inventory management in new sectors

In 2016 we anticipate organizations wanting to realize the benefits of their market data inventory & management platforms for additional, non-market data, expense categories such as software, research etc. Organizations are looking for a total view of their spend across all their enterprise subscriptions and expenses, consolidated into a single system and reporting and analytics platform. This platform will offer both summary-level detail, and the ability to drill down into individual line item expenses.