Systems designed to increase operational efficiency can have the counterintuitive effect of lowering efficiency and increasing cost by introducing processes that don't reflect the adopting organizations business model.

Emmi avoids this pitfall by providing a comprehensive systems setup suite that allows processes to be introduced based on the organization's current structure and future plans. For example, an IPA with multiple operational centers will have different needs than an IPA with a single operational center. This modeling capability ensures the appropriateness of the processes that are put in place and lessens the potential of end-user resistance to the introduction of a new system.

Emmi provides operational efficiency opportunities to the IPAs business partners (broker/dealers) and clients (issuers) allowing the IPA to provide value added services at no additional cost.
  
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System Configuration

Emmi provides the opportunity to define operational structure down to the point where multiple operational centers can be created, each operating under its own currency with its own operational calendar and attachment to a specified depository (or depositories). Each operational center can have its own staff with assigned rights, its own vault / note printing operation and its own reporting capabilities.

Each of these operational centers exist as part of the parent organization and all transactional information from all operational centers can be rolled-up into a single reporting view supporting a single general ledger.

Integration with External Systems

Transactions can be entered directly into the Emmi interface, or can be initiated by a external system such as DTCC's PIMS, Thompson's CanDeal or Sungard's STN Money Markets. Integration with external systems reduces timing and matching errors and increases efficiency by eliminating the IPA's need to dedicate staff for data entry.

Integration with Internal Systems

At various stages of the issuance and payment process, other departments and processes within the organization need to become involved. A list of these departments and processes might include DDA, money transfer, treasury, risk management, billing and general ledger.

Internal systems integration can dramatically reduce operational costs by eliminating multiple, redundant data entry tasks. This, in turn, reduces the possibility of costly data entry errors and the possibility of damaged business relationships.

Emmi was designed to ease the complexity of integration with these systems by incorporating a toolkit that allows an administrator to define fields needed to communicate with an external system and triggers/procedures to cause information to be moved from one system to another.

Data Security

Data integrity is usually defined in terms of assurance that information can only be accessed or modified by those authorized to do so and that it remains as entered for the life of its use.

From an operations perspective, data integrity can also be viewed in terms of the information's correctness at the time it is entered or imported into a system. Emmi insures transactional data integrity in the following manners:

•	Emmi authenticates the source of data manually entered into the system.
•	Emmi makes extensive use of automated processes to ensure transactional (data) integrity during all phases of a transactions life span dramatically reducing both corrective processes and financial loss.
•	Data that is entered or imported into the system is automatically checked for correctness and further validated by affirmation processes. In addition to processes to assure correctness at inception, audit trail tracking is performed for all phases up to and including the final movement of funds at payout.

All of the above data integrity measures are designed to reduce both the human interaction normally associated with such activities as well as the financial loss associated with failing to provide this level of data integrity.

Process Flow Management

Emmi's Note Manager makes it possible for straight through processing (STP) to be achieved in an intelligent manner where validation is automatically applied based on established risk management procedures and subsequent processes are automatically monitored to eliminate timing errors.

This level of attention is applied to both the issuance process (book, physical or hybrid) as well as the subsequent processes involving the movement of funds. During levels of high activity, dash board-like utilities provide an immediate overview of all processes needing attention and operational drill-down is possible right down to the individual note level.