In the financial services industry, effective information management can make the difference between success and failure. Individual investors, for example, want fast access to the current value of their mutual funds and other investments. They want to access such information via an expanding range of output formats - some want printed documents, while others want to look up information via a Web browser, a telephone, a PDA, or another device. There are also trends toward an increasing amount of customization and personalization of content delivery.

XML helps companies meet such needs, letting them keep existing clients happy while continuing to attract new business.

In this article we will look at the general characteristics of an XML solution, as well as some specific ways that XML has helped organizations in the financial services industry manage their information. We will consider the migration to structured authoring of two companies, MFS Investment Management and Moody's Investors Service. We will consider the challenges faced by these organizations, the way XML helps solve those challenges, and the benefits that XML solutions can provide.

The Power of Structure
Because XML provides a means of defining the structure of information, content maintained in XML is guaranteed to be structurally consistent. This consistency facilitates information exchange, as the programs involved know what to expect and can verify that the messages exchanged meet those expectations. The structure of XML can also be mapped to and from other forms of structured information, such as data housed in relational databases.

Consistent structure is also a great benefit when information is published: formatting rules, maintained in templates or stylesheets, can specify how XML is delivered to specific presentation formats. Such a template-based workflow, in which source content is maintained independently of how it is ultimately presented, enables single-source publishing (often called simply "single-source"). Instead of maintaining distinct versions of a document for each form of publication (for example, distinct HTML and page layout files), updates can be made to a single source, and changes to this XML source are automatically reflected in all forms of published output.

Organizations are moving to XML both actively and passively: while some companies model their information with XML as part of a strategic plan, others simply find that the next revision of their core software supports XML. Such support ranges from behind-the-scenes uses of XML, such as storing initialization or configuration files in XML, to support that is integral to the high-level functionality of the application, such as the new capability of most current relational databases to return query results as XML.

XML Authoring Technologies
XML authoring tools are critical to managing information with XML. Such tools share a common set of core functions, including at a minimum the ability to parse, validate, open, edit, and save XML. Different tools extend this minimal functionality in different ways, providing capabilities such as integrated formatting, "tree-view" interfaces for navigation, automatic conversion of non-XML formats to XML, and interfaces to XML-enabled content management systems. Most XML authoring tools also provide a means of programming and/or scripting the application via an API, letting users and IT departments customize the authoring environment or create a custom interface with other applications.

WYSIWYG XML authoring
Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 is an XML authoring tool particularly relevant to financial services organizations. Perhaps most important, FrameMaker deeply integrates authoring and publishing functionality, providing true WYSIWYG XML authoring capability. With FrameMaker, users can see in real time how their XML will look when published to print or Adobe PDF format. WYSIWYG authoring lets authors know as they work on a document precisely how the document will paginate when printed: authors can see, for example, whether the word they're writing wraps to another line, or whether it begins a new page. Seeing how a document will paginate can be important when print output is a concern (and print output is a fundamental requirement for most organizations in the financial services industry), and page numbers can be useful reference points in a collaborative authoring environment.

Because FrameMaker is tightly integrated with Adobe PDF, authors can also easily control features of Adobe PDF that are specific to the electronic format, such as bookmarks and hyperlinks. While the FrameMaker user interface is clearly modeled around a print and Adobe PDF paradigm, FrameMaker also comes with Quadralay Webworks Publisher, Standard Edition, which offers built-in publishing capabilities for other output formats (see Figure 1). The fact that FrameMaker opens and saves compliant XML, of course, also makes it compatible with a growing range of other XML-based publishing tools.

Other established XML authoring tools include Arbortext Epic Editor and Corel XMetaL. Arbortext Epic provides formatting capability for print and Adobe PDF output via an optional add-on, which lets users define formats using FOSI (an older, SGML-based standard) or XSL-FO. While Epic provides GUI tools to aid in the generation of both types of stylesheet, it does not provide complete WYSIWYG authoring capability, but rather uses a distinct "screen FOSI" to render the document as it appears in the user interface. This can provide a general sense of how the document will look when rendered, but does not go so far as to provide real-time indications of the precise way the document will be formatted when printed.

XMetaL is still less print-publishing focused, offering CSS formatting within the authoring environment, but leaving most of the work of Adobe PDF generation to the user. It provides a customization option by which users can automatically format their XML with FOP (Formatting Object Processor), an open source program from the Apache Project, but leaves it up to users to develop their own stylesheets.

Guided XML authoring
Despite their different degrees of focus on print and Adobe PDF publishing, FrameMaker, Epic, and XMetaL have many common XML authoring capabilities. All provide real-time validation, a parallel tree-like view of XML with which to navigate and edit, and visual cues that tell authors which tags are valid in the current context. The Structure View of FrameMaker, for example, lets authors easily select a range of XML content, and move that content to another location (see Figure 2). As the user moves the insertion point to potential destination locations for the current selection, visual cues (for example the check mark next to the Para element in Figure 2) indicate whether or not the resulting change would "break" the structural integrity of the XML (i.e., result in the XML being out of conformance with its DTD). A similar functionality exists in both Epic and XMetaL.

Authoring tool as repository interface
Increasingly, XML content is managed in some form of database or repository. XML support of the Documentum 5 enterprise content management system, for example, lets authors "check in" or "check out" XML files, which can be entire documents or document components. Fine-grained security, such as that provided by Documentum 5, can also provide powerful support to collaborative authoring. With such a system, multiple authors can maintain distinct sections of a document, with a view of the current state of the entire document available to all. Content management systems also typically provide versioning capability, so edits can be undone as needed, and workflow management capability, such that review and approval processes are triggered automatically based on authoring activity. XML authoring tools are often customized to interface with such systems. While robust customization can be convenient, a basic form of compatibility exists by virtue of the XML support common to authoring tools and repositories.

XML authoring tools can serve a range of roles in relation to such repositories. In some workflows authoring tools are used primarily to edit source data, i.e., maintain the content residing in the repository. In other cases, they are more oriented toward managing the publishing process, formatting content that streams from the repository but not necessarily modifying or editing the source of that content. A common workflow in the financial services industry, for example, is to pull data (in the form of XML) from a relational database, and use an authoring tool such as FrameMaker to format such data (often aggregating it with other XML and non-XML sources) for publication.

Case Study: MFS Investment Management
MFS Investment Management (MFS) is a worldwide leader in providing investment services to individual and institutional customers, managing assets of $122 billion. As the nation's first provider of mutual funds, MFS has a wealth of experience meeting clients' information access needs, and has a historical perspective on the changes of those needs over time.

The challenge of content aggregation
The information that MFS provides to their clients comes from a range of divisions and departments across the company. A single marketing brochure, for example, includes content aggregated from an array of sources: regulatory language from Compliance, marketing language from Corporate Communications, and valuation figures from analysts and staff across several other departments. This information also comes in multiple forms, including text, data, charts, and graphics.

The creation of such materials can be very time-intensive. The large number of document sources, the expanding range of required delivery formats, and stringent requirements for accuracy combine to make publishing particularly challenging for financial services organizations like MFS.

Creating performance-marketing materials for MFS was once a slow, cumbersome process: a number of dedicated employees using QuarkXPress and Xtags worked to assemble information and lay out pages. With such manual methods, marketing staff could produce only a limited number of publications.

A structured, automated solution
MFS dramatically improved this process by implementing an automated enterprise authoring and publishing system based around FrameMaker as a core authoring and publishing tool. The system uses PatternStream from Finite Matters Limited (FML) to connect FrameMaker to content sources such as relational databases (see Figure 3). The system helps MFS to more efficiently reuse content across departments, and has enabled the company to exponentially increase productivity: the new system, with fewer staff, publishes over 400 different marketing publications quarterly, delivered on paper and online in Adobe PDF format.

Going forward with XML
While the current system is automated and already provides many of the benefits of working with structured information, such as a template-driven publishing process, it is not currently based on XML. FrameMaker provides both structured (XML-based) and unstructured authoring and publishing capabilities, and initially the system uses the unstructured capabilities of FrameMaker.

Moving to an XML-based workflow by using the structured capabilities of FrameMaker 7.0 allows financial institutions to store all information in one place, from which it can be more easily reused. By moving to XML, companies will also be able to leverage additional tools for publishing XML, such as XSLT processors.

FrameMaker 7.0 uses the same document objects, such as character and paragraph styles, to format content in both unstructured and structured modes. This means that migration to XML will not require creating templates from scratch. Rather, a FrameMaker EDD (Element Definition Document) will be used to map XML structure to existing styles and layouts. FrameMaker can also help automate the conversion of unstructured content, such as word processing files, to XML.

Enjoying the benefits of an XML solution
An XML-based system can offer MFS several significant benefits. In the first place, a centralized content repository lets MFS store all information in one place, making it easily accessible across the organization, and making content aggregation a less arduous task. Using a central repository, and using XML-based techniques for managing document components, MFS can also improve the effectiveness of collaborative authoring, maximizing content reuse.

Benefits are apparent not only in the efficiency and effectiveness of internal processes, but also in the quality and throughput of published output. With a template-based publishing workflow built on highly structured content, MFS can count on consistent style and layout across documents of a given type. XML also expands the possibilities for multichannel publishing.

Case Study: Moody's Investors Service
Moody's Investors Service (Moody's) is a leading global credit rating, research, and risk analysis firm. They publish research covering more than 2,800 institutions in over 100 countries. Published content includes opinions, research, and ratings on fixed-income securities, issuers of securities, and other credit obligations.

Vast amounts of complex data
Moody's faces the challenge of analyzing vast amounts of information, and delivering the results of their analysis to clients in a variety of formats. For Moody's, information management is critical both internally and externally. Within the organization, analysts navigate through large amounts of information from a wide array of sources in the course of their research, while outside the organization, customers rely on Moody's for timely and accurate presentation of these analysts' assessments.

Until recently, Moody's created its documents using word processing applications and QuarkXPress. The data, including financial statistics, graphs, and tables, resided in databases throughout the company. Assembling lengthy reports took weeks and the efforts of many employees. "Traditional page layout tools weren't adequate to handle the volume and complexity of our data," says Ari Weinstein, assistant vice president and manager of the Publishing Solutions Group at Moody's.

Consolidating to a single source
Moody's overcame these challenges by migrating to a structured authoring solution based on a centralized repository. First, all data was consolidated into a single database and converted to SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). Moody's then made the move to an authoring and publishing tool that understands structured information: Adobe FrameMaker. FrameMaker provides both a powerful XML/SGML authoring environment that lets users navigate and edit structured information and a page composition engine that formats structured information for delivery to print or Adobe PDF formats.

Moody's is in the process of converting its SGML data to XML. The XML data will be pulled into FrameMaker templates for formatting, and then converted to Adobe PDF for online delivery. XML represents another step forward due to the increasing availability of XML tools that can be used in the content delivery process, as well as the increasing use of XML as a standard form of data exchange. XML will also potentially give customers the ability to perform more powerful queries for their own research. For example, a customer could query all research publications and retrieve ratings for only the issuers in his or her portfolio. The fact that Moody's is using FrameMaker eases the transition from SGML to XML, as FrameMaker understands both, and (as with conversion of unstructured FrameMaker documents to XML documents authored in FrameMaker) uses common formatting methods for each.

Reaping the rewards of a structured approach
Now, when an analyst updates an opinion of an issuer in Moody's proprietary publishing system, the system automatically publishes the new information on the Web. At the same time, the system sends the information to the database as SGML. To revise the handbook, the production associate simply opens the FrameMaker file, which imports the up-to-date information.

After the FrameMaker document is complete, Moody's uses Adobe Acrobat to convert it to Adobe PDF for publication on the Web or submission to a print vendor. The Adobe solution boosted the productivity of Moody's production associates. "Producing a credit opinion handbook previously took four associates three weeks of work, and now with Adobe FrameMaker, it takes one associate just a day or two," Weinstein reports. Such time savings and increased productivity result in cost savings as well.

Conclusion
Migration to structured authoring based on XML makes sense for industries such as financial services, where quick access to well-formatted information is an expectation of both internal and external customers. Payoffs such as reduced time to market, increased efficiency, and ultimate cost savings and competitive advantage can be well worth the effort of implementing an XML-based information management solution.