Overview

In the previous chapter we looked at issues surrounding relationships and resource in terms of the internal structure. Just as important are the relationships that an organization has externally.

The external relationships will be with either clients or suppliers of services of one sort or another. The client may be retail, corporate or institutional. They could be based in the same location or be remote and they could be overseas. The client profile is important for many business reasons and, of course, it is important for the type of service that will be provided. We deal with this subject in Chapter 5 so for the moment let us focus on the non-client relationships in the sense that we are in fact the client and utilize other organizations services and facilities. By using Figure 3.1 we can see where these relationships might occur.

Figure 3.1: Operations relationships

The various relationships that an organization might have will also be varied in their nature. In similar vein to internal relationships there will be those that are almost constant and others that are periodic. Some may be critical, others not so critical, and yet each is important in the overall scheme of things. We can look at some of these relationships from a specific point of view and consider the issues that arise for the Operations teams.

Exchanges/markets

The obvious link between exchanges and Operations is the transaction data. Today with more and more exchanges moving to electronic trading the links into the...