Data Catalogue Study

Objective

The objective of this study was to understand how financial institutions evaluate and choose market data feed providers. We examined decision-making dynamics, usage intensity across roles, vendor preferences and the factors influencing renewal and switching. The goal was to clarify who drives decisions and what sustains long-term vendor loyalty.

The Challenge

Market data feeds are deeply embedded in financial workflows, but vendor selection and renewal decisions are rarely straightforward. Influence is distributed across technical, commercial and user stakeholders, making it difficult to pinpoint what truly drives preference and retention.
Key challenges included:

Multi-Layered Decision Influence Purchase and renewal decisions involved heads of market data, CIOs, enterprise data managers and end users, each evaluating vendors through different lenses.
Usage Intensity Variation Adoption and dependency differed significantly across roles, creating gaps between procurement logic and day-to-day user experience.

Our Approach

We treated vendor selection as a behavioural ecosystem, not a feature comparison exercise.
Here’s how we did it:

Stakeholder Interviews Conducted in-depth interviews across decision-makers, influencers and end users in North America, EMEA and APAC.
Institution Diversity Included banks, hedge funds, asset managers and corporate institutions to reflect real market diversity.
Decision Mapping Mapped decision pathways from initial evaluation through renewal and switching triggers.
Insight Integration Captured qualitative insights alongside survey-based indicators on vendor usage, evaluation criteria and satisfaction levels.
Vendor Benchmarking Benchmarked perceived strengths and weaknesses across leading market data providers.

The Outcome

The study clarified who influences vendor decisions and how usage intensity shapes renewals. It showed where loyalty came from workflow dependency versus switching friction and where dissatisfaction built quietly despite surface satisfaction. The insights helped refine positioning, strengthen retention strategy and align product priorities with decision-makers and power users, beyond pricing-only churn assumptions.

Client Remarks