How a Tier 1 Investment Bank Saved $4.2M Through Distribution Engineering

The Challenge

A global Tier 1 investment bank with $45 million in annual market data expenditure across five major business units faced a complex and costly data infrastructure problem. Years of organic growth, acquisitions, and decentralized procurement had created a fragmented landscape:

• Duplicate data feeds consuming identical content across multiple business units, each paying separately
• Fragmented vendor relationships with over 60 individual contracts and no consolidated negotiation leverage
• MiFID II compliance concerns related to data redistribution across European operations
• No enterprise-wide view of data consumption, making it impossible to identify redundancy or waste
• Individual business units optimizing locally while the enterprise overspent globally

Our Approach

Oceanview Partners designed a comprehensive distribution engineering engagement that mapped the entire data supply chain from vendor source to end consumer. Our team -- including specialists with deep EMEA regulatory expertise -- executed a four-phase strategy:

• Distribution Engineering Audit: Mapped every data feed, API connection, and terminal across all five business units, identifying where the same content was being delivered through multiple channels
• Cross-Department Data Flow Mapping: Created an enterprise-wide data consumption model showing exactly which business units consumed which data products, enabling identification of consolidation opportunities
• Vendor Consolidation Strategy: Developed a unified vendor management framework that consolidated 60+ individual contracts into strategic enterprise agreements, significantly improving commercial terms
• EMEA Regulatory Alignment: Ensured all data redistribution practices across European operations met MiFID II requirements, with particular focus on pre- and post-trade transparency obligations

The Results

Beyond the immediate financial impact, the bank gained an enterprise-wide view of its data consumption for the first time, enabling ongoing optimization and informed decision-making around future data investments. The unified vendor management framework continues to generate savings through consolidated negotiations and strategic sourcing.