Interview Questions

Full Interview with Sandy Frucher

Sandy Frucher:

The future of our business depends on staying ahead of the technology curve. This is a business where volume continues to expand exponentially. Because of this, IT must guarantee that we have the capacity to go with this expanding traffic. Secondly, I want the IT team to be strategic and be able to respond to [the other exchanges that are] our competition. The last objective I'm looking for is to have them integrate our options, equity and futures products technologically so we have things running on a common platform. We're working on a slogan that is something like, 'One Technology, Three Markets'. We need IT to support that.

 

Sandy Frucher:

IT can't ever go wanting. I need to make sure their part of the business is adequately funded. We made that mistake once before I arrived, and we're not going to make it again. Bill and his whole operation go through the same rigorous budget process as everybody else, but they generally get what they need because that's the heart of the business. The other thing is that we've put Bill in charge of operations. Once you determine that IT is the business, it's silly to separate it.

 

Sandy Frucher:

 

We have to ensure the integrity of our markets. When we look at new technologies and competitive technologies, we need to make sure the systems do what we need them to do and that they're cost-effective. We ask ourselves: does it make sense? Can we save money with it? Then we put it through business analysis and make determinations accordingly. Part of that cost-benefit analysis is the opportunity cost associated with how we deploy our IT manpower. It's not a question of straight dollars. It's a trade-off of one system versus another system, because we've learned that you can't do it all at once.

 

 

Sandy Frucher:

No. In a business, you have to be prepared to fail in order to succeed. There are many times that you're going to make investments where the investment itself doesn't pay off in a bottom-line kind of way but is a necessary interlude at a particular moment in time.

Sandy Frucher:

The CEO of a business has to do two things: He has to have adequate information to run the business and has to be sure that he does not have too many direct reports. With too many of those, you are limiting your capacity to manage. You have too much information coming at you, too many people that you have to interact with on a regular basis. [But] this is a business that's conducted from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and frequently there are disruptions in the process that are critical to the whole market structure of the United States. If we can't conduct business, under the law, I'm required to call a meeting of a committee that makes the determination as to whether or not to send the order flow to another exchange. So, I need to have direct contact with Bill 24/7.

Sandy Frucher:

The biggest lesson is never to underfund it because it's much harder to catch up. Second, do not rely on anything you build to be a long-term solution because the world will change and there are forces that will make you change your strategies and your technologies to comply at a moment's notice. The third lesson is what makes the other two lessons so important: the world is changing at speeds much greater than anybody could ever have anticipated, and therefore, you can never rest on your laurels.

 

Sandy Frucher:

I would want to have triple redundancy instead of double redundancy. I'm amazed when you have a problem with something that's so off the wall, there's no way to anticipate it. And as soon as you fix it, something else goes wrong. That's just the way systems are. This is one reason we decided to make the investment to build the standalone technology center - to have backups to our backups. You can't build in enough safeguards in our kind of business. All you can do is prepare for problems and be flexible enough to solve them quickly and move forward.