Our expertise is in using technology to solve problems. I think all of the people here are very solution-oriented, and that's what gives us our advantage. Rather than just confining ourselves to a set solution, we look at the way the technology can assist us in making a decision.

Refinements and solutions to meet new problems often arise out of steps taken in our previous work. You have to keep upgrading, have to stay current with what's available. Not just faster and faster hardware; that's only an incremental solution. To address the base of a problem -- to solve the problem better or more efficiently -- that's where the people come in.

Working a new piece into the system - a nifty performance attribution engine, for example -- means having to come up with the way to feed it the right data, then getting the two computer systems to talk to each other. It's like building a road between two cities; you have to work around mountains and rivers and unstable ground to create a smooth, safe link. That's hard. You can't delegate that outside the firm. In this technology-driven business, it's almost impossible for one person to have all the expertise needed to do every job.

Where teamwork comes in is leveraging the talents of specialists, like the virtual investment team, the database vendors, and the software vendors we collaborate with. The external consultants on the virtual investment team work with the customized data I put in place. John Philson runs simulations and backtesting for the historical analysis we need to confirm our disciplines. Bob Olson's understanding of portfolio management issues helps us define what we have to deal with. Once these two have put together the elements we need to solve a research problem, the investment team here approves it and I then create the handshake that works the new piece into our system.