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On July 25, 2003, CNQ, the Canadian Trading and Quotation System was born, a web-based, automated, regulated, and transparent marketplace for emerging public companies, investment dealers, and investors.
The technical infrastructure underlying the CNQ Marketplace is a sophisticated content-managed website built by New Media Architects (NMA), of Toronto, incorporating a live data stream from the CNQ automated trading system.
“I'd like to thank NMA for their hard work, determination and steadfast support,” said Michael Malone, CNQ’s COO. “For the past two years, they've played a pivotal role in the development of CNQ.ca. Going forward, I'm confident that with NMA's know-how, CNQ will continue to lead in the exploration of innovative, web-based, trading technologies.”
NMA has a history of enabling enterprises such as CNQ to establish their business models using the Internet. Past projects range from the ground-breaking e-minerals website (1999) – the first offering of shares by an issuing company, to the recent ZeeLINX website (2003) – the prototype of a full-service, online concierge for visitors and residents of vacation/recreation communities.
“Our role, as the technology supplier, is critical in these situations and our past experience is a valuable asset.” says Cameron Hawkins, NMA’s President.
The CNQ Marketplace, found at www.cnq.ca is a collaborative share-trading and disclosure engine, the first of it’s kind approved by the Ontario Securities Commission.
A New Business Model
CNQ is an alternative to traditional exchanges where high costs and large capitalization are often barriers to trading in a junior company’s securities. Responding to the recent consolidation of exchanges, CNQ’s founders identified the need for a low cost, streamlined marketplace – with an extremely high standard of disclosure.
A complex business model, to be sure, but one that Scott Holdsworth, NMA’s Account Representative was confident could be successfully implemented on the web.
“In order to meet the Ontario Securities Commission regulatory requirements, CNQ had to clearly and precisely define their initial requirements. This actually worked to everyone’s advantage,” said Holdsworth. “The scope of this project was nailed-down from the very beginning. In fact, the specification for the Disclosure Hall was virtually unchanged over the two-year, pre-launch phase.”
CNQ were also concerned about the more general issue of entering an entirely new, and as yet undefined, market sector. How restricted would they be? Could they react quickly enough to the demands of dealers, issuers and investors?
Holdsworth pointed out that CNQ’s web-based infrastructure would allow it to identify and react to business opportunities faster than it could using traditional business channels.
“First of all the website is completely content-managed by CNQ. In seconds, it can respond to the needs and wishes of its users. Secondly, the architecture of the website is such that users can send feedback to CNQ from virtually any page. This is a direct channel of communication from the user to CNQ – so they always know what their users are thinking.”
“Lastly,” concluded Holdsworth, ”I emphasized that we recommend building a web-based business in measured, manageable stages. The tendency is to try to cover too much ground at the start. What is more important is to establish initial success with a core service to a primary target client.”
Building an Online Securities Marketplace
CNQ business model is complex and incorporates
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NMA was responsible for building the publicly-viewed web-pages of the CNQ Marketplace as well as the secure intranet/extranet that would give various stakeholders the ability to publish information to the website.
But more than a collaborative content-management system, or CMS, the CNQ Marketplace website also incorporates live and historical trading data from CNQ’s off-line, automated trading server.
NMA VP, Dave McKay, describes the technical challenge. “Even though this was a unique, complex requirement it was relatively straightforward for us because our web technology is already entirely data-driven. ActiveApps is now at version 4.1, and from the very beginning it was designed to display content from a database in a browser.”
“So displaying the trade info wasn’t a problem. Our challenge was to take the continuous data feed from the trading server and write a web service to store it in the ActiveApps database. What was tricky was that we wouldn’t be able to test it with real data until the week before our go-live date. Time was a definitely a factor,” said McKay.
CNQ: Phase One
The CNQ project began in June 2001 with the establishment of a preliminary “marketing” website to introduce CNQ to the investment community. It kept the various interested parties informed while CNQ navigated through the twists and turns of regulatory approval.
Using the content-management features of the website, CNQ’s staff were able to post news releases, a feature that saved them time and money over the two year start-up cycle.
The initial phase also included the development of a detailed Feature Requirements Specification for what would become one of the most progressive, collaborative, web-based securities marketplaces of its kind – The CNQ Marketplace.
The Feature Requirements Specification was revised in January of 2002 to reflect refinements to the collaborative extranet, as the business model for CNQ evolved. It called for the ability of wire news services, another CNQ-related service provider, to post filings to the Disclosure Hall, on behalf of Issuers.
More than a year after start-up, a key milestone was reached in July of 2002, a “Request for Comment” was issued from the Ontario Securities Commission to the general public, requesting feedback on CNQ’s proposed quotation and trade reporting system.
Phase Two
Finally, on February 28, 2003, CNQ received recognition from the Ontario Securities Commission and the final phase of development began.
A final, “go live” version of the CNQ Marketplace FRS was created by NMA, in collaboration with CNQ’s staff. The new website would be constructed using NMA’s Baseline CMS to give CNQ control of virtually every word on the website.
Additionally, this FRS included a detailed Design Specification, developed by NMA Information Architect, Tonja Terterian. It included a portal-style home page and a new ‘look’ that favoured the clear presentation of trading data over flashy graphics. The information architecture of the site was fine-tuned to address the requirements of various visitor profiles.
“This is one of the more complex, data-intensive sites we’ve developed,” said NMA’s Tonja Terterian. “There were several types of information – legal, financial, and regulatory – and a variety of user profiles for both the publicly-viewed website as well as the back-end CMS.”
“Ultimately, the end-user wants simplicity, especially in a ‘FirstEver’ website where we are
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D-Day
In many ways, launching a FirstEver website is no different than the opening night of new restaurant. It’s a tense, but exciting time.
NMA’s Project Manager, Marc Gorcey is a veteran of many such launches. For him, the crunch starts weeks before the launch date and the key to success is communication.
“We have to be ready for almost anything,” said Gorcey. “And that means having staff and resources available to respond immediately to our client’s needs. They are in a challenging situation – using real tools and systems that up until now have been plans on paper. We understand that no matter how much planning you do, it isn’t until you have your hands on something that you really understand what it’s all about.”
“Our job at that point is to help them fine tune their processes – to help them bring their product to market and to get the best out of their new systems.”
In the case of the CNQ, the fine-tuning also involved integrating the live-data feed from the trading server, a complex system which didn’t permit much customization.
“We had a clear set of high-level feature requirements from CNQ and we had great technical support on the trading server-side, but it was really up to us to take that raw data-feed and represent it on the website so that it met those requirements,” said Gorcey. “When the time came. We were ready.”
CNQ Marketplace Website Features
Public Website
Portal-style Home Page that incorporates content-managed information with live-feed market data.
- Lists of latest trades and most active issuers automatically displayed – based on data from the market-feed. (15 minute delay)
- CNQ-related bulletins, notices as well as CNQ press releases posted by CNQ staff and featured on the home page using the CMS.
- Latest Issuer press releases posted by the individual Issuers using the content-management Issuers Extranet.
- Search for quotation.
- A leading-edge, virtual Disclosure Hall that ensures the highest visibility standards and regulatory compliance in a streamlined, easily managed environment.
- Comprehensive issuing company information.
- Detailed trade information from the CNQ trading system.
- Filing documents in PDF form.
CNQ Intranet
The CNQ Intranet supports CNQ staff in a variety of operations:
- Legal – CNQ’s law staff manage the reviewing of Issuer filing documents through a list in the Intranet that displays all filing documents and shows their review status.
- Marketing – each page on the CNQ website has a “questions/comments” link that visitors to can use to contact CNQ – CNQ marketing staff can manage this correspondence through a list in the Intranet, together with the date and page that the visitor made the link from, and whether the comment was responded to.
CNQ Extranet
- CNQ’s Issuers have direct extranet access to manage their company web page in the Disclosure Hall.
- In addition to keeping their company information up to date, the extranet CMS lets Issuers upload their regulatory filing documents to their Disclosure Hall web page.
- The Disclosure Hall is a combination of Issuer-managed information and historical trade data from the trading server.
- The most recent filing documents are displayed on the initial Issuer page, with a link to a complete record of Issuer filings.
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