Servicing may be our core function at State Street, but technology helps us deliver it. Every day, our asset servicing and asset management businesses depend on information technology infrastructure to do things like record and securely execute high volumes of complex financial transactions — in many currencies, across diverse markets and jurisdictions.
As our businesses and the markets in which we operate are continuously evolving, so must we. In 2019, we appointed a chief transformation officer and began to re-examine and rationalize our own operating model. As part of this process, we set out to improve and update our information technology infrastructure to be more efficient, meet increasing client and regulatory security, and support more opportunities for growth.
During the year, we enhanced the resiliency of our technology and strengthened business continuity by moving to common platforms and eliminating or retiring redundant and legacy systems. We simplified processes, added automation to tasks such as net asset value (NAV) calculations, and redeployed employee talent to more value-add assignments as needed. These investments are aimed at improving our platform and resilience, enhancing the quality of data and analytics, and boosting our transaction speeds. To better serve our global client base, we shifted key operational functions to global service centers in 2019, to help provide around-the-clock service in real time. Ensuring we have access to the right data at all times obligates us to constantly redevelop design systems, refine operating models and create solutions for every step of the investment cycle. This model helps sustain our operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing us to reassign workloads amid rolling country lockdowns.
Superior client service is the heart of our technology strategy, so we’re being smarter about where and how we employ technology, while leveraging it to create more client-focused innovation. We saw some of that innovation emerge in 2019 with State Street AlphaSM, the industry’s first front-to-back investment servicing platform. Alpha helps clients keep pace with advancing technology by providing increased processing speed, data accuracy and end-to-end delivery.
Client-first innovation was prevalent in our tech-driven Global Markets business, which offers research, trading and securities lending services for foreign exchange, stocks, fixed-income, and derivatives. Our focus on FX solutions is why we ranked No. 1 in market share for real money clients globally in Euromoney’s 2019 survey. We also ranked No. 1 globally for eFX trading. In 2019, we saw how BestX®, our trade execution analytics platform, has transformed how quantitative investors design and test their trading algorithms. We also launched an outsourced trading capability for asset managers and owners looking to cut costs in order to focus on their core portfolio construction mission, while gaining access to the scale and liquidity of our larger trading operation. Small and medium-size managers may also choose to outsource trading to gain access to what may otherwise have been unavailable counterparties.
Innovation is an inherent skill at Global Markets, where every day we provide our clients with more than 300,000 market indicators that can help them gain insight into market forces and trends. We also interpret proprietary data and review information from 1,000 media sources to turn into fact-based asset intelligence reports on everything from liquidity flows and tracing COVID-19 infections to pricing indicators on environmental, social and governance investments.
We recognize that talent is the foundation of a strong technology infrastructure, and we’re investing in engineers and innovators with expertise in new technologies to help us stay ahead of client demands. In 2019, we formalized our Numerates Network, an internal recruitment and mentoring tool that matches employees with skills in emerging technologies to State Street projects that may need their help. This tool hastens innovation at our company by leveraging the skills of our in-house talent for highly specialized internal projects. Cross-company innovation makes us stronger together.
Looking to the future, we are addressing ways to use emerging technologies such as machine learning, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and robotics to drive innovation and convert data into insights. Whatever new technology presents itself, we are laying the foundation for the future of financial services to help our clients overcome their most pressing challenges.