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The End of Do-It-Yourself

Mar 2011/in , /by

Do you remember those futuristic articles or stories we’d read in the 80s that talked about how with technology we would work less and have more time to recreate? Technology was going to free us from the shackles of our desk. Well, that is possible, if you actually wanted to change it.

The technology of the future has freed us from our desks (mobile phones, laptops, etc.), and this article discusses how the right mix of technology can easily enhance our productivity. Additionally, the Internet has dramatically changed the way that we gather information for business decisions.

With improvements in analytical algorithms in business monitors like FirstRain, Capital IQ, FactSet, and many others, more valuable data can be targeted.  The FirstRain platform can filter out the noise, and simultaneously generate highly targeted business intelligence with its patented semantic technology and analytics. Through such advancements, analysts can not only receive information that is personalized and adaptive to their markets, but discover valuable patterns and data trends as well.

In speaking with one of our customers—a sales rep named Samantha Barrett, I was able to understand how she used FirstRain to solve four problems:

  • Understanding key industry changes
  • Staying current on her top ten prospect’s businesses
  • Finding expansion opportunities in existing customers
  • Finding out what’s new for her competitors

This newfound method of information gathering is contradictory to what used to be considered the “traditional” way of researching. Think of it as a new perspective for a new century—it was acceptable, and necessary to “do-it-yourself” given tech limitations in the 90s and first half of the last decade. Searching for your own information was the way to go—who else could you trust to find the most relevant results and cover all the bases? Well, now we can automate it, and we have to start building that trust.

The change in information management models to platforms like FirstRain comes as no surprise. Using solutions like FirstRain allows for an easy, efficient way to manage information. Not having to worry about how credible the sources are, or how much time you spend gathering information allocates time for more important tasks.

Being able to understand information in different ways, and having access to meaningful patterns and data trends can directly or indirectly make all the difference in an entire business. Those who embrace the technology will be more effective, and have access to a plethora of information that they otherwise wouldn’t.

The stories of the future are now the stories of the present—the revolution is here and it would be smart to adopt the 21st century trend of “trusting tech,” as the end result will benefit decision makers. No longer can you do-it-yourself, the 80s were right, and once again technology dramatically eases our lives.

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Does the simplicity of the Bloomberg model make it vulnerable?

Mar 2010/in /by

We’ve been hearing from an increasing number of customers and prospects that they are not only trying to reduce their budget, but specifically trying to reduce their Bloomberg costs or replace Bloomberg altogether and I’m curious as to what’s really going on behind this.

Bloomberg has the premier platform today. It’s known for the deepest quality of data, having the best sales force, being the hardest to use, but also being the hardest to give up. The terminal has cachet. User’s have told us they feel as if their firm thinks less of them if they don’t have a Bloomberg terminal and it’s their link into their IM network. And yet for many of the users in our target market – we’re talking fundamental equity research guys – they only use a fraction of the functionality and in many cases they only use Bloomberg news.

The Bloomberg business model is very simple and consistent with a premier brand. One product, one non-negotiable fee of $1500-$1800 per month and for major accounts services are provided at no additional cost provided the total terminal fees are high enough. And they sell 2 year contracts and won’t cancel them even if the users have left. Makes good business sense.

So what’s a firm to do that has reduced the number of users and wants to dramatically reduce platform costs? What we are seeing is that as firm’s contracts with major high-end (i.e. expensive) vendors are rolling off they are looking at ways to swap the platforms and services out for less expensive ones. This risk/phenomenon is well captured in the Silicon Alley Insider’s The Bloomberg Terminal Stands On The Precipice.

And what it means for FirstRain is we are in an astounding number of conversations now, either alone or with one of our partners, with customers who are looking to replace Bloomberg. Because of the simplicity, and yet rigidity, of the Bloomberg model they are looking to replace it with a less expensive solution, especially when the users are only using it for news, and we help our partners provide a very rich news platform by mining the web for alternative research.

That said, we are careful to be respectful of everyone and not get between two large players because in the end what we offer is different and complimentary to all the platforms today – it’s a sales balancing act!

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How the internet can unlock Alpha today

Feb 2010/in /by

We’re busy ramping up our partnership with FactSet now – and the FactSet team invited me to talk on a webinar about how you can generate alpha (that’s gains over and above the market for you non financial types) from information that is freely available on the web today.

It’s a fun talk – it’s not about FirstRain – it’s about the information on the internet and how to use it. You can watch it here if you are interested.

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FactSet to sell FirstRain directly

Jan 2010/in /by

FirstRain is starting out the year with some exciting news – we are expanding our relationship with FactSet and enabling FactSet to sell the FirstRain research engine directly to its customers.

You may recall that in 2008 we began our partnership with FactSet – allowing their users to access FirstRain directly in FactSet Marquee. Now, to coincide with the new FactSet interface, and our expanding mutual customer base, FactSet has the ability to sell and support FirstRain and we’ll support their customer support team.

It’s easy to get to FirstRain within FactSet now – you can see a recorded demo on our web site and see some screen shots – both here. We’ve implemented it in a way so that every FactSet user get’s a snapshot of web data on any company and then can click through to FirstRain easily from the snapshot.

Here is the link to our press release.

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Integrating FirstRain into RMS platforms

May 2009/in /by

The FirstRain application keeps growing in functionality and today we have announced yet another way you can get to it. We’ve announced our integration with RMS – research management systems.

Todays RMS platforms organize research for the user. Sorting their sell-side research, independent research, internal research etc. into a file folder type of application making it easy to find based on what document is about. Now our research can now be organized and retrieved in the same way.

We have announced our ability to integrate into any RMS platform today – and specifically partnerships with Code:Red and Wall Street On Demand. In both cases, our research results and reports are provided already automatically categorized (tagged) by both the companies they are about and the investment topics they’re about so they easily integrate into the user’s RMS workflow.

The approach we’ve taken is a little different in each case though – as a result of what workflow the end user wants.

In the case of Code:Red we provide an XML feed of our research but we have also integrated our user interface embedded into the Code:Red UI. This means a user can pull up windows into FirstRain – looking at company data, competitor data, management data etc. and they are linked to the companies or topics the user has up in Code:Red system. If the user updates the company in Code:Red, the FirstRain windows also update. All very efficient – and this is the way FirstRain is also integrated into the FactSet Marquee platform today.

In the case of Wall Street On Demand, we provide an XML feed of research results, again pre-tagged by company and topic, which is integrated straight into the end user’s platform so the results show up natively instead of in a FirstRain window. WSOD builds platforms for their client partners and our results are available to our mutual customers. This approach of taking the FirstRain results and using them natively within the end platform is similar to the way FirstRain results are integrated into the Capital IQ platform today.

Both workflows greatly increase the efficiency for the user if the user wants to use RMS as the primary way to organize and access research.

We did these integrations at the request of several end users. Many firms want RMS to work. They want help sorting through the firehose of research they see every day and having it automatically categorized so they can find it easily saves them time, no question. Many users use their email systems today – Outlook or Lotus Notes – and so we are very interested to get involved in helping users find a better way. These partnerships are an important step forward for us, our partners and our mutual customers.

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Factset and FirstRain partner up to bring the web into the Marquee platform

Oct 2008/in /by

Today is an important day for FirstRain – we’re announcing a major partnership with FactSet Research Systems. There is a rapidly growing awareness of the importance of the web in financial research and we are thrilled that FactSet has selected FirstRain to be its partner on providing web data into their process. We are proud to work with such a highly-acclaimed market leader.
To put it in today’s context, as the market swings with unprecedented volatility, our customers on the buyside need complete information more than ever and cannot carry the risk of missing critical information about their investments. As Clint Anderson at Meritage Portfolio Management says:
“Prices react rapidly to new marketplace information, so it’s important to have as much of that information as possible. FirstRain consolidates hard-to-find data from the web on our portfolios, sectors, and industries. Integrating FirstRain with the analysis I do in FactSet provides a more complete picture of the market.”
For users who are customers for both Factset and FirstRain this will mean a more seamless research process. The FirstRain platform in now integrated into Marquee allowing a user to move from a Marquee view of a stock straight into a FirstRain view of the stock – and effectively adding the web as a new dataset into the Factset platform.
For FactSet users who are not yet FirstRain clients, we will offer a sample snapshot of company data and the ability to request up to 5 company tearsheets showing the FirstRain web view of the company.
FactSet is the second top tier financial platform to add web research capabilities into its platform, and the second to select FirstRain to do so – Capital IQ was the first.
As I have been talking with our clients these past few weeks, it’s obvious that the shakeout we’re chronicling in our free report: Eye On The Storm is certainly not over, but I’m hearing their confidence that, while this will be an ugly downturn, it is not the end of the world as we know it. And managing money hasn’t fundamentally changed. Investors still need high quality and complete information to make decisions from and both the web and FirstRain are seen more and more necessary components of the research process.

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