As a Portfolio Manager (PM) you need a birds-eye view of your team’s research activity, a window into who is working on what, when, and where at any given time. Equally you want to be able to deep-dive into the details when you need to. And what about the ability to analyze the effectiveness of each step of the research process? How about an aggregated view of all data related to active portfolio positions, or bridging to portfolio construction to undertake risk/reward analysis?
There’s a lot more to Research Management Software (RMS) than how to organize and log your research data. PM’s now turn to modern RMS to expose the power that a smart, centralized research platform has to run real-time queries, integrate with fund data, analyze trends and deliver performance gains.
So, we’ve placed analyst productivity tools and compliant data management benefits aside for this one, and detailed the top 5 ‘What’s in it for me?’ features of RMS from our Portfolio Manager clients.
1. One-Click Content and Context
As a primary consumer of content, you need a single hub to access research assets, from meeting notes to the most recent versions of files and models. A RMS can act as that true system of record; remove data silos and make it fast and simple to retrieve and consume research over time.
PMs use Bipsync as the single place to go and find the content and context related to their train of thought, with the confidence the information is accurate and up to date. The ability to filter research by custom schemes and tags — across company, industry, geography, author, contact, date, note type and more — is also a favorite feature. It allows you to quickly slice and dice research data in way that can’t be done in email or across other information silos.
2. Portfolio View, Position Sync and Custom Dashboards
Research doesn’t exist in isolation. You need to tie notes, content and quantitative data to projects and companies, and access all past/present content and context related to a portfolio position at your fingertips. When you synchronize portfolio and position data with Bipsync RMS, (maintained up-to-date via either API sync with your PMS, scheduled CSV upload, or even ad-hoc updates) your central system of record takes on another dimension.
PMs get a ‘go to’ hub with all the relevant content, notes, models, price targets, etc. related to each company. And, instead of critical analyst inputs siloed in spreadsheets (if tracked at all), you get an intuitive UI that aggregates price target, upside/downside, thesis points, etc. for each name in the book.
Whether you need a dashboard view of the top metrics and stock price chart for a company, or you want to aggregate 30+ data points with values from your PMS, Excel models or Bloomberg, you can configure the RMS to deliver the deep-dive or high-level view you need, when you need it.
3. Never Ask “Am I Missing Anything?” Again
You need to stay efficient and focused on specific ideas related to your train of thought at any given time to be productive. You want to stay up to date with the information that matters to you, when it matters to you, and cut out the noise.
Bipsync Subscriptions remove the cognitive overhead of whether you’ve missed any critical data, analyst update or research input, and puts you in control.
With a “push” vs “pull” flow for sharing critical internal information, you decide the information you’re tracking at any given time and how and when you’re updated on it. Subscribe to specific authors, your “heavy hitting” analysts for example, or subscribe to companies for notifications on any updates or additions to key names in your book.
4. Harness Powerful Pipelines and Tasks
The challenge for many PMs is to encapsulate the talent of research analysts into some form of structured process, without cramping their style. To support analyst productivity and retain control, you need to be able to dictate investment criteria and guidance without being invasive.
Combining effective fund collaboration and personal productivity is the cornerstone of modern RMS. It’s where task management, automations and pipeline management come into their own for PMs.
Pre-trade idea pipelines, for example, both help analysts know “what’s next” for each idea across qualification stages, while you get a window into who is working on what and at what stage of the investment process. In this way, you introduce a repeatable process that’s transparent to all, and in the long run leads to a better understanding of the effectiveness of each investment stage to uncover latent opportunities, discover new trends and identify bottlenecks.
5. Report and Analyze for Actionable Insight
Research is a cyclical process; continuous improvement is critical to finding an edge. A centralized research repository provides the foundation to run real-time queries to deliver this actionable performance insight.
Your RMS should enable you to generate custom reports to answer questions of interest to you at any given time. In Bipsync, you can query and report on anything in the system, completely configurable for your needs. It’s these types of insights into current and past performance that enable you to discover new trends and identify efficiencies. Try these common queries out for size:
- What names in the portfolio are “stale”/require attention?
- Which sources performed best last quarter?
- Where is each investment idea in the investment process today?
- Which work paths were most efficient and profitable last year?
Modern RMS provides PMs with clean, consistent research data that speeds up the comparison and prioritization of investment decisions. If you’re looking for a better way to stay informed on team activity, maintain high-levels of productivity and optimize the process from idea to investment, get in touch.
You can find more information on Bipsync’s Process Management Suite here, or schedule a free demo to see it in action.
