When you create a financial services product designed for a great analyst experience, small features and use-cases take on a big significance.

As a product-focused company we develop the Bipsync platform 100% in-house, so working closely with customers is an important part of our research and development process. We continually re-assess which developments will bring the most value to our users as we talk to our customers and collaboratively assess their priorities. And these aren’t always the big-ticket new, shiny features.

Modern RMS can deliver huge efficiencies in research processes with core functionality and feature-sets, but in an industry where every small edge counts, optimizing the user experience and simplifying processes that analysts use every day really matters.

Here’s a brief case study of how we’ve worked with one of our clients, a New York-based fund with over $6Bn in AUM, to do just that…

Optimizing Day to Day Research Productivity

From the outset, this firm has been committed to drive momentum and continuous improvement into the research and collaboration process. Proactive in understanding how analysts engage with the Bipsync platform, the project manager works to encourage users to explore new functionality, formalize use-cases with them and discuss challenges and ideas they have to improve processes.

This collaborative approach – both internally and with Bipsync as a supplier – has been key to continued high-levels of adoption of the RMS at 80% weekly user engagement (something that’s not always easy when analysts’ technology preferences are concerned).

It also means the fund is continuously uncovering new ways to leverage the RMS to improve day to day speed and productivity across the fund, and across teams. The following are just three interesting use-cases for the technology, that have helped this fund boost productivity levels and collaboration:

1. Third-Party Consultant Access – Smart Sharing Models

When the firm wanted to add a consultant onto the Bipsync platform, it wanted to do so for only a short period of time without providing full access to the RMS.

There are many scenarios where a fund may have third parties that need to access very specific research or files, and yet require other associated information to be protected. The RMS, as the centralized research database and secure system-of-record – is the obvious place for this to happen.

To support this need, we looked to extend our smart sharing models to help the fund segregate-off the third party consultant to only provide selective access. The ability to “share with separate teams”, means specific users can share notes with a totally separate team, which effectively enables the fund to “firewall-off” the third party consultant to only share the exact notes with them that they wanted them to see. It’s a function the fund will use time and time again, and a RMS use-case we’ve worked with a number of other clients on since.

2. Automating and Distributing Weekly Reports – Modern API

Like so many funds we initially work with, research analysts have a tendency to be over-reliant on email. One specific challenge this fund wanted to address on this front was how to simplify its existing process for creating and distributing internal reports via email.

Weekly reports were previously time-consuming to create manually – searching for, compiling and formatting information into an email, managing distribution lists – and at the end of all that still finding that the weekly reports were ignored or missed in very busy and overcrowded inboxes.

The question they brought to us was “Can we do this in-app?”.

With analysts spending their time in Bipsync as their core productivity environment, it made sense to deliver the report where the analysts work; to their primary screen. This was a perfect use-case for our API to help automatically capture the relevant content, generate formatted weekly reports and distribute to the relevant teams in Bipsync.

3. Removing Email ‘Clutter’ – Configuration and User Preferences

Email is an indispensable communications tool, the primary method of communicating with clients and associates, and no-one’s ever going to remove it completely from their workflow.

In a RMS, however, it’s really important that when email information is captured, it’s done so in a way and in a format that’s easiest for the user to get to the information they need, fast.

It sounds small, but adding the ability to remove email footers and signatures from a captured note in the Bipsync RMS, made a significant difference to this fund’s, and many others, user experience. This new beta feature allowed users to select text in notes that are emailed into the RMS, and mark unwanted text as Email Clutter. All email clutter is then removed from future notes emailed into the system, helping users get straight to the meat of the information they need, when they need it, without distraction.

If you’d like to hear more about how our customers use Bipsync to power their research, get in touch.