We’re excited to announce the expansion of Bipsync’s reporting functionalities with the launch of our new Reporting and Analytics Platform (RAP). The RAP is a suite of reporting tools made up of three key components – the Report Builder, the Data Connector, and the Compliance App – which complement one another perfectly, but can be used independently.

Before we dive into the 3 components, a quick summary of what the RAP is for and how we see it becoming incredibly valuable for Bipsync customers to get faster access to the data needed for reporting, analytics, and compliance purposes…

Organizations are capturing more data than ever before. For nearly a decade, Bipsync has safely stewarded our clients’ data and empowered client organizations to access that data through charts, reports, and exports. Now, RAP consolidates these features into one comprehensive solution, and offers new data extraction and analysis functionalities to allow for maximum insight.

Together, the features of the RAP appeal to technical and non-technical staff alike: CTOs; CIOs; research directors; portfolio managers; compliance teams; data scientists and indeed anyone who wants to leverage research data — including data synced via one of our many integrations — in their business decisions.

The Report Builder

The Report Builder is designed to make the creation of customized data exports incredibly simple; allowing users to intuitively navigate Bipsync’s native data structures to craft and export reports. Starting with a predefined “dataset” — a table of data that can be assembled from multiple types of content — users are able to either export that data as-is, or customize it further.

The predefined datasets represent basic reports that are commonly requested by clients, such as “Research, By Author”, or “Count of Research Documents Created, By Author”. 

Export in CSV format to do further analysis in Excel, or use the Data Connector to leverage other applications within the same Bipsync environment (more on that below). 

Report Builder

Customizing datasets

The customization stage allows users to build upon the predefined datasets, either by including more properties from the core content type, or by connecting the relationships the core content type has with other documents in the system to include properties from that related content. This could be used to (for example):

• Add a column which lists, for example, investment types, or stock tickers of companies, etc. that have been tagged to each note in a research report.
• Add two columns to a report of invested funds: one which contains the name of the associated fund manager and another which contains the manager’s head office location.
• Add a column to an export of contacts which contains the name of the company at which the contact is employed, and then another column which contains the GICS geography classification associated with that company.

Once a dataset has been created, it’s permanently available within the app and can be revisited to access the latest content. Reports can be further customized prior to export using filters, such as the date entries were created, or whether the author that created them is still active. Filters allow a set of reports based on the same data to be quickly generated in sequence e.g. research grouped month by month.

The Data Connector

The Data Connector goes a step further than creating reports to allow Bipsync data to be ingested and manipulated by third-party data visualization apps. Now the likes of Microsoft Power BI and Tableau, spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel, and even other database GUIs can leverage Bipsync data.

We know that our clients already utilize these specialized tools for the analysis and visualization of data, so we felt it important that our RAP works seamlessly with these products. 

The Data Connector is a comprehensive solution which provides users direct access to Bipsync’s database of research content. Specifically, it allows Bipsync data to be accessed via an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connection. ODBC is a standard which is supported by numerous applications, including several BI products. Through ODBC, applications can connect directly to Bipsync’s database and query the information they need in a flexible, secure and performant way. The database is an SQL-based, read-only replica of Bipsync’s production database and it has been designed in such a way that it can support a very broad set of query types, to fit the use cases of our clients.

Optimize data visualization ROI

Officially, we support ODBC connectivity with Tableau, Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Excel at present. Unofficially, any ODBC-compliant tool should be able to connect to our database — like a database browser GUI, for example.

With users able to access their RMS data within tools like Tableau, they can create visualizations to fit their standard or bespoke reporting and analysis requirements. The following examples make use of a number of data elements in Bipsync to illustrate the breakdown of asset class exposures within the Diligence pipeline, most created and viewed research and a geographical breakdown of where a firm’s managers reside.

Embedding a Tableau dashboard using the Bipsync App Engine

Minimize app switching by showing data visualizations within your Bipsync experience

Allowing other apps to harness Bipsync data is even more powerful when using our IFrame capability. In this setup, once the Data Connector allows other apps to process and visualize Bipsync data, users can stay within their Bipsync environment and see the results displayed in graphical form via an embedded IFrame or as raw HTML data. No need to switch over to another app – it can all be supported as part of the same continuous Bipsync experience. 

It’s all made possible thanks to the Bipsync App-Engine, which provides a set of APIs that allow our clients to customize app integrations to their needs. 

The Compliance App

Last but not least, the Compliance App will already be familiar to Bipsync users. We’ve just pulled across that existing capability to form a key part of this reporting and analytics platform. 

It acts as a read-only lens on all your Bipsync data, with the power to search for anything across every data type, note, document and artifact. That makes it a powerful asset for compliance and governance professionals who need to extract insights – rather than contribute them – in a safe and non-disruptive way. Lending them this autonomy cuts turnaround times and frees up operations and analyst teams from unnecessary audit and data requests.   

For further reading on RAP and its constituent parts, explore these from the Bipsync documentation library:

• RAP overview
• Report Builder guide
• Data Connector guide: connecting a third-party BI tool via ODBC
• Using Tableau with the Data Connector

And that’s it! Find out even more about the Reporting & Analytics Platform by getting in touch or requesting a demo today!