Financial Industry Research Products

Research Workflow and Distribution
The product set offered by InVitesse is an integrated offering for the Sales and Research functions of an Investment bank. The scheduling, contact management and call logging functions of Calypso, enable all information about the client to be kept centrally in a structured form. The Research publication system QuickStep enforces consistent formatting and processing of reports which are then distributed to Clients via the integrated Distribution engine Forro. To assist the production of Quantitative Research, the Tango and Carimba products provide easy access to historical fundamental and pricing data for listed companies.

Marquis
Marquis is a menu and administration system for the whole product suite. The module enables a single entry point for all InVitesse products, and offers administration functions for common features and data across all the individual modules. The individual InVitesse product components share data with each other, enabling single user account setup, common client database and access to features such as report distribution settings.The individual products operate in both English and Japanese mode and can be switched in the Marquis module.

Calypso
Calypso comprises an integrated time scheduler and contact manager targeted at the financial services industry. The system operates in both English and Japanese language and can be operated across multiple sites, synchronizing the data automatically. The time scheduler system is feature rich, with support for single events, repeating events and alarms. The calendar can be viewed monthly, weekly and daily. There is support for Meetings and Conference Room bookings, notification of absence (away from desk), as well as standard features such as to do lists and notes. There are also integrated call logging features for general use, and a Visitor feature which is useful for preparing agendas for overseas visitors, or keeping track of staff visits to companies or other offices.

The contact manager is particularly appropriate for an Investment bank environment. There are standard features such as searchable Client/Company lists, call-logging by Client/Company, and records of meetings. But there are also special features such as notifications of the type of Research the client receives, whether they receive Research via email, fax or other transmission mechanism. A preference for Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat format can also be noted.

The research preferences thus captured can then be fed into the distribution system to direct the documents to the correct recipients in their preferred form. This automation increases the speed and reliability of the distribution process, and reduces the staffing overhead associated with manual processes.

Of course all the data can be entered in either English or Japanese, and will be stored correctly in the database. The data itself, as in all InVitesse applications, is stored in an industry standard SQL compliant database rather than a proprietary database format, thus facilitating integration into the client's environment.

QuickStep
QuickStep is a fully featured Research Publication system. The system enables an efficient Research production workflow model to be implemented department wide, with an automated, audit tracked process from document creation, through translation, editing and approval to electronic distribution via a variety of mechanisms such as fax and email. Creation of documents can be standardized via templates, which themselves can be enhanced through the use of Tango to import and/or chart quantitative data from a large historical database. This database can be populated from external data services such as Reuters.

QuickStep software is bilingual, with the screens and menus capable of being switched between English and Japanese. It is capable of working correctly in a double-byte character set environment such as Japanese to enable bi-lingual Research products to be created and managed. It also seamlessly integrates with the research distribution module to send research reports to clients via a number of distribution methods, including email, fax, access via the web and of course printed copy.

There are modules within the software to perform functions such as word and page counts, translation cost estimations, and document consistency checking. The work-flow model also ensures that Research is officially approved by the Head of Research before sending. A special Compliance user is available, which enables the audits logs to be checked to follow the history of a document within the system, an important feature in the new regulatory environment.

Forro
The last application in the Research document workflow set is the distribution of the research to end Clients. This is performed by the Forro application. This application receives completed research documents from Quickstep, and checks against the Client list from Calypso to determine what to do with each Research document. The possibilities include distribution by fax, email, file transfer or printed copy, in English or Japanese. The documents can also be uploaded to common vendors such as Reuters and Bloomberg for distribution and display via their networks.

The system is highly automated, and the monitor screen shows the progress of each step and allows an operator to control the process and take action when issues occur. Examples might be when there are network connection problems or fax transmission errors.

The combination of Calypso, QuickStep and Forro provide a complete solution to the creation, management and distribution of Research reports.

Tango
Tango is an integrated research database and Microsoft add-in toolkit, enabling users to easily build Excel sheets, which access a vast historical research database. The system can be used standalone or in conjunction with other InVitesse components. The add-in creates a new menu item and right-click options which allow the user to format cells which access the database via underlying libraries supplied with Tango. Examples of data retrieved could be company information, single data items, or time-series data. Through the flexible data model it uses, the database can store a range of historical data including actual results, external estimates and (if up-loaded to the database) internal estimates. All this data can be accessed through the add-ins, providing a valuable resource easily accessible to Analysts and other Research staff within the familiar Excel environment.

The database itself is shared with Carimba, so that users can easily upgrade to the full Carimba system without any loss of functionality or retraining.

Carimba
Carimba is a powerful web-enabled research database and front-end. The application loads data from external vendors, interpreting the rows according to rules defined in a table. The rules are soft-configurable to allow amendments to match vendor data format changes without source code changes. The outputted data is written to a standardized database ready to be displayed by the web front end application, the Tango toolkit, or any user written application calling the standard api.

These five products are designed to form a complete in-house solution for the Research department. The combination of these three modules used together is a powerful tool to streamline the function of Research Production. The support for Asian languages makes the package particularly suited to East Asian markets.

Brochures

Introduction to Research Workflow and Distribution software (MS-Word)