Buy-Side Technology Awards 2013: Best Buy-Side Performance Measurement and Attribution Product—BI-SAM

For money managers, pure performance measurement is hugely important, but so too is being able to drill down into individual portfolios to discover where exactly that performance is emanating from, which parts of the portfolio are underachieving, and the level of risk consumed in obtaining that performance. That B-One, BI-SAM’s flagship offering, manages this process with aplomb is hardly surprising—after all, pretty much all platforms worth their salt in this space have similar functionality for equities and fixed-income securities. But where B-One—which also provides buy-side users with an array of data management features supporting the comingling of data from multiple source systems and performing validation checks on the integrity of that source data—has the edge over the clutch of mature and similarly sophisticated competitor offerings, is its intuitive, easy-to-use interface, closely allied with the variety of ways in which it can be delivered and configured according to clients’ preferences. That said, BI-SAM’s victory in this category was far from a landslide—in fact, this category went down to the wire, with BI-SAM finally winning by a margin of only two votes.

BI-SAM, which now boats a New York headcount of 20, in addition to London with 35, and Paris with 50, makes no secret of the fact that it re-invests 25 percent of its revenues in its technology, the primary beneficiaries being its B-One and recently launched B-Portal offerings, the latter of which provides users with a web-based version of B-One, supporting detailed views of funds, portfolios, composites, benchmarks, and indices through interaction with data, customizable dashboards, and external reports and presentations.

BI-SAM Reaction:
“We are thrilled to win the best buy-side performance measurement product award for the sixth straight year. Retaining the award shows we are never content to rest on our laurels. BI-SAM continues to listen to and work with performance teams within the asset management industry to ensure we understand their current and future needs, and to invest heavily each year in enhancing B-One to meet users’ requirements. This commitment has enabled us to achieve significant global expansion this year, with B-One now used by eight of the world’s top 20 largest asset managers. We remain determined to lead the market going forward, providing innovative solutions that offer compelling value to support performance and reporting teams in a fast-changing business and technology environment.”
—Alexandre Harkous, CEO, BI-SAM