Best Big Data Analytics & Technology Provider: AlphaSense

As trading professionals face growing quantities of data sources to perform predictive analytics, finding new ways to efficiently make use of that information and identify critical data points that can drive trading strategies is a challenge. The recipient of this year’s Best Big Data Analytics & Technology Provider award is software technology firm AlphaSense, which is on a mission to empower users with greater insights.

AlphaSense provides investment and knowledge professionals with a search engine, enabling them to wade through large volumes of data and find information in seconds—instead of hours. Julie Craig, vice president of marketing at AlphaSense, says it aggregates millions of relevant documents and applies intelligent search technology to help customers find critical information almost instantaneously.

For the judges, its services are what “make AlphaSense a winner,” and they add that “it has its finger on the pulse of (hidden) disclosures.”

AlphaSense, which launched its product in 2011, collates millions of research documents, including company filings and transcripts, presentations, real‑time news, press releases, industry and trade journals, and Wall Street investment research. Craig explains that AlphaSense semantically indexes content and uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing to enable teams at more than 800 firms currently using the search engine to gain an information edge. “We have developed proprietary algorithms to assign a relevance score—a single click can sort results by relevance. This alone can save hours,” she says.

AlphaSense uses AI and financial language to discover information that could be difficult to find, and functions that make the search engine stand out include the Smart Synonym feature—which allows users to automatically expand keyword search results—and the ability to set alerts on saved searches, similar to Google Alerts. 

AlphaSense recently added the capability for users to put their own content on the platform. Craig says users can now connect drives, clip content from web pages or forward documents to their personal AlphaSense account via email and, once the content has been indexed by the system, other users can also search through these documents, alongside other content. 

Another focus area, Craig says, has been improving collaboration tools. Users now benefit from tools that improve workflow by, for example, enabling them to highlight and annotate documents and then share them with other colleagues.

Read more about the IMD/IRD Awards 2018 winners