New York, NY – Internet search-based research firm, FirstRain announced today that it has inked distribution deals with research management system provider Code:Red, and financial services software solutions provider, Wall Street On Demand. These new partnerships will enable analysts and portfolio managers who use either of these platforms to access valuable information extracted from over 30,000 web-based sources to enhance their productivity.
Continuing Firm’s Strategy
These two new contracts mark the fifth and sixth arrangements FirstRain has reached with third-party distribution platforms, as the firm has rolled out its strategy of becoming “platform agnostic” – distributing their search and analytics capabilities through a wide variety of platforms already in use by investors and research analysts. Previously, FirstRain had signed deals with CapIQ, FactSet, Hanley & Associates, and the Financial Times’ Newssift project.
The Two New Deals
Code:Red provides research management software to the investment management industry. Code Red’s flagship product, Red Alerts RMSTM, organizes and automates the use of research by facilitating the rating and ranking of information sources, speeding the navigation of investment research, and the discovery of new ideas. Code Red’s IdeanetTM platform facilitates the communication and collaboration of ideas, meetings, and research from independent research firms and the sell-side to the buy-side.
For the past 17 years, Wall Street On Demand has developed and deployed unique knowledge management solutions for the financial services industry. The firm’s new research management platform, MaestroLink, provides a unified interface for investment professionals to access and share all relevant internal and external research content, coordinating internal and external events, measuring the performance of internal and external recommendations, and identifying, tracking and rewarding providers that have added the most value.
As part of the new commercial arrangements, FirstRain will provide users of Code:Red’s Ideanet and Wall Street on Demand’s MaestroLink with web-sourced content in a number of ways. Clients can access the FirstRain application via widgets embedded into an RMS platform; they can receive personalized reports; or they can access a consolidated data feed from a rich range of companies and topics delivered via XML for enterprise wide use.
Integrity’s Perspective
FirstRain’s two new deals with Code:Red and Wall Street on Demand, following on the heels of distribution arrangements with CapIQ, FactSet, Hanley & Associates, and the Financial Times, should all be huge positive steps for the firm as they make FirstRain’s search capabilities, and the content they collect from various web sources, easily accessible to thousands of sell-side and buy-side investment professionals. The biggest question now is how will FirstRain use these new partnerships to commercialize their capabilities and the content they collect.
The following is the full text of the company’s Press Release announcing these new partnerships with Code:Red and Wall Street on Demand.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FIRSTRAIN ANNOUNCES INTEGRATION WITHIN RESEARCH MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Intelligence from FirstRain Now Accessible within Leading RMS Platforms
San Mateo, Calif., May 18, 2009 – FirstRain® today announced it has partnered with leading research management service (RMS) platforms Code:Red and Wall Street On Demand to integrate intelligence from the web into their offerings. Leveraging FirstRain’s deep expertise in business and market insight within their research environments, RMS users are now able to immediately access valuable, pertinent information from the web — streamlining their research workflow and creating significant time savings.
FirstRain is the established leader in search-driven research for investment professionals, providing a rich online experience, personalized daily research reports from the web and data feeds on companies, markets and company management prioritized and analyzed from thousands of web sources. FirstRain’s search and analytics can now be accessed within RMS platforms in three ways:
- Integration of the FirstRain application via widgets embedded into an RMS platform
- Personalized and tagged daily reports that are tuned to each individual user’s portfolio and topics of choice, and delivered via XML feeds
- Broad, consolidated web content data feed from a rich range of companies and topics delivered via XML for enterprise wide use
With many diverse desktop solutions on the market today, users not only value simplified workflows and integration between their chosen applications, but also across a growing library of internally and externally generated content. The FirstRain integrations with Code:Red and Wall Street On Demand meet this need by enabling users to easily navigate search and analytics within their own specific research environment.
As a result of this partnership, users of Code:Red’s flagship product Red Alerts RMS can now receive their personalized FirstRain reports automatically categorized within the RMS via Code:Red’s IdeaNet research distribution solution. Code:Red users can also access the FirstRain application via embedded widgets that include multiple research components about a company. These powerful widgets include company research, competitor and ecosystem research and management turnover analytics.
“We realized that automatically categorized relevant web content and analytics is a natural fit with our RMS platform and IdeaNet research distribution hub” said Tim Gavin, Chief Executive Officer for Code:Red. “Integrating FirstRain enables our users to include valuable company information from the web, putting it alongside side their internal and/or independent or sell-side research, and allowing them to spend less time searching for and more time analyzing that information. FirstRain was the right choice as a partner due to their unique ability to deliver high-quality categorized content and analytics from thousands of global business sources.”
FirstRain’s partnership with Wall Street On Demand is an enterprise level integration. Clients access the FirstRain application through one standard web content data feed which provides a wide range of companies and topics for all users to access within the platform. “We recognize that many institutional investors want a single view of their internal and external content” said Jim Tanner, Chief Executive Officer of Wall Street On Demand. “That is why it makes sense to include the web intelligence coming from FirstRain alongside of our other external news sources, sell-side research and internal research. FirstRain can now be seamlessly accessed by our clients through our platform, allowing them to include targeted web information as part of their research process.”
“As evidenced by the past relationships we established with Capital IQ and FactSet, FirstRain’s strategy is to take a “platform agnostic” approach and provide search and analytics within a wide variety of solutions already in the research workflow. Given the growing interest in our capability, integrating with RMS platforms is a logical extension of this strategy” said Penny Herscher, President and CEO of FirstRain. “We are delighted to partner with both Code:Red and Wall Street On Demand to provide our mutual clients with a rich user experience. These partnerships provide another crucial piece of the investment professional’s research mosaic.”
About FirstRain
As the leader in search-driven research, FirstRain provides global firms with a competitive advantage, revealing information and trends from the web that they would not otherwise see. FirstRain changes the rules of research by applying state-of-the-art extraction and pattern detection technology to the web. FirstRain is a privately held company headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., with additional offices in New York, NY and Gurgaon, India. For more information, contact FirstRain at www.firstrain.com.
About CodeRed
Code Red provides research and idea management software to the investment management industry. Code Red’s flagship product is Red Alerts RMSTM, a Research Management Solution that acts as a portfolio manager and analyst workstation. Red Alerts RMSTM organizes and automates the investment management process, facilitates rating and ranking of information sources, and speeds navigation of investment research and the discovery of new ideas. Code Red IdeanetTM facilitates the communication and collaboration of ideas, meetings and research from independent research firms and the sell-side to the buy-side. For more information, visit the company website at www.coderedinc.com.
About Wall Street On Demand
Wall Street On Demand is a 340-person design, development, deployment and hosting services company, dedicated to creating unique knowledge management solutions for the financial services industry. For 17 years, Wall Street On Demand has delivered innovative, high quality information products to help our client partners visualize, manipulate and interpret complex financial content.
Our research management platform, called MaestroLink, provides a unified interface for investment professionals to access and share all relevant internal and external research content (Dashboard & Library). MaestroLink also provides interfaces for coordinating internal and external events (Calendar), measuring the performance of internal and external recommendations (Research Team), and identifying, tracking and rewarding providers that have added the most value (Catalog & Vote). For more information, please visit http://www.maestrolink.com/.
Contacts:
Renee Potter
FirstRain, Inc.
(212) 916-8106
mailto:tenders@firstrain.com
Jaime Bean
CodeRed
(212) 421-1670
jbean@coderedinc.com
Sofia Rossato
Wall Street On Demand
(303) 583-4334
sofia.rossato@wallst.com