Equity research isn’t rocket science. All you need is a researcher to find and collect the pertinent data, an analyst to make sense of it and write it up, and a compliance officer to review it and demand changes.

Then you are likely to have a series of revisions, preparation of the final document, proofing, updating with any new data, another round of compliance and proofing, and the report is ready to publish. A few meetings, some of them canceled because of last minute conflicts, some late nights to meet deadlines, and with a little luck the report is published before market conditions change.

Time for Change

The process is ripe for a better approach based on the latest powerful technologies. Some years ago when a Wall Street consulting firm developed a Word-based authoring application for a large investment bank, the bill was somewhere north of $1 million for just the software, before integrating it with data sources and the firm’s work processes.

Today the tools for data capture, analysis, collaboration and review, revision and distribution are available through the Microsoft Office 2003 Professional system.

At the enterprise level, Microsoft’s Office Suite has been replaced by a powerful platform that looks and acts just like the tools, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, which financial analysts have used for years. But like the sports car enthusiast who replaces a modest four cylinder engine with a compact aluminum V-8, appearances are deceiving; the Office System has much more power than appears on the surface.

Traditional research and distribution worked pretty well when firms mailed out reports and could always blame the Post Office if the information appeared outdated by the time it arrived. Since the spread of the Internet – really since the days of ubiquitous fax machines and FedEx overnight delivery – excuses for outdated material have lost much of their credibility, although we all try them from time to time.

Globalization of the markets has only made the situation more challenging. Not only do reports have to arrive at offices around the world on time, but creating the report might require research in multiple countries and compliance reviews in several jurisdictions. The explosion in market data and the unpredictability of market volatility require cutting the time from data collection to publication if the report is going to be of any use.

Microsoft’s Office System provides tools that are fully integrated and eliminate the barriers between tasks.

Once an analyst or researcher chooses a data source, she can link it to Word or Excel through XML. Anytime updated information is required, she can refresh her report with a click of her mouse and pull the newest prices or latest news from online sources. The new data will update figures throughout the Word document and trigger fresh calculations in Excel spreadsheets, while simultaneously updating any charts in the report that are linked to Excel.

SharePoint: A Personal Portal for Data Collection and Coordination

On her personal SharePoint site she can arrange all the information relevant to her work – macro economic news, political reporting from regions she covers, and news about the industry and specific companies she is following. She can drag and drop into her site pricing charts that are updated in real-time throughout the day, so she can immediately spot any significant changes. She can reserve an area for click-through links to useful information and to colleagues. She can also maintain a list, with calendar-triggered prompts, of her upcoming tasks and deadlines.

The SharePoint Portal offers a single place to collaborate on documents. Contributors and reviewers can be assured they are working on the latest version, with access control to maintain confidentiality and integrity of the document. All changes can be accessed and viewed by internal auditors or regulators if they ever want to review the development of the information.

In global firms, working across time zones, or simply getting onto the calendar of busy executives, can add days to the development and revision processes; SharePoint makes the full document and revision trail available to anyone authorized to see it or work on it, 24 hours a day, with no meetings required. Participants can post questions and responses on the document, avoiding the round robin of email revisions, which often leaves participants puzzled about whether they are changing something in a version that has already been superseded.

Establishing a System

With the Microsoft platform, procedures can be encapsulated in business rules and workflow that enhance the process rather than impede progress. BizTalk Server is a powerful tool for translation and transformation of data and message formats so the final report has consistent information.

Smart Doc templates provide a combination of consistency of appearance with flexibility for information content, so analysts can create reports of appropriate length including essential elements – photographs, graphs, charts, and text – while still adhering to a firm’s design template.

SQL Server is a powerful but easily queried database with reporting capabilities that business users can draw on themselves. Along with Microsoft’s Content Management Server and Web services, it offers a powerful reporting process that simplifies the complex process of creating reports to meet the needs of internal auditors and regulators. Microsoft’s partner, K2, has developed a powerful drag and drop workflow design environment on .NET.

Finally, of course, firms face distributing the report to consumers. All the improvements from automated data updates, streamlined workflow, and a virtuous compliance review cycle are lost if a production office has to spend days formatting the report for print, Web site, email, and PDA recipients.

Here BizTalk Server and Microsoft Commerce Server provide a way to release a report in multiple formats without human intervention.

The Complete Package

Microsoft Office 2003 Professional provides a complete and flexible tool for creating research reports that meet today’s industry demands. It is cost effective, since firms already have most of the software installed in their desktops. The XML links in the Professional version of Microsoft Office automate integration between reports and data, and the application’s templates allow firms to maintain a consistent appearance for all their documents. When coupled with Microsoft’s distribution tools such as Content Management Server and Commerce Server, the platform simplifies controlled distribution for email, print, or PDAs. And because the reports are produced on an integrated platform, compliance is simplified.

If you are interested in learning more about how Microsoft Office System 2003 can help you in the authoring, approval and publishing of your Investment Research documents, contact your local Microsoft representative or email Christian Schneider – Business Productivity Strategist at cschneid@microsoft.com.

Tips and Tricks For Microsoft Office

Microsoft refers to Office 2003 Professional as the Office System for a reason – it is loaded with powerful tools. Starting with this issue, Windows in Financial Services presents a guide to useful shortcuts in Office to make life easier for financial professionals.

Chris Bertelson, who was a senior technology specialist with Microsoft, has become famous for his 90 Tips in 90 Minutes classes for Microsoft Office.

• When you paste a paragraph from a Web site with one typeface into a Word document with another, a little symbol appears on the screen. Click on it, and you get a choice to keep the original source formatting or make the insertion fit with the style in the rest of your document. That’s a Smart Tag, and the next time one pops up, click on it to see what it can do for you.
• For research in a hurry – place your cursor over a term and Alt-Click on it for a quick definition or a Web search.
• Informational Smart Tags will recognize a name as a person. Click to choose from a menu that could include sending an email to that person, scheduling a meeting, or adding her to contacts.
• Need to describe euros, pounds sterling, or yen? Go to Insert and Symbol to find £, ?, or ¥. Since most people use no more than five symbols, the ones you have used most recently are in a display at the bottom on the symbol list where you can find them immediately.
• Excel speaks. Under Tools, click on speech and you can go head down to your keyboard, typing in lists of numbers that your computer will read aloud as you enter them, so you don’t have to keep looking from your source to the screen. And the speech tool is powerful enough to recognize different currencies and the difference between 2005, the year, and $20.05, the amount.
• Keep data flexible. Creators of reports often don’t have any idea how users will want to view their data. The solution is a pivot table in Excel. Go to Data and then Pivot Table to enter data. Users can compress weekly reports into monthly or quarterly reports, or view it by city, state, region, or producer by simple changes to the chart. The spreadsheet can also be linked to charts that are updated when new information is added.

To view, the Office Tips and Tricks Webcast go to:

http://office.microsoft.com/enus/assistance/HA011423051033.aspxus/assistance/HA011423051033.aspx