Sell-Side or Buy-Side, Large or Small, Blue Curve works for you on a Global basis.

Blue Curve has been developed with the input of many different types of firm, but all with one thing in common: Their desire to improve their research business . Indeed, many of the people behind the software have worked in the industry themselves, and have first-hand experience of the research business. As a result, Blue Curve has evolved to meet the needs of large firms, small firms, sell-side firms, buy-side firms and firms that operate locally, regionally or globally.

Over the 20+ years that we’ve been in this business, working with a huge number of customers, we’ve discovered new needs, new operating methods, new issues and new opportunities. That experience and knowledge has been distilled into the Blue Curve platform to provide all our customers with the broadest range of functions, the flexibility to adapt quickly, the lowest operating costs and the tools to compete with the best in their business.

Blue Curve in the Sell-Side

Mark Robertson founded Blue Curve after spending several years in the early 90’s as the head of a technology program at Swiss Bank Corporation to improve financial research processes. Blue Curve began life in the Equity Sell-Side, with early customers including Natwest Markets and Credit Lyonnais. The core functions around content authoring, workflow and distribution were originally developed to improve the traditional processes used to produce paper research documents. This quickly evolved to focus more on the internet and email as the main delivery platforms, and the key idea of componentisation embedded itself into the DNA of Blue Curve.

Today’s authoring modules, Insight & Create, have evolved over time with the input of some of the world’s most innovative investment banks, and independent research producers. Todays’ analyst will find it easy to connect their financial models to Blue Curve, submit data, use the data scratchpad, extract data, and create draft documents. The system takes care of market data updates and standard calculations, enforcing consistency and making quality data easily accessible to all.

Analysts also have a choice of authoring tools: Microsoft Office, Web Authoring and mobile options. All options use Blue Curve’s sophisticated dynamic templates, automated data integration and platform specific productivity tools. All content, whether created using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or a web browser, is saved into Blue Curve as a series of components. This makes it simple to create consistent output for web and email delivery which is based purely on the type of publication rather than the authoring tool used.

Regulation has become an increasingly important part of the sell-side research business, and Blue Curve has evolved to meets the needs of various world-wide regulations from SEC472/NASD2711 to MiFID II. Indeed, the development of the Comply module, specifically addresses the needs of sell-side firms when it comes to regulatory disclosures, compliance checking, audit trails and record keeping.

More recently, Blue Curve’ distribution and Analytics modules have developed in response to customer’s needs around delivery, usage and access. Blue Curve Reach distributes content to all delivery channels, including email, third-party libraries and web portals, whilst controlling individual client access to comply with MiFID II or corporate agreements. Blue Curve Web Portal provides a flexible, dynamic, integrated interface to disseminate published content, and data, to both internal and external users. Whilst the Analytics module records all key customer interactions and provides a reporting interface to easily analyse the usage data.

Blue Curve in the Buy-Side

Buy-side research started to adopt many of the working practices of the sell-side in the early 00’s. We’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the world’s largest and most innovative firms in this regard.

Although most buy-side research is not destined for an external audience, and doesn’t face the same regulatory constraints, the need for consistency, analytical depth and content retention is often much greater than seen in the sell-side.

A typical buy-side installation of Blue Curve will have an initial focus on the authoring modules, Insight & Create. But we tend to find that the depth of the data held in Insight, plus the calculations and aggregations required will be more extensive. In addition, most buy-side firms will also load data into Blue Curve on subject entities they don’t cover themselves, to build a wider view. As a result, we focussed on making sure Insight had the performance to handle large numbers of entities (Companies, Securities, Countries, Sectors etc), calculations and aggregations.

Content creation also has a different focus in a Buy-Side firm. Here, we’re more concerned about recording views on a subject entity, and tracking how those views change over time. Blue Curve components are ideal for this scenario, allowing the analyst to update just those components that require changes, rather than writing a completely new document. Blue Curve automatically records changes to each component in an audit trail, making it simple to display changing views to the research audience.

There’s less focus on the look and feel of the research, but Blue Curve templates make it simple to ensure that it’s all consistent and easy to access.

Transforming data and components into distribution formats, such as internal web portals, third-party research libraries and emails is also simple in Blue Curve. There’s less need for complex workflow and production processes, but the high level of automation in Blue Curve means that he research gets out to the target audience quickly and consistently.

Blue Curve also makes it simple to combine published research from external sources in the Blue Curve Web Portal with your internally generated data and content. Buy-side firms that use Blue Curve are building an increasing valuable internal resource to support their investment decisions, whilst reducing costs and increasing their efficiency.