A Leading Provider of Financial Data and Analytic Applications: FactSet

The Silicon Review

Since becoming a public company in 1996, FactSet has evolved from a U.S.-centric software firm into a global company delivering the world’s best insight and information to investment professionals through its superior analytics, service, content, and technology.

The world’s investment professionals trust FactSet, across asset classes and at every stage of the investment process. FactSet offers in-depth insight with powerful analytics and comprehensive datasets, seamlessly integrated with client content. Its dedicated account teams partner with clients to provide flexible, round-the-clock support.

FactSet prioritizes customer service and the client experience. Clients have unlimited access to a team of consultants and product specialists. They’re able to leverage a wide range of combined industry knowledge and FactSet product experience to maximize the value of FactSet. Client feedback is regularly incorporated into the product through constant enhancements and technology innovations.

The company serves up thousands of terabytes of analytics and data each day to users across the globe. Content is synchronized and accessible in a variety of mediums, including web, mobile, and desktop applications and devices. “Nearly everything we create is developed in-house from the bottom up, including our database technology and client server platform. Development happens quickly — most projects take between one day and three months to complete — so engineers see immediate results for their efforts. Our class of computing is unmatched in the industry, and includes two fully redundant data centers, each able to handle our entire client load, hundreds of FactSet-managed routers in global WAN, and heterogenous environments including Solaris, Linux, Windows, and Cisco,” said Mark Hale, Chief Operating Officer.

As of August 31, 2015, FactSet has a market capitalization of $6.5 billion, which is up 22.6% over the previous year. Through technological proficiency, a dedicated workforce, and an unwavering commitment to client service, FactSet has driven revenue and earnings per share to new heights, as well as increased its international presence, and ultimately, its competitive edge.

Continuous Innovation to Help Clients Make Smarter Investment Decisions
For nearly 40 years, FactSet has offered smart, streamlined software designed to help its clients stay on top of global market trends. It integrates thousands of datasets in its desktop and mobile solutions, giving clients the accuracy and transparency they need to perform innovative analysis and present it clearly.

In the past year, the financial technology company has innovated in a number of ways to better serve its clients. Its industry-changing, first-of-its-kind Portfolio Services offering provides clients robust and transparent data reconciliation and standardized custom reporting options across regions and asset classes. This service removes the burden of manually processing their portfolio data off of clients, freeing up their time and resources to focus on more strategic functions.

FactSet Geographic Revenue Exposure (GeoRev) is a comprehensive database that correlates geographic revenue to a proprietary normalized four-level geographic classification structure containing more than 280 countries, areas, regions and super-regions. With GeoRev in FactSet’s industry-leading Portfolio Analytics, active managers can construct developed market portfolios to gain exposure to emerging markets. The GeoRev dataset covers 18,000 global securities with history starting with 2003 for U.S. firms and 2006 for international companies.

As-Reported Financials is a new dataset within the FactSet Fundamentals product line. As-Reported Financials data is available in income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow reports via the Company tab in the FactSet workstation. It allows users to easily view all as-reported reports in one place, benefit from complete transparency with 100% data auditability, and view data in way it is presented by each company.

FactSet Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) Data and Analytics provides comprehensive reference and analytics data across the universe of exchange-traded products. FactSet ETF Reference allows users to complete ETF due diligence using FactSet’s library of fund-specific data points and information on ETF structure, trading, and benchmark indexes.

Users can also search across asset classes using a horizontal classification system to understand each ETF’s exposure on a granular level and retrieve exchange listings data, including exchange names, tickers, exchange codes and listing currencies to monitor trades on multiple exchanges in different currencies.

A Collaborative Culture Built on Client Service and Integrity
FactSet’s employees are the key to its success and the reason it continues to execute at a higher level than its competitors. Its focus on engaging and enabling employees to do their best work is central to FactSet’s ability to deliver the best insight and information to clients around the globe.

Over the last 38 years, FactSet has built a collaborative culture that recognizes and rewards innovation and offers employees a variety of opportunities and experiences to learn. “I myself started as a junior level consultant, supporting clients in using our analytics, content, technology, and service solutions. And, like many other FactSetters, I was given the opportunity to develop my skills, pursue global opportunities within the company, and interface with leaders across the organization to build my career,” said Philip Snow, CEO.

One of the facets of FactSet that the organization is most proud of is its flexibility, which allows employees to achieve work-life balance. This is critical to reinforcing to employees, many of whom join FactSet right out of college, that FactSet is a place to grow, and not just start a career.

In March 2016, FactSet was ranked #89 on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For,” marking the Company’s eighth appearance on the list in the last nine years. FactSet was also recognized as one of the UK’s “Best Workplaces” by the Great Place to Work® Institute UK for the seventh consecutive year, listed in Crain’s for the third year in a row, and included in the “Best Places to Work in France” list for the fifth
consecutive year.