BST Awards 2019: Best Data Provider to the Buy Side—FactSet

Being awarded Best Data Provider isn’t just about quality content; it’s also about delivering the best service, and fostering a corporate culture that focuses on client service.

FactSet has long impressed industry analysts with its ability to deliver consistent growth, and this year—reflecting the vendor’s increasing importance to buy-side professionals—it wins the best data provider to the buy side category, stealing the award from regular winner, RIMES Technologies.

Delivering a best-in-class data service isn’t just about doing one thing well—it’s about providing the right mix of proprietary and third-party content from statistical and economic data to alternative datasets—and being able to tie them together in a way that creates value for clients. So, in addition to curating and mapping content from different sources into a seamless experience, FactSet has opened up its API to allow others to develop applications and models directly within FactSet’s environment.

“We recognize that clients need different tools and different ways to tie information together,” says Rob Robie, executive vice president of analytics and trading at FactSet.

But what makes a provider the best in its field isn’t just its technology or content; what makes a company stand out is its service and support, and how it listens to and communicates with its clients. “We really listen to our clients… and as their needs expand, we want to make sure we can continue to support their requirements, so that we can stay alongside or get ahead of those needs,” Robie says.

There’s another aspect to being the best—and that’s how a company handles its greatest asset: its people. “As technology, analytics and data continue to evolve, we want to offer the best choices to or clients. But we also want to offer our employees excitement,” Robie says. “With everybody getting into the data and analytics space, you want to attract the best and brightest. And when people see what FactSet is doing, they want to get involved. As a company, we get excited to be part of a team trying to solve clients’ problems… and it’s rewarding to see the response from clients.”