The FactSet Workstation is a dynamic platform designed to empower financial professionals with seamless data access, advanced analytics, and technology. Integrating over 800 data sources across asset classes and markets, it consolidates crucial insights and elevates decision-making. Its AI-powered tools include smart search and chat features. The workstation simplifies complex workflows, enabling users to uncover insights quickly and improve collaboration. From research and portfolio…
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PitchBook
Score 8.1 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
PitchBook is a resource for data, research, and insights spanning the global capital markets. Founded in 2007 and acquired by Morningstar in 2016, PitchBook's data on the private and public markets helps business professionals discover and execute opportunities.
As an equity focused investment manager, it is a great all-in-one platform to work from. It solves all our needs for data and Excel integration, modeling, news, market research, economic research and other investment research work. If you are a day trader, its maybe not as useful, but for a manager with normal turnover, it works great
Sourcing of companies. Augmenting information about existing companies. MArket research, example AI for cyber security. Using the data for internal data purposes. Researching a particular market segment (example insuretech). You have had pieces on LP environment in the past that I have found to be very interesting as well. THank you
PitchBook provides a very comprehensive database of not just companies and investors but also M&A activity, financials, funds and LPs.
Pitchbook is multi-dimensional it how it can be used. For example, it can help to accomplish various business objectives, including deal sourcing, due diligence, private market intelligence and fundraising.
PitchBook has an easy-to-navigate user interface. It enables the user to quickly find the data and information that he or she needs.
Excel add-in formulas are not constructed in an intuitive way and too often require assistance from help desk
No chat function for help desk, which means delayed assistance time or talking with non-native English speakers, some of whom can be difficult to understand
There should be an AI chatbot that can answer routine queries; for more advanced questions, a human rep can be connected
Portfolio performance metrics should be downloadable using Excel add-in rather than being available only on Workstation
Better use of Generative AI (At this point, I should be able to type in a natural language search and PitchBook should give me that answer without having to go through the old school search of checking boxes and setting parameters)
If possible, include preliminary data on un-funded startups, perhaps by scraping various non-financial filing records.
We need the FactSet data and capabilities to complete 75% of the financial analyses that we complete for both internal and external purposes. It is invaluable and I am not aware of any other provider that would be able to fill this gap that FactSet does
FactSet Workstation offers a plethora of tools that I don't find I often use daily; however, the overall usability of the product is very user-friendly. As an example, I often use the search bar at the top of the workstation to find a specific metric I might need in a flash. The company frequently checks in through surveys and user feedback to identify areas where they can improve the usability and experience.
I personally love the organization structure of PitchBook. I think others like the UI of Crunchbase but I am not a fan of CB. It is too flashy. PitchBook gives you eveyrhign you need and makes it black and white. No need to flash up the data.
The overall support for PitchBook is about average. It is not excellent for two primary reasons. First, PitchBook can run slow from time to time, and I cannot copy and paste from the Chrome extension. I have found neither of those issues to be a function of the computer I am using. However, the PitchBook support team has proved helpful on several occasions.
Bloomberg has more info/data than FactSet Workstation which I pointed out earlier. To be fair, I believe Bloomberg is more expensive. Refinitiv - I have used Thomson Reuters Eikon in the past and I did not like the inflexible interface, FactSet Workstation is much more flexible. To be fair, Refinitiv may have made some upgrades since but my mental impression still lean towards FactSet Workstation because of ease of use.
We use Pitchbooks concurrently with HG and ZoomInfo Sales. Pitchbooks primarily brings the funding status and information to the table. However, it's company description that is available in the extract along with the revenue growth figures have also been useful when collating the data. It does not have as much contact information as Zoominfo nor the tech database that HG has but this was made clear when purchasing the solution.
We were able to end contracts with a few vendors because FactSet provided everything we need for stock screening, modeling, and analytics directly saving us capital that could be repurposed elsewhere
Having a an all in one system that does everything speeds up training and learning curve for users
I'll pull ~25 company descriptions on occassion instead of writing them myself. Each time I grab one of those I'm saving myself 2-3 minutes. Easily save an hour+ on this simple / repetitive task related to a daily / weekly work product.
If I want to understand other companies in the industry, PB's search function will save me from skimming the internet for hours. This can result in 4-7 hours of time savings across a more macro or industry-wide project.
Quickly finding who invested in an asset can save sometimes 30-45 minutes of searching the internet. While I wish it provided more details on the specific fund that invested (i.e., Fund IV), it provides sufficient direction for me to begin searching internal databases.
