AlphaSense vs. Appian vs. IBM Watson Discovery

AlphaSense is very well suited to investing teams that need a research management system that has a robust database behind and rich content management features for note-taking. AlphaSense may not be well-suited to individual investors who want data access but don't need to be sharing notes to a wider team. The sharing features are what make AlphaSense most useful.

Incentivized

Appian is well suited for the areas which involve a workflow. For Example: Consider there is a task and 3 teams are required to work on the task, with Appian we can create tasks for each team and monitor the comments and completion. Together with the integration capabilities, this tool can function in many areas. In our firm, we are using it to automate the workflows for our business teams and help them in capturing the OLA's and SLA's.

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Whether using it as a standalone search tool, integrating with other IBM Watson products, or using the API to integrate with proprietary or third-party systems and applications, Watson Discovery addresses these and many other scenarios where document search is required -- understand- if here documents can be pdf, doc, txt files, websites, among other formats --, don't confuse Watson Discovery with EDRMS (Electronic document and records management system) software, Discovery goes further, allowing text search to be done within a context using natural language (NLU) and returning not only the search term but also insights and related issues. File indexing works very well, and training Discovery so that documents and technical terms are learned a bit of work, but it can be reduced by using some of the learning models already trained and available for use.

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• Summarizing information across multiple company documents via their new Generative Grid tool.
• Aggregating the latest insights from diverse sources - broker research, expert insights, company documents, and news.
• Providing a repeatable way to query information.
• Smart keywords to help you search, e.g., car = auto = automotive.

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• Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation.
• Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market.
• Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development.

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• Help us analyse and extract useful data points and insights.
• Powerful API which is both fast and accurate.
• Can analyse almost every type of file including word, pdf, excel, txt etc.
• No need to hire anyone or a freelancer to extract the data.

Incentivized

• The whole platform should be much faster with less lag.
• The layout of the document search isn't great. Often, I find it hard to expand sources or dates.
• Financials sections should be customisible, i.e. bolden certain ratios, remove others etc.
• "Error loading documents, please refresh the widget" should be seen fewer times than often.
• Why can't I export events dates to my Outlook calendar?

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• Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field.
• Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work.
• Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing.

Incentivized

• I believe AI should be more flexible about providing data. However, it's understandable that you need to provide the details you need in a more specific and detailed way.
• The interface could use more tweaking. Being new to the program, it was kind of hard to navigate.
• Luckily, there was a customized feature of the dashboard that I could set up, and having something that you know where you are placed always feels familiar and comfortable.

Incentivized

AlphaSense is a very useful tool and is reasonably priced for our organization. While I may not be a hyper-active user, it's a great resource when I need to quickly do a competitive landscape survey, review publicly available documents (transcripts, etc.), or review Wall Street research

Incentivized

We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian

For my daily work AlphaSense is inevitable, as it holds a real added value compared to most of the CI platforms. It really makes my work more efficient and contributes to better strategy and decision making in the company. Datalog is
available up to 15 years, which is a real advantage compared to other CI platforms that can only start competitor monitoring following the signature of the agreement.

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There are many differences between using Appian and using other programming languages. Additionally, there are many trade offs that have to be made and that have to be accepted for using Appian. In some cases, you give up control of one small area, but in others, it may open settings that are unavailable to a developer when using other program languages.

Incentivized

IBM Watson Discovery has the best user capabilities and easily transform business decision-making portfolio. The automation system saves time used in data analysis as opposed to manual research that consumes a lot of time. The visualization across the dashboard enables my team to interpret complex data and use it to make reliable marketing decisions.

Incentivized

The availability of Alphasense is great. I have used the software for multiple years and cannot remember ever having an outage issue. This is surprising actually, as I use other software applications that do not have regular outages, but still have outages periodically. Alphasense, on the other hand, never seems to have any outages. Good sign if I can't remember the software not working :).

Incentivized

Loading or performing searches on AlphaSense platform is reasonably fast for most of the time. However, it is sometimes unacceptably long for me to load PDF files (earnings presentation, supplementary financial report) on AlphaSense. Certain features might also take very long time, such as loading for "similar tables" across EDGAR filings, or downloading tables from EDGAR filings

Incentivized

Customer support is very prompt. I get personalized support for search recommendations and content that I could not find in my own search. Support checks in with me on a bi-monthly basis to keep me informed of the many different feature additions, I cannot find a more kind, understanding, and supportive team.

Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.

Incentivized

Similar to all IBM Watson and Salesforce product solutions, the overall support would be a 10/10. Their provided FAQ's help with frequently experienced issues and if still unable to figure something out, their customer service representatives are always super responsive. With instant chat functions available, it is easy to ask a quick question rather than sitting on hold.

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The person was prepared, attentive, understood the nature of my questions, was willing to work through any difficulties or misunderstandings, was patient, and super pleasant to work with. Great customer service.

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As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.

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Trainers address the basics, and such training was meant for new users. Instructions are really helpful by providing scenarios that our team will face in our daily tasks. It will be more thoughtful if the training is conducted by case studies so as to allow new users to get first-hand experience during the training.

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Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.

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seamless integration

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It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.

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Compared to FactSet and PitchBook, AlphaSense is a good tool to fill my suite of financial analysis. PitchBook is superior for private company and transaction data, as well as screening for similar companies (the sourcing feature of the job). FactSet is superior for financial analysis for public companies, as well as charting data. AlphaSense is superior in research for documents and deep dive industry research (mostly qualitative) and grabbing data from financial documents

Incentivized

Appian compares favorably with other vendors in the space. It is strongest with business workflow automation and to create custom business applications. The tool base for coding is extremely straightforward and allows for faster coding and deployment. Handles very complex process flows and has the ability to discover new opportunities for automation.

Incentivized

To be entirely honest, in my review, I have used Elasticsearch in the past, but not in a way similar to that I am using Discovery, and I cannot honestly say that I can compare the two because I used Elasticsearch in infrastructure management and monitoring setup while using the ELK stack (Elasticsearch - Logstash and Kibana).

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The sharing features provides by AlphaSense mean that it can be readily scaled for teams within an organization and, subject to compliance requirements, with client organizations. The ability to share annotations of transcripts and investor releases is valuable, and facilitates collaboration between analysts.

Incentivized

• Research speed has now increased to a single day, allowing us to find everything we want about an industry, compared to 3-5 days before with Alphasense.
• Comps analysis, gathering detailed financial information, is now seamless and can be completed in less than 1 hour, compared to 1-2 days.
• Expert interview access, before Alphasense, we had no way of including this into our analysis. This has significantly improved the quality of our decisions and research.

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• Our IT automated procurement process has sped up time to get paid by a few days on every transaction
• Our approvals are more organized as a result of being put in digitally
• Managing our own tenant requires more than we have available, given the quarterly updates
• Since we have business-critical functions running in the platform, we have to thoroughly review every note of every update. Because of this we skip half of the updates since we don't have enough time to review these changes four times a year.

Incentivized

• IBM Watson Discovery has had only positive impacts on our overall business objective of providing quality customer service and timely resolutions for our clients.
• The use of this integration has made life easier for our customer service team, who can now resolve cases for customers quicker and easier.
• Our company prides itself on the service and expertise we're able to provide for our customers and IBM Watson Discovery has only made that task easier for our employees to perform.

Incentivized