AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform used by companies and financial institutions. Since 2011, their AI-based technology has helped professionals make business decisions by delivering insights from public and private content—including company filings, event transcripts, news, trade journals, and equity research. The platform boasts users among 4,000 enterprise customers. Headquartered in New York City, AlphaSense employs over 1,000 people across offices in the U.S., U.K., Finland, and…
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iContact
Score 6.8 out of 10
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iContact is an email marketing solution that was acquired by Vocus in 2012. The product is integrated with Facebook and Twitter and is aimed at SMBs with unlimited sending as a key feature.
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.
I would only recommend it if someone was a small business. I think they are the best suited for companies who will send out a coupon or offer here and there. The most recent updates made it more complicated to use for more complicated processes. It is easy to train someone on the program, and so quick to learn. But I would also only stick to the simpler things. I also think the colorful templates are great, and show great creativity. But again, it is hard to justify recommending the program when it isn't WYSIWYG.
Contact management. iContact is really great for entering all your contact. You are able to put them onto different lists, and let them choose which lists they would like to be a part of as well. There are many data fields provided to fill in information.
Emailing. We use the email feature at least once a month. They are always improving and adding new features, which is very helpful in presenting content in a new and exciting way to our readers. There are many options with remade templates and themes, or you can add your own.
Insights. It is really helpful being able to have the data to see what is working and what isn't. It is nice to be able to go back and see how things went in the past compared to now. Opens, clicks, shares, etc.
I believe the AI agent could be improved to answer more detailed questions and provide better data.
Access to real time financial data in a similar vein to Koyfin.
The ability to easily search across all company decks to be able to quickly gather all relevant slides for a specific topic, similar to what Quartr offers.
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
iContact has been a quick and easy way to send any announcements and news directly to email and social media subscribers. Its tracking and reporting capabilities turn a simple email into a marketing campaign that can be used as a tool to efficiently gauge reader response and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to reach potential customers. The consistency and excellent customer service is what makes this program a pleasant experience.
AlphaSense has a very intuitive user interface, and I can tell they have been focused on expanding their product breadth and continuing to innovate on current products. Some basic features are missing or I can't find (I can't just sort expert calls by only the ones that are applicable to that ticker, most relevant is the one that works best, but I want just the ticker)
I rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.
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 :).
iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.
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
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.
They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.
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.
Our online training was led by a AlphaSense representative. The training is always good. The bigger issue is our time availability to remember the training and utilize it. The trainers will show us examples and then ask us for real industries or companies of interest to use so that the training is most relevant.
Special features of AlphaSense that made us decide on this CI platform: - US-based market and competitive intelligence platform with various premium content (broker information, expert calls, earning transcripts, original company documents etc.) - AlphaSense is a trusted CI platform by world’s leading corporations and financial institutions - AlphaSense’s proprietary AI stack has been meticulously engineered over a decade so that their AI accelerates speed-to-insight so clients can act with confidence when making critical decisions - Private and public companies, therapeutic areas and products can be monitored - Datalog is available up to 15 years, and advanced search is supported for them - Curated newsfeed is available from more than 3,500 top news publications, client requests and hand-picked vendors for premium subscription - Very advanced company profiles are available by default with newsfeed, original company documents, expert calls and reports - Newsfeed and alerts can be also set by admins and individual users
I didn't have a say in the decision because I wasn't with the company at the time. I listed HubSpot here because I know we used it in conjunction with iContact for email automation, but HubSpot Email was only recently built-out to the point where it is today. Now, iContact and HubSpot are no longer integrated.
It has been very simple. Contract terms are standard for an online portal. Of course, I would like unit pricing to be lower so I could get more users on the license or to rotate seats to get more value out of each license. Billing frequency has been standard as well. This could be more significant for a larger customer.
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.
iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.
AlphaSense has allowed us to generate deeper competitive insights. For example, we conducted an in depth analysis of the aerial data analytics (drone) industry, and AlphSense helped us narrow in on the market leaders and their various strengths / weaknesses.
AlphaSense has improved our team's overall efficiency. With Stream in particular, we are able to pinpoint insights in a matter of minutes through the transcript feature as opposed to having to conduct a series of calls ourselves. This is a significant time saver.
AlphaSense has allowed us to make more informed decisions on our public holdings by providing us with unfettered access to equity research analyst reports.
