Capital IQ is a market intelligence software solution offered by S&P Global Market Intelligence, which is the result of McGraw Hill Financial's acquisition of SNL Financial.
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ReconNET by Trintech
Score 10.0 out of 10
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ReconNET is a corporate performance management solution from Trintech. ReconNET automates account reconciliation, including high-volume reconciliation, with the goal of helping users tighten controls, reduce risk and increase process efficiency.
Cap IQ is well suited for analyzing security pricing and valuation, tracking stock performance over time, looking up comparable transactions, and analyzing valuations on an industry basis. The service is also well suited for charting and data analysis purposes.
It is well suited in scenarios where customers have tremendous volumes of data to deal with and where the reconciliation of the information is of paramount importance to businesses and stakeholders. We use it primarily for balance sheet reconciliations that come with features, such as exception management, which is great for focusing on the few that matter the most at the end of the day.
The ReconNET tool has a great audit-trial system that captures every detail in the life of a record and helps eliminate any manual intervention. It's fully SOX Compliant, and helps track any changes in the data from an audit perspective.
The automation helps us focus entirely on the exceptions, which helps eliminate attention from the mundane tasks to areas with potential problems.
Exception management and automated posting to the GL are great features that help streamline many of the routine, mundane, and yet time-consuming activities, freeing up time to focus on issues at hand.
S&P Capital IQ's add-in slows down my Excel when I incorporate formulas into it.
S&P Capital IQ's algorithms don't necessarily look in the footnotes of company filings, which can make for a less robust analysis of financials and multiples than desired.
The user interface is not very user-friendly and thus makes maximizing the software's features difficult. It could be more intuitive to use and not so busy (e.g. not so many small icons on one web page). The S&P Capital IQ support team, however, is always available and very helpful.
It takes a little bit of practice to get the hang of the tool to set up the reconciliations, but its not necessarily a drawback, since this applies to every other automation tool out there. However, once someone gets the hang of it, it's pretty user-friendly to run it on a daily basis.
Since automatons can only be built on a set logic, at times certain items that show up as exceptions are not truly a cause of concern. However, since it's always better to flag too many potential exceptions than too few, it's not a true drawback.
It has quite a few features, such as multi-currency reconciliation, bank deposits, disbursements, automated postings to G/L, etc. which could be of great value for various requirements for clients. It is especially useful where volumes of data are too large to deal with. The uses might not be phenomenal for low volume reconciliation requirements.
We had Capital IQ in addition to Bloomberg. It was much easier for a new person to use Capital IQ than Bloomberg. The ease of use was a huge selling point for us. Yahoo finance on the other hand is free, but you cannot gather all the data you may need in one location like you can in Capital IQ.
Each automation tool has its own set of features, but the fact that ReconNET is built for reconciliation purposes sets it apart from the rest. The ease of usage once the user gets a hang of it, the extensive audit trial, and the ability to focus on exceptions rather than the necessity to scroll through a bulk of irrelevant information, all provide the key-user with the critical decision-making ability.
We were a boutique investment bank, so it helped multiple people doing their job at the same time instead of waiting for a turn on the Bloomberg terminal.
Brought more interactive reports in PDF format to the table.
It definitely has a positive impact on ROI with freeing up resource availability and usage on the most pressing tasks at hand. For example, focusing on exceptions rather than reconciling from scratch.
Another positive impact on the ROI can be realized with the detailed audit trials on sensitive information.
Strong Financial Reporting is the backbone of any industry, regardless of the sector it operates in, and having an automated reconciliation tool such as ReconNET helps you attain the key objective of integrity of information in a timely fashion, to support the close process.
