Top business search platform in the market
Updated November 24, 2023

Top business search platform in the market

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with AlphaSense

AlphaSense is well integrated into our investment research workflow. AlphaSense is quite close to being a one-stop-shop for us to search for materials such as regulatory documents, conference transcripts, press releases and business news to support investment decisions. Table extraction from 10-K/Q documents is also made easier with the platform. We also rely on AlphaSense to monitor real time news flow for any specific topic or company.

Pros

  • Natural language search. It recognizes the synonym of the words, and the accuracy of the search result is unrivalled out there.
  • One-stop-shop for the business-related contents. If you can name it, AlphaSense most likely would have it. I am also quite appreciative how we can access most sell side research reports on the platform.
  • Table extractions from 10-K/Q. It saves us so much time.

Cons

  • The platform could be quite buggy or unstable. Sometime the search could be particularly slow, or the search results were not appearing. Sometime the platform forced logout me, especially after a long browsing session.
  • AlphaSense claimed that it could integrate with our internal research database, but it is difficult to work in real life and the results weren't as good as it could have been.
  • With ChatGPT and LLM, I wish that AlphaSense could integrate them into the search process, making the search results more concise and contextually accurate.
  • We gained a lot of productivity by using AlphaSense, hours saved per day just from searching and data extraction process.
  • The ability to search from a broader content source means that we could be more informed in our investment decision.
I think that its business search capability is unrivalled. We have a Bloomberg Terminal and the search function there is horrendous. There is nothing quite like it on S&P Capital IQ, of which we trialed briefly before using AlphaSense.
We use AlphaSense to monitor some of the real time development of our investment portfolio because the platform has the access to multiple proprietary business news sources, and some of them are industry specific. We are more confident in making investment analysis because AlphaSense's sources are really non-exhaustive, and it is less likely that we could be missing out something.
The search function is horrendous. The news search is inaccurate. The search results could be overwhelming, and most of them are irrelevant. Transcript keyword search is slow and clunky.

Do you think AlphaSense delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with AlphaSense's feature set?

Yes

Did AlphaSense live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of AlphaSense go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy AlphaSense again?

Yes

AlphaSense is particularly well suited for business research deep dive, whether in buyside or consulting, of which we have to access multiple sites to obtain reliable business information. AlphaSense works pretty well to search for publicly listed companies in the US, but I cannot say for sure that it can work as well for private companies in the US or foreign listed companies.

AlphaSense Feature Ratings

Public Company Data
8
Private Company Data
5
Industry and Sector Research
8
Industry-Specific Information
8
Independent Research Access
4
M&A Analysis
Not Rated
Supply Chain Data
Not Rated
ESG Data
Not Rated
Credit Ratings Reports
Not Rated
Macroeconomic News
5
Search Tools
9

Evaluating AlphaSense and Competitors

Yes - AlphaSense has largely replaced Bloomberg Terminal in our firm. This is because AlphaSense is more suitable for us to conduct fundamental research on public companies. It is much easier for us to search for relevant information across different sources. AlphaSense has a cloud based modern interface, which is more intuitive to use than archaic DOS interface of Bloomberg Terminal.
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Ease of Use
We decided to purchase AlphaSense because AlphaSense is a modern cloud based platform that has the search feature that we are looking for. We have tried other solutions: Bloomberg Terminal, S&P Capital IQ etc., but none came close to what AlphaSense has to offer. As a platform that centers itself on search, we have successfully integrated it in our day-to-day research workflow.
If we have to do it again, I do not think we would materially change our evaluation and selection process.

AlphaSense Reliability

While AlphaSense can be readily accessed through desktop website, it does not support android mobile application as well as mobile website. This limited me from using AlphaSense on-the-go.
AlphaSense is reliable and generally available all the time. Serious application errors were rare, and resolved promptly if surfaced.
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.

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