Accenture Touts Efficiencies In ResearchAccenture Touts Efficiencies In Research

Continued margin pressures and the demand for a clearer separation between research and corporate financial services have heightened the focus on the economics of investment research. Accenture is advocating that investment firms use this movement as an opportunity to implement technologies that will improve efficiencies and cut costs in research.

According to a study compiled by the consulting firm, which conducted personal interviews at 30 of the top investment institutions, the financial industry spends more than $13 billion annually to develop and distribute research. While that total includes the cost of hiring and retaining top research talent, more than half is spent on packaging and delivery. Accenture maintains that the greatest costs of producing and distributing research are the amount of time spent by sales forces and analysts in packaging and distributing content. "For all the technologies that are available today, the primary mode of distributing research is PDF files," says Bob Gach, managing partner of Accenture's Capital Markets practice. "It's clear there are more efficient ways to approach this."

Gach contends that investment houses could cut down on those costs by implementing technologies such as digital content management that provides research to users on a needs-based system, standards-based network technologies, and the editorial best practices used by leading news organizations to distribute information.

The cost-cutting potential is great, Gach says: Some top 20 firms could save $50 million to $100 million annually. "The savings would come from increased productivity, reduced headcount, and reduced tech costs in terms of printing and electronic distribution and storage for the documents not used by anyone."