Bullish about business-critical information

Financial management company Merrill Lynch is using a solution from The Relegence Corp. to access and manage crucial business information and news sources in real time. The company has deployed Relegence's FirstTrack and KnowledgeHub technologies in its institutional equity sales and trading group in New York and London.

The system manages the flow of varied information including major newswires, more than 10,000 corporate and editorial Web sites, as well as internal information sources, including Merrill Lynch research and market commentary. The new solution enables the immediate and widespread communication of that information to clients, colleagues and internal departments.

"The Relegence KnowledgeHub delivers a wealth of relevant, customized data to our equity professionals and facilitates the sharing of this information with clients and colleagues," says Jim Russo, director, Merrill Lynch Equity E-Commerce, New York. "We use it to quickly and efficiently locate newsworthy items. The relevancy filtering and advanced test scan technology have revolutionized the process."

The system is said to incorporate an artificial intelligence component that monitors, sorts and filters information from thousands of sources to bring only news and intelligence that is relevant to the user. The product also allows users to gain access to importance information with only one or two mouse clicks. Users can then push the information to their colleagues or clients, according to The Relegence Corp.

Merrill Lynch plans to roll out the solution worldwide eventually