Knowledge management in financial services: Collecting and sharing information and analyzing data and social media content are among the benefits.

Better investment information

With investors looking to get every edge, it’s essential that investment banks use knowledge management applications to help determine the right investments for their clients. BPI France, a private, state-owned financial institution, wanted to make more informed decisions about Silicon Valley companies. But to do that, the bank needed a way to cull through the vast amounts of information available from various news sources and publicly available reports as well as details from social media discussions of the firms, says Paul François Fournier, the bank’s director of innovation.

In spring 2016, the bank looked at different solutions, deciding on Netvibes in June 2016. In September, the Netvibes dashboard collected more than 1 million news articles from Silicon Valley, focusing on high-tech

as well as social media posts from the top 250 venture capital influencers in that area.

BPI created a specific ontology for what Netvibes showed were the top 21 topics, then tracked and compared the difference between media information and the commentary of venture capital social influencers.

The comparison helped BPIFrance determine where to focus investments for the best returns for customers, Fournier says. As a result of the research, the returns nearly doubled. With that type of success, BPI France is undertaking other investment research projects, relying on Netvibes to help analysts quickly aggregate and analyze pertinent data.

As the amount of data they have internally and have access to continues to grow, financial services firms will continue to rely on knowledge management solutions to collect and share data across their organizations, keep data private and to quickly analyze internal and external data and social media commentary.