The Lay of the Land
After hitting pause and reset in the year 2020, this year is proving to be an amalgamation of different pandemic response pieces hitting the need to return to business as usual. However, business is not usual. In this age, the demands of transparency are high in people's minds.
People need to collaborate. They need to be able to share research easily. Furthermore, when that research is shared, everyone who is engaged in the decision-making needs to see where the information came from.
This isn't a problem for a world that runs on paper. But for a world of zoom meetings and email discussions, don't you need research tools that match your workflow? What about research tools that do the work for you? Smart cards that can be shared amongst colleagues, in and out of your team?
Follow Your Curiosity
As a researcher, curiosity can be a powerful ally. Especially now, when the rules of the game can change so quickly. Staying up to date is essential, but it's also about choosing what you stay up to date on.
The near future holds the capacity for greater disruption in technology and business. Climate change, political pressure, social engagement – these forces for change will continue to influence public companies in complex and unpredictable ways.
Norms develop over time, as widely accepted ways of doing things become institutionalized. To be sure you are on the cutting edge, you have to know where the edge is, and how fast it is moving, and preferably, in what direction.
With idaciti's Disclosure Research application, you can start with one topic, see how public companies discuss and report it, find keywords, use those to further extend (or narrow) your search. You can look back in time or use email alerts for up-to-the-minute information. This iterative way of working allows questions to beget questions, with answers that come with knowledge of your peers.
See For Yourself
The critical piece to the puzzle is having accurate information at your fingertips to continuously querying the most relevant source materials. Many new regulations have been rolled out in the last few years, and the next few promises an even further need for adaptation to changing situations. See for yourself how companies are treating new or sensitive disclosures, so you can stay clear of outliers and know how the norms are developing in real-time.
It is one thing to get quality research on market trends, but it's another thing entirely to plan for yourself what research matters most. Only you know the exact right blend of circumstances that define your company's narrative in the market. Research that you initiate, and that you own, will inevitably match more closely to your needs. When you deliver that research to others, you know it contains the best examples - because you selected them yourself.
Manage and Collaborate
So what if there are cool new tools for disclosure research? The question is, do they enable collaborative workflows? It's 2021, and we're mostly still remote. When we go back, it will likely be blended. In any version of future events, more work is being done over the internet than ever before.
At idaciti, we are powering teams to work flexibly when they research. You wouldn't accept less from any other technology in your life; why accept it for research tools you use every day? We are users of our own applications. Integrating team workflows is a part of our technology because it is also a part of our internal process.
We've added features like live comments, specialized groups, and "liking" documents. You can determine where your team will focus, and you can track the work they are doing through internal hashtags and group sharing.
Share More
When more departments are involved, sharing effectively becomes essential to keeping everyone on the same page.
I was able to create a card with several human capital disclosures that I "liked" that I shared with HR and Legal. This was an extremely efficient way to get all of the information in front of them so they could see the variety of disclosures already out there – Jenny Simpson, Whiting Petroleum, FEI Interview, March 2021
Disclosures are high-stakes documents; they require broad internal support to be truly effective. Leveraging the many stakeholders that may be involved and helping them see why decisions are being made is a key concern that transparency-focused applications makes possible.
No more copy and pasting research into static documents that fill up emails and get lost in endless trails of revisions. The idaciti applications enable organized research and analysis to flow seamlessly in and out of the platform. Sharing is not a feature - it's what the technology platform is based on. We fundamentally believe the power to collaborate is key to staying competitive in the years to come.
Level the Playing Field
Technology has always been about efficiency – from the very beginnings of the wheel to the 90's dot-com boom to today. When you work efficiently, you can do more. There are solutions to workflow inefficiencies in disclosure research – making sure that you and your team have access to these innovations can enhance your productivity.
Why should obtaining data and research take 90% of the work and thinking and discussing only 10%? Our goal is to turn that equation on its head and ensure that our clients can spend 90% of their time actually doing what they truly are best at.
The research itself can be fast, and it can also be exhaustive. It can have breadth, and it can also have depth. Don't compromise if you don't have to! That's the industry-shifting alternative that great technology has the power to unlock.
Unlock Your Creativity
We don't mean paint pictures to describe how you feel about your research process. A different kind of creativity can arise from reducing stress, enabling connected teams, and using tools to improve workflow. This is the creativity that leads to solving challenging problems.
The future may hold many tough problems for businesses to crack – a lot of opportunities are created through transitions. We know the value that transparency creates in this process because once the work has been done, it can still be tweaked, flipped, discussed, and examined from other angles. You have to maintain clarity about the subject, and we ensure that a direct line to the source materials is always available.
To see more for yourself, sign up for a quick demo today. The power of new technology may not transform your workflow overnight. Slowly but surely, saving time will lead to benefits that justify new ways of working. Once you have made the leap, a brighter, more transparent future waits for you on the other side, with idaciti.
