Corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) research and ratings firms measure companies’ performance across a wide array of topics, such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, workforce diversity and executive compensation. Some of these vendors predominantly track companies’ ESG performance to inform and influence equity investors, creditors, bondholders and other participants in the capital markets. These vendors’ products often include a single corporate score to represent a company’s entire performance, simplifying interpretation for end users. This is intended to make it easy for investors to make a more informed decision on potential investments and for other stakeholders to understand how a company is performing relative to its ESG obligations, as well as its peers.
Digital communications governance and archiving solutions (DCGA) are designed to enforce corporate governance and regulatory compliance across a growing number of digital communication tools available to employees. For the various communication tools in use across the enterprise, DCGA solutions enable consistent policy management, enforcement and reporting capabilities. Enterprise organizations face a growing number of regulatory mandates, such as the Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA), Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In addition, they must adhere to corporate governance guidelines, such as proper employee conduct and handling of sensitive data, in the use of digital communication tools. The DCGA market aligns to vendors that develop archive- and platform-integrated solutions, which capture and analyze communication channels, and those that solely develop communication connectors to a variety of communication tools used by enterprises. Organizations utilize DCGA solutions to proactively manage and collect communication content. As part of their direct integration and ability to centralize access to communication data, DCGA solutions facilitate multiple use cases such as supervision, surveillance, e-discovery and data insights. While email has been the most traditional communication channel in the scope of DCGA solutions, there are multiple types of communication channels to be factored into a governance strategy. The scope of these communication tools is constantly changing as new messaging applications are frequently introduced to the market and adopted by employees. Recent evidence suggests enterprise organizations’ customers are dictating the communication tool of choice.
File analysis (FA) products analyze, index, search, track and report on file metadata and file content, enabling organizations to take action on files according to what was identified. FA provides detailed metadata and contextual information to enable better information governance and organizational efficiency for unstructured data management. FA is an emerging solution, made of disparate technologies, that assists organizations in understanding the ever-growing volume of unstructured data, including file shares, email databases, enterprise file sync and share, records management, enterprise content management, Microsoft SharePoint and data archives.
Legal Research Software is a tool designed to assist legal professionals in conducting legal research and accessing relevant legal information. It provides access to comprehensive legal databases, case laws, statutes, regulations, legal journals, and other legal resources, as well as tools for searching, filtering, and citing legal documents to help users refine their queries and find precise results. It also integrates with other legal tools and platforms such as case and document management systems and legal writing sofware, which allows for seamless transfer of information and enhances overall productivity. All in all, Legal Research Software helps lawyers and legal researchers find relevant legal information to support their legal arguments, stay updated on legal developments, and make informed decisions.
Tax software solutions help businesses manage and file their taxes, stay compliant with tax laws and regulations, and reduce the risk of errors and penalties. The primary functions of tax software include calculating tax liability, generating tax forms and reports, and electronically filing taxes with domestic and cross-border tax authorities. It includes collaboration tools to allow tax teams to work together on tax preparation and filing and can be integrated with other applications to streamline the tax compliance process. Additionally, the software can be an integrated compliance suite or specific to individual processes such as provision, indirect tax, and transfer pricing.
Gartner defines a trading platform as a computer system designed to perform financial market analysis, capture and process daily treasury transactions, evaluate the risks associated with those transactions, provide settlement and reporting functionality, and post transaction records to accounts and other financial records repositories. Trading platforms directly or indirectly facilitate the placement of orders for financial products with another financial entity or intermediary over a network. These financial offerings include products and asset classes such as equities, bonds/fixed income instruments, foreign exchange, money market/cash instruments, commodities and derivatives. The financial entities involved in the transactions include brokers, market makers/principals, investment banks, universal banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Trading platforms facilitate electronic/digital transactions that may be undertaken by trading firms from any location using available computer networking infrastructure.