Excel® works brilliantly as a presentation layer
Excel is used throughout the investment management industry to create dashboards and reports. These reports present in-house views, managed portfolio positions, or any information relevant to the investment process. Most role players in the industry are comfortable using Excel to algorithmically manipulate and present data. This makes Excel the tool of choice for investment managers.
So wouldn’t it be great if the data used was dynamically updated?
A problem arises when analysts need to maintain the data used in these dashboards and reports. Third party data providers such as Bloomberg offer functions in Excel that dynamically return market data when a workbook is opened or refreshed. However, these reports usually also require in-house research and proprietary fund information supplied by the custodian. As a result, investment managers spend valuable time on menial repetitive tasks in Excel – tasks that can and should be automated. Wouldn’t it be great if you could retrieve all data used and generated within the research and investment process dynamically into Excel?
Retrieve data into Excel® using Quintessence data functions
It is easy for analysts to retrieve data into Excel using Quintessence data functions. The Quintessence functions are ‘live’ in the sense that their data is drawn and updated from the consolidated underlying data. Analysts are also able to update their research into Quintessence from Excel, ensuring that all investment and research information is stored in a centralised repository.
Quintessence data functions return blocks of data
Users manipulate these blocks of data using a combination of both Excel and Quintessence functions. This is possible because the Quintessence Addin enables Excel to recognise blocks of data. If a user moves a cell that contains a function, the whole block of output data moves accordingly. If a user deletes a cell that contains a function, the whole block of data is deleted. Likewise, if a parameter changes such that a function returns fewer rows than before, the function ‘cleans up’ after itself accordingly.
Create beautiful dynamic reports
Users can easily retrieve data into Excel using Quintessence functions from one integrated source. That data can then be worked with using both Excel and Quintessence functions to create complex dashboards, reports and graphs. These dashboards only need to be created once and no maintenance is required.
Feel free to contact us for more information and to learn about additional Quintessence features.
