As part of its ongoing strategic relationship with Multex.com, Merrill Lynch has tapped the ASP service provider to develop and host a new research Web site. The internal site will be made available to almost 700 analysts and portfolio managers with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM). The group, which manages over $555 billion in assets world wide, expects to go live with the MultexExpress ASP platform for its research site sometime this month.

The site will feature proprietary research from MLIM along with broker research and Multex Real-Time Estimates, which includes earnings estimates, growth rates and recommendations. "This allows us to create an exclusive community of investment managers to share information regionally and across sectors," says Geoffrey Campbell, global project leader and research manager at MLIM. "At the moment people have access to a lot but they have to know where to find it. This means they will have access to everything and it will make their jobs more efficient."

Previously, the investment managers were relying mainly on a disparate system of spreading information via e-mail, voicemail, conference calls, lotus notes and "sneaker net," says Gregg Amonette, senior vice president of global sales, marketing and business development at Multex.com. "Instead of having all of the information scattered it allows users to organize all of it in a central archive with a very powerful and easy to use intelligent search interface."

On the end user perspective, analysts and portfolio managers can input any type of information, whether it is a Word document, a spread sheet, a power point presentation or any other format through MultexExpress' contribution interface. Although the contribution interface is not a part of the overall site, it is Web based and users simply log onto a URL and input their information via that site. The information is then automatically archived and available to other users through the search engine where users will have access to different levels of content, depending on their specific information needs. "We particularly like the control aspects," notes Campbell, "The idea is to get down to the individual, so the individual says I want to receive this information daily, this information weekly, or I would like to be able to build searches to suit my particular work requirement."

Amonette adds that some other trends among major investment management firms using sites like this include accessing research through hand held devices such as telephone or RIM devices. While these trends are widespread, Amonette wouldn't comment on anything else specifically that MLIM might be working on with its internal information site in the future. Amonette also says some firms are looking into what he calls "e-collaboration" which allows users to continually comment on research and decision making information.