The FactSet Workstation is a dynamic platform designed to empower financial professionals with seamless data access, advanced analytics, and technology. Integrating over 800 data sources across asset classes and markets, it consolidates crucial insights and elevates decision-making. Its AI-powered tools include smart search and chat features. The workstation simplifies complex workflows, enabling users to uncover insights quickly and improve collaboration. From research and portfolio…
N/A
PitchBook
Score 8.2 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
PitchBook is a resource for data, research, and insights spanning the global capital markets. Founded in 2007 and acquired by Morningstar in 2016, PitchBook's data on the private and public markets helps business professionals discover and execute opportunities.
PitchBook is better for private company data and getting contacts. It is also more useful for capital raises and data AlphaSense is great for more targeted searches which FactSet is very bad at. FactSet often makes it hard to do searches and then once you get to a specific …
PitchBook excels at private company data and has significantly improved its coverage of investors and funds. It is generally more easy to navigate and information is updated frequently. It is not nearly as strong with public, credit or market data including access to news and …
Verified User
Vice-President
Chose PitchBook
PitchBook has the most accurate and complete data. CB Insights platform loads slightly more quickly and is a little more intuitive, but lacks data integrity. Tracxn is not easy to use, but offers some data on a lot of international and small, non-VC or PE-backed companies. …
FactSet Workstation is great for equity research. It is very simple to use and has the most crucial items an analyst needs. Wish it can bridge some of the gaps a Bloomberg Terminal can provide such as the search function and most importantly the chat function. You can easily find an investor on Bloomberg and get the contact info to do more research, it's basically non-existent on FactSet Workstation. Also, I use the FactSet Workstation news function and a lot of times, the news are a repeat of the same thing through the day. I feel like reading the same thing. Better to send one less update if the customer/user already read it.
For our business being able to segregate and prioritise data is essential in keeping overall costs down. Rather than targeted thousands of accounts we need to be able to reduce this number or at least manage which are prioritised first. Whilst it is not the only data vendor we use it is an important one in filling gaps that others do not seem to have reliable information for. It is not the best tool for mapping in revenue or employee size, which is not essential for us as we have other data vendor contracts that have this information.
PitchBook provides a very comprehensive database of not just companies and investors but also M&A activity, financials, funds and LPs.
Pitchbook is multi-dimensional it how it can be used. For example, it can help to accomplish various business objectives, including deal sourcing, due diligence, private market intelligence and fundraising.
PitchBook has an easy-to-navigate user interface. It enables the user to quickly find the data and information that he or she needs.
Excel add-in formulas are not constructed in an intuitive way and too often require assistance from help desk
No chat function for help desk, which means delayed assistance time or talking with non-native English speakers, some of whom can be difficult to understand
There should be an AI chatbot that can answer routine queries; for more advanced questions, a human rep can be connected
Portfolio performance metrics should be downloadable using Excel add-in rather than being available only on Workstation
We need the FactSet data and capabilities to complete 75% of the financial analyses that we complete for both internal and external purposes. It is invaluable and I am not aware of any other provider that would be able to fill this gap that FactSet does
It does everything I need. It is pretty user friendly and easy to work with whatever technology interface I am using (desk top, notebook, tablet, or mobile phone). I am able to get work done whether I am in the office, at home, or traveling. The user up time is very good. They are rarely doing maintenance when I need to use the platform
I personally love the organization structure of PitchBook. I think others like the UI of Crunchbase but I am not a fan of CB. It is too flashy. PitchBook gives you eveyrhign you need and makes it black and white. No need to flash up the data.
The overall support for PitchBook is about average. It is not excellent for two primary reasons. First, PitchBook can run slow from time to time, and I cannot copy and paste from the Chrome extension. I have found neither of those issues to be a function of the computer I am using. However, the PitchBook support team has proved helpful on several occasions.
Product is magnitudes more affordable and provides 80% of the functionality that Bloomberg has and is working to build out the remaining. The workstation is more user friendly than bloomberg but still not perfect. Not as robust as a Bloomberg Terminal and doesn't have the chat/trading features.
Certain regards, such as comprehensiveness and ability to store and export searches and data related to searches PitchBook performs better than the above and remains our go to tool. However we also use DealRoom to supplement some of that data to ensure comprehensiveness and accuracy. Crunchbase appears less sophisticated and hence less relevant for us
I'll pull ~25 company descriptions on occassion instead of writing them myself. Each time I grab one of those I'm saving myself 2-3 minutes. Easily save an hour+ on this simple / repetitive task related to a daily / weekly work product.
If I want to understand other companies in the industry, PB's search function will save me from skimming the internet for hours. This can result in 4-7 hours of time savings across a more macro or industry-wide project.
Quickly finding who invested in an asset can save sometimes 30-45 minutes of searching the internet. While I wish it provided more details on the specific fund that invested (i.e., Fund IV), it provides sufficient direction for me to begin searching internal databases.
