Connexiti: A Massive Financial Analysis System

A supply chain analysis system for better investment decisions

Project Background

Connexiti is a massive financial analysis system that Sibers developed for a client which has since been acquired by Bloomberg L. P. The initial brief involved transferring an existing database (DB) from one format to another, and making it available for remote editing. Also, a PHP-based front-end was developed to track changes and maintain the DB. Iteration after iteration, Connexiti grew to include thousands of business relationships, helping our customer and his clients to identify investment opportunities and make informed business decisions.

Solution

When the project started, data was entered manually. After the format change and the front-end’s development, the whole system was rebuilt into a proper commercial system necessitating minimal manual input.

Quarterly, semi-annual, and annual reports which disclose data as required by law represent the largest outlay of a public company’s financial information. The first thing Sibers did was to retrieve and parse these reports automatically. Since these reports highlight revenue streams from the company to its customers, they’re of crucial importance when attempting to connect the dots between thousands of businesses worldwide. Luckily, a huge amount of unstructured data is periodically "leaked" via press releases or news. To retrieve this particular information, Sibers employed some advanced data mining techniques which enabled the tech to aggregate and store news items by market sector, company name, tags, and more.

We also provided the project owner with a PHP-based website which enabled him to quantify relationships between companies, do some manual data tuning, and easily write reports from within the system and send them to Connexiti’s subscribers.

The last part of Connexiti is a Java-based application. Clean and minimalistic in its presentation, the application graphically depicts the current relationships between companies, allowing a user to conduct his/her own analysis, or read reports written by experts. From within the application it’s also possible to create virtual investment profiles for different industries, all-inclusive of virtual funds and hard currency.

Tech highlights

  • PHP
  • PostgresSQL Database
  • DOM XML, PDO
  • Stock Screener component
  • Javascript: AJAX (OpenRico, XAJAX, XML-RPC), RIA (OpenRico), X library
  • Java
  • Bizmap (applet for Thinkmap)
  • Xapian
  • Curl, Tidy
  • MySQL
  • Flash
  • C++

Results

Connexiti was acquired by Bloomberg, and its owner was hired by Bloomberg as a financial analyst. Bloomberg’s tools, in use since 2012, are very similar to the ones developed by Sibers.

Customer Says

I found Sibers and shared with them my idea for starting a new business. My goal was to team up with a partner that was able to realize my vision. The task suggested a whole team of experienced developers, to evaluate the technology side, help with the necessary decisions of implementation, and create the product itself. I was looking for a responsible partner to cope with changing requirements and specifications, help with new ideas, and maintain flexibility while providing real results — all of the attributes necessary to turn a startup from an idea into a business. We started out small, and grew over time. Sibers has been the right choice, despite the long distance. We consider our collaboration a successful and beneficial one. Our business has undergone constant development and improvement for nearly three years, and we have many additional projects waiting to be implemented. (July 2008)

Connexiti has been working with Sibers for over three years now. We started with one developer, and have had as many as six working on the project, and now have a core group of four developers. We’re happy with the work we get from developers and our project manager manages to keep our complex project in line.
We're looking forward to a prosperous 2009, and only wish we could accept the repeated invitations to visit! So far it seems we've missed a solar eclipse, lots of snowboarding, an auto rally, and who knows what else.
Thanks Sibers for all your work, and maybe one day we'll be able to join in on the fun as well! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (December 2008)

Richard D. — Founder and CEO at Connexiti LLC

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