The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is at the forefront of the development of new products and services to help listed companies meet their obligations under a growing list of financial reporting requirements. The LSE is adopting new and emerging technologies as the enabler for these product developments. One of these new products is IR Web Modules, a managed investor relations web site product that was developed for the LSE by Priocept, an Internet technology consulting firm.

The LSE discovered that its small cap and AiM customers needed a simple and cost effective means of creating an investor relations presence on the web. Legislation states that all companies that have a website should make all materials published to investors, as well as two years worth of regulatory news, available on their site. The LSE found that many small cap and AiM companies did not have the necessary IT and web design expertise or resource required to implement and host web-based communications and fulfil investor relations requirements.

These companies needed to make corporate information available on the web for investors, researchers and others, covering financial performance, business operations and corporate governance. This data needed to be available in one place and in a standardised, easy-to-access way. The solution to this problem was to introduce a product that the LSE would call Investor Relations Web Modules (IR Web Modules).

The challenges

The LSE had two key drivers when deciding to initiate the IR Web Modules product development initiative:

•A perceived market opportunity to meet small cap companies’ desire to improve communications and transparency for investors and meet their regulatory obligation to provide published documentation about their company to investors, researchers, fund managers, etc.

•A desire to deliver a lower cost, less technologically taxing web site product for small cap companies, providing an alternative to commissioning an IT consultancy or web design firm to develop a bespoke website.

Product overview

The IR Web Modules product allows a company to edit their investor relations content via a web-based interface. It also allows them to insert financial performance, real-time share-price and regulatory news data, sourced directly from the LSE’s corporate data warehouse, using a simple point-and-click interface.

Reusing company information that is already stored within the LSE’s corporate data warehouse makes IR Web Modules an attractive solution because all the information that is used has already been validated via existing processes in place at the LSE for collecting and verifying this data for each listed company. This ensures the accuracy and timeliness of data on a continual basis, removing the possibility of an investor relations web site with incorrect or out of date information.

Furthermore, the system was designed to be user friendly and easy to use – both for those wanting to publish the data and those seeking it.  This allows companies to set up a sophisticated investor relations web presence with little technical knowledge, while providing investors and other end users with content and functionality that are often missing from the websites of small cap companies.

The LSE chose Priocept to develop the IR Web Modules product because of its track record in product development for the web and its cost effective and creative approach to web technology projects.  Furthermore, Priocept was chosen because it fully understood the LSE’s needs and could collaborate effectively with its product marketing team.

Priocept helps its clients manage Internet technology projects and build Internet-based products and services that increase revenue streams and add value to customer relationships. The company’s founders came from a leading web agency but left to independently leverage their IT expertise by creating web-based technology products for clients.

Simon Wilkinson, deputy head of IR solutions at the London Stock Exchange said, “As an agency, Priocept was selected because it is specialised enough to understand our specific needs but broad enough to handle the challenge. They impressed us with their ability to visualise the IR Web Modules product and then deliver it on time and within budget.”