Bloomberg has announced a significant overhaul to the eponymous terminal that is a feature in the offices of most major Australian institutional money managers, which is aimed at making the system easier to use, search and navigate.
Several years of work have gone into the Bloomberg NEXT upgrade, which has been largely based on client feedback, with rollouts of the upgrade beginning for US clients earlier this year, according to head of sales and account management at Bloomberg LP, Australia and New Zealand, Amanda Dobbie.
To upgrade clients, Bloomberg coordinates a site visit to explain the new functionality – although the actual upgrade itself is done automatically.
Currently, at least 165,000 of Bloomberg’s 310,000 clients have been upgraded, including at least 3,500 in Australia and all of New Zealand.
Dobbie described the upgrade as the most significant overhaul of the system since its inception in 1981.
The main changes are around "discoverability", "uniformity" and "intuitive workflow", according to Bloomberg.
Data is easier to search now, with users able to simply type in search terms on the home screen. For example, companies can be searched by name or description without having to look up the ASX code, or a user could look up "China GDP" without having to know how to navigate to the country’s economic data.
The various information and news screened has been reconfigured for a more uniform appearance, which aids navigation by making the process more intuitive through a more consistent look and feel, according to Dobbie.
