One of the areas in Wharton Computing that I am responsible for is Wharton Research Data Services. WRDS, as it is better known, has become the global standard for academic and institutional business research, and we’re about to make our services available to corporate clients, too.
While you might not have come across WRDS during your time at Wharton, it’s actually one of the most powerful resources available for conducting research and developing business strategies. Providing clients with access to an extensive collection of databases covering financial, economic and marketing disciplines, as well as a computing cloud and consulting services, WRDS can easily be customized to meet a range of business needs.
Developed in 1993 to support faculty research at Wharton, WRDS has since evolved to connect over 20,000 academic and institutional users in 27 countries to data from over 40 vendors on a single platform.
Generating $10 million a year in revenue for Wharton, WRDS currently provides services to nearly 300 academic institutions—including Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School and New York University’s Stern School of Business. In addition to top universities, other clients include the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
Overseeing WRDS is a faculty-run advisory board led by Prof. Robert Holthausen, chair of Wharton’s Accounting Department. Our board members provide a unique perspective in that they use WRDS for their own research and provide firsthand feedback and advice on its services throughout the year.
After almost two decades focusing on academic and nonprofit clients, our expansion to corporate clients is the next logical step. Our market research has shown that clients such as investment banks, hedge funds, economic consultants and litigation support firms stand to gain tremendous benefits from using WRDS.
One of the biggest benefits they’ll immediately see is the ability to reduce research effort from months to days with WRDS’ intuitive and flexible access to multiple sources of reliable data. We sometimes refer to it as one-stop shopping for standardized data, with the bonus of an optional computing cloud and a help desk. The help desk is a substantial benefit, too, as all of our clients receive the same access to doctoral-level research support and expert technical support.
We’re thrilled to enter this next stage of our growth. To see all that WRDS has to offer, please visit our website and try out our demo. And if you know of any companies that could benefit from WRDS, please let us know.
For more information on WRDS: http://technology.wharton.upenn.edu/wrds/
