January 15, 2026 — As programmatic research becomes an increasingly important part of investment analysis, buy-side firms are moving to centralize programmatic research tools and workflows across investment teams, risk and compliance functions, trading desks, and other areas of their organizations.
More than 80% of buy-side portfolio managers and analysts are now supported by their firm’s programmatic research infrastructure, as are about 40% of risk and compliance teams, according to the results of a new study from Crisil Coalition Greenwich, in partnership with Bloomberg. This infrastructure is composed of an expanding set of tools that facilitate the consumption, coding, and modeling of increasingly large datasets, including shared data pipelines, financial model deployment tools, collaboration tools, visualization tools, and dashboards and other features.
Selecting and Sharing Programmatic Research Tools
Currently, about a quarter of participants in the study say their programmatic research infrastructure is fully centralized, while roughly half support programmatic research in a hybrid manner, in which some tools and processes are centralized, while others are not.
“When it comes to tool selection, teams often choose what they need independently. However, there is a push for more standardization, as long as flexibility is maintained,” says Audrey Costabile, Senior Analyst in Market Structure & Technology at Crisil Coalition Greenwich and author of Buy-Side Programmatic Research Infrastructure and Tooling.
While programmatic research tools may be centralized, the reuse of models, code, and other tools remains sporadic at best. Despite a desire to share tools and output, limitations such as firm culture, resources, and skill sets needed to integrate tooling, in addition to a lack of awareness of what other internal teams are doing, are strong barriers to collaboration and model or output reuse.
External Tech Partners and AI
Buy-side firms are overwhelmingly turning to third-party vendor technology to build out and maintain this growing infrastructure. As they select external technology partners, firms are focusing on customization and costs.
“Buy-side firms are also choosing to partner with third-party vendors to ensure that the infrastructure they are putting in place is ‘future-proofed’,” says Audrey Costabile.
Buy-side decision-makers are split on whether their programmatic research infrastructure is adequate for just today’s needs or will stand the test of time. However, there is broad consensus that artificial intelligence will play a much larger role in programmatic research processes and infrastructure.
“Researchers and analysts believe AI will increase access to knowledge and information, improving the efficiency of firms’ programmatic research infrastructure by reducing the search time necessary to locate data and turn it into dashboards and visualizations,” says Audrey Costabile. “They also feel AI should increase capabilities at a reduced cost, although ROI and impact may be unclear today.”
Buy-Side Programmatic Research Infrastructure and Tooling draws on interviews with 66 investment professionals at buy-side firms in the U.S., Europe and the U.K. to examine how buy-side firms are building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to support programmatic research. It presents data-driven insights into current challenges and future needs of investment teams regarding programmatic research infrastructure, analytics tooling and workflow efficiency.