CSE498, Collaborative Design, Spring 2019
Computer Science and Engineering
Michigan State University

The Principal Financial Group is an investment management and insurance company, with offices located in 19 countries. It welcomed 2019 with $626.8 billion in assets under management.

A major key to the company’s success is the investment information generated by its financial analysts. Analysts generate reports on investment opportunities, thus ensuring that Principal is managing its assets in the most effective way possible.

Our Integrated Analyst Ratings and Notes system is a web app that aggregates Principal’s divergent reporting systems into a single, comprehensive tool.

This allows analysts to more easily search through company and investment ratings and update the ratings if necessary. Analysts find they spend less time filling out forms and more time making data-driven decisions. The improved report viewing interface provides a central location for all report analyses, while also maintaining historical ratings.

Our app also improves collaboration between analysts, making access to imperative data widely available. Ratings and notes are easily accessible through the notification, feed and search functions.

In addition, analysts have the option to subscribe to investment portfolios, securities, user-generated tags or other Principal analysts to receive up-to-date information regarding the most vital investments.

Our app is built using PHP, CSS, JavaScript and HTML, and is supported by a PostgreSQL database backend.