Democratizing Data Access at the Stockholm School of Economics
The Challenge The Stockholm School of Economics is one of Europe's leading business schools, producing world-class research in economics and finance. However, the faculty faced a "Technical Divide." While students with Python skills could leverage APIs to gather data for empirical studies, the majority of fundamental researchers and finance students were restricted by manual workflows. They needed to analyze thousands of Annual Reports to spot trends, but downloading files one by one was prohibitively time-consuming, limiting the scope of non-technical research projects.
The Solution FinancialReports partnered with SSE to co-design and launch the Bulk Downloader—a tool specifically built to bridge the gap between complex data and non-technical users.
- Campus-Wide Access: We deployed site-wide access, allowing every student and faculty member to log in via their university credentials.
- The "Zero-Code" Interface: Incorporating feedback from SSE researchers, we built a visual interface that allows users to filter vast datasets (e.g., "All Manufacturing Companies in the Nordics, 2020-2024") and download the source documents in a single ZIP archive.
- Analysis-Ready Structure: The downloaded data is pre-organized by company and year, allowing students to drag-and-drop thousands of filings into local analysis tools or Excel without writing a single line of code.
The Result The Bulk Downloader transformed how empirical research is conducted at SSE. It leveled the playing field, allowing students without programming backgrounds to conduct large-scale archival research that was previously reserved for data scientists. The tool, incubated at SSE, is now a core feature of the FinancialReports platform used by institutions worldwide.
"The Bulk Downloader changed everything for our fundamental researchers. It bridged the gap between our technical and non-technical students, ensuring that the quality of a thesis is defined by the student's economic insight, not their ability to write a web scraper."
