Abstract: A heuristic method is described for use with a financial system, wherein the method receives a newly added research item, extracts a text-based index from the newly added research item, applying a plurality of heuristics to said extracted text-based index, matches results of heuristics application with each of the following entity types: companies contacts, industries, themes, and ideas, and, upon detecting a match, creating a bidirectional link between the newly added research item and the matching entity type. The results of the detected match is then stored in a database.

Abstract: Business research items are maintained for a subscriber, wherein the business items are any of the following: company information, contact information, ideas, themes, or notes. When the user creates a new item for business research, the input is parsed to match the parsed user input to indexed research to identify a matching entry (or entries), wherein a link is automatically suggested between the matching entry (or entries) and the new item to be created. Upon receiving an acknowledgement from the user accepting the suggestion, the suggested link is stored in permanent memory.

Abstract: In response to receiving user input specifying a dataset and a display format, an interactive benchmarking system displays aggregated benchmark data based on the specified dataset and display format. The benchmarking data may include, for example, financial or operational data. Users may access the data sets selectively and use the data as a basis of comparison to provide benchmarks of a particular organization's operational and financial performance.