Top Expert Network Companies to Support Your Business Goals

In a rapidly evolving market climate, investment professionals face a challenging economic landscape. Industry developments and market movements often feel endless, making it difficult to stay at the forefront of your industry.

Staying ahead of market trends requires constant sifting through the ever-expanding supply of available information, as well as finding relevant insights amidst the noise. However, the timeliness and quality of those insights could directly influence your company’s performance and future outlook—which is why it’s so crucial to rely on research tools that provide you the right information at the right time. 

That’s where expert networks come in. 

Expert networks refer to a type of business that connects companies with expert resources or subject-matter experts (ranging from former C-level executives to a company’s customers) to provide valuable and current information, data, or assistance. These first-hand perspectives from industry experts are a critical addition to the secondary research that most professionals rely on to formulate investment strategies, market landscaping, and due diligence.

Leveraging knowledge from first-hand operators in a company or industry, alongside unique experiential insights, will radically transform your market research from reactive to proactive. These critical expert insights allow you to build a more comprehensive view of any company, industry, or trend.

Below we dive into the top expert network companies to support your business goals.

Understanding Expert Network Models

Expert network models can be divided into traditional and modern with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven approaches.

Traditional expert networks, like GLG and Third Bridge, typically follow a one-on-one consultation model, where clients are matched with industry experts for direct, tailored conversations, often conducted through phone calls or meetings. These networks rely heavily on human research teams to source and vet experts based on client needs, focusing on providing high-quality, customized insights. They also collectively lack artificial intelligence capabilities that can accelerate access to expert insights, market data, and financial research.

On the other hand, Inex One utilizes a different model that serves as a marketplace that aggregates multiple expert networks in one platform, allowing clients to access experts across different networks and streamlining the process. This marketplace model still leverages human research but offers greater flexibility and efficiency by consolidating options. Although Inex One is not an expert network itself, it provides the same service for clients looking to access experts fast and run B2B surveys.

During the mid-2010’s, a new generation of expert networks surfaced, often founded by former employees at incumbent networks. These offshoot firms used modern technology either internally built or built on top of Inex One’s operating model. AlphaSense Expert Insights and Tegus, however, were two platforms that opted for entirely new operating models which disrupted the expert network industry.

AI-driven expert networks, like AlphaSense, incorporate advanced machine learning algorithms to enhance the expert-matching process. These platforms use AI to rapidly analyze data and automatically connect clients with the most relevant experts based on their specific queries, significantly reducing the time and human labor involved.

AI also enables these platforms to provide real-time insights by continuously monitoring data trends and sourcing expertise dynamically, making them well-suited for fast-paced decision-making environments.

Ultimately, the best expert network platform to support your business goals is one that leverages advanced technology to streamline access to expert insights and financial research all in one platform.

AlphaSense

As of July 2024, AlphaSense and Tegus have joined forces, bringing unparalleled access to even more insights and covering more industries and companies than ever before. Both platforms come with extensive libraries of high-quality research, as well as data and AI tools that allow users to extract the most value from the insights they find.

Expert Insights

Staying current on every trend, development, and movement related to your industry requires a tool that separates the noise from the insights you need. However, going through the channels of a traditional expert network can be a time-consuming task—especially for professionals that need to make quick and accurate investment decisions.

AlphaSense’s Expert Insights helps you find millions of valuable insights from industry experts in seconds, without spending valuable time on manually searching for the right expert. With over 10 years of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) development, our AI technology allows you to surface critical insights from tens of thousands of expert call transcripts across all industries.

AlphaSense offers fast-tracked Expert Call Services to provide in-depth insights so that investment professionals can outperform competitors without the associated costs. Personalized expert interviews can uncover insights and potential research areas that most investment analysts and fund managers would have never known to look into.

Even when a researcher does know the nuances of a niche space—for instance, when an investment firm seeks to enter a high-potential market—Expert Call Services can still provide the kind of unique perspective that would be impossible to get from any other resource.

The Full Value of Expert Insights

Market researchers can easily access various expert perspectives through our powerful research tools in three effective ways:

• Expert Transcript Library – Dive into an extensive expert transcripts and audio in our library to access proprietary insights from former executives, customers, competitors, and channel participants across a range of industries. Leverage on-demand access to our premium insights on thousands of public and private companies to create strategies that lead to fresh insights on new products, market sizes, and sector occurrences.
• Expert Call Services – Our Expert Call Services offering allows you to quickly connect with experts for customized interviews to fill in any research gaps in your investment strategies. Gain access to more than one million pre-qualified expert profiles spanning all industries across the globe with seasoned subject matter experts—such as thought leaders, former executives, customers, partners, and competitors.
• All-in-One Market Intelligence – AlphaSense aggregates financial and business data (broker research, company documents, news articles, and more) from over 10,000 trusted sources to provide our users with a robust research universe and ensure they never miss a vital piece of information. Our one-stop solution for expert insights means you never have to toggle between multiple disparate platforms while conducting your market research.

Combine our suite of Expert Insights with an extensive collection of broker research, earning calls, filings, news reports, and more, all available in AlphaSense to build a comprehensive view of any market, industry, or company.

Powerful AI Technology

Leveraging AlphaSense’s award-winning AI capabilities along with Expert Insights allows users to gain tens of millions of data points at the industry, watchlist, and document level to better track market landscape and industry trends, identify disruptive players, and discover competitors’ hidden strategies.

Researchers can save time on research and maximize their research budget with AlphaSense’s powerful AI-search capabilities:

• Smart Summaries – Enables users to glean expert insights in an instant with generative AI (genAI) summaries that capture the gist of any expert call transcript found within the extensive AlphaSense library in seconds.
• Smart Synonyms™ –  Empowers users to expand keyword and thematic searches to deliver the most relevant expert insights by including all synonyms, excluding irrelevant results, and filtering out the noise.
• Sentiment Analysis – Allows users to identify and quantify levels of emotion around specific topics within expert transcripts by using a boolean operator to search for mentions of a specific topic in a positive, negative, or neutral light.
• AI Assistant – Offers users to ask live questions and gain real-time answers with our AI-powered chatbot designed to summarize billions of data points to get you from question to answer faster.
• Enterprise Intelligence – Enables businesses to secure searches, summaries, and follow-up questions across their proprietary internal data and a vast repository of 300M+ premium external documents.

Combining AlphaSense’s powerful AI search technology and user-friendly navigation allows you to easily capture insights from thousands of on-demand transcripts and find the information you need faster, so you never have to waste time or money on irrelevant sources.

Industry-Leading Compliance

AlphaSense prioritizes compliance throughout the entire content development process of Expert Insights. Not only is our compliance process established by our Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) with 20+ years of experience, it also follows a robust procedure to verify experts and review each individual transcript before publication. Our industry-leading compliance mitigates risk of exposure to material non-public information (MNPI) by thoroughly vetting both industry experts and investment analysts conducting interviews for each expert call. Additionally, Expert Insights’s hand-picked team of compliance reviewers has reviewed every single transcript published in the past two years to provide our clients with confidence about the safety of their research.

AlphaSense’s customizable compliance programs offer tailored solutions to ensure each customized call adheres to company-specific standards and laws, securing operational excellence. These rigorous compliance protocols provided by AlphaSense allow investment professionals to make faster investment decisions with confidence.

Outperform Without the Associated Costs

Traditionally, analysts spend around two hours on expert calls—one hour sourcing and coordinating, and another conducting the call. This not only wastes valuable time but also incurs significant costs, with the industry average price per call being around $1,200. 

Expert networks have become commoditized. However, AlphaSense challenges this model by reducing both time and cost while offering the same level of white glove services and bespoke custom recruiting to gain unique insights at a fraction of the cost.

AlphaSense offers expert consultations through Expert Call Services at a rate 70% lower than traditional methods. This substantial cost reduction can lead to significant savings, directly impacting the bottom line of your research budget, allowing you to maximize your research budget.

To ensure our pricing meets your specific needs, we offer flexible platform subscriptions to accommodate team sizes, content needs, and more, ranging from enterprise packages to per-seat options.

Learn how the price of Expert Insights can keep you ahead of the competition without the associated costs of a traditional expert network.

Tegus

Tegus brings top-quality content on public and private companies, financial data, and workflow tools, enhancing Alphasense’s comprehensive market intelligence solution across the research lifecycle. Together, AlphaSense and Tegus bring their complementary product and content capabilities together to enable users to unearth even more comprehensive insights from thousands of content sets.

Tegus Expert Transcripts

AlphaSense and Tegus have joined forces to offer customers the world’s most extensive and rapidly expanding expert transcript library. The Tegus platform offers the largest curation of public and private company transcripts built on top of leading AI-powered functionality to easily find, sort, and surface powerful insights.

Tap into a unique, powerful set of expert perspectives through one-on-one expert calls, panel calls, management checks, and the deepest and fastest-growing library of expert call transcripts on the market. With over 100,000 expert transcripts and growing, you can discover your unique perspective faster.

Tegus Expert Call Services

Connect live to a unique, powerful set of credible expert perspectives through one-on-one expert calls that meet your unique research needs. Gain unique perspectives from highly-vetted experts, including former executives, customers, competitors, and channel partners.

Unlike other expert networks, our call services deliver curated quality experts fast without the markup, empowering our customers to make more informed decisions with confidence.

Tegus Compliance

Our powerful platform and team of experienced compliance professionals use the latest technology and rigorous policies to prevent and detect potential risks or violations. Every expert call transcript is pushed through a multi-layered compliance review process that deploys proprietary AI and a team of highly trained specialists to identify and remove potential confidential information or MNPI.

Additionally, Tegus’ leading compliance framework helps ensure your research is SEC-compliant and implements transparent checks and guardrails so you can make better investment decisions. 

Financials and BamSEC

Gain instant access to over 4,000 global fundamental models and over 60 industry dashboards, all hand-built and sourced by sector-focused analysts in Vancouver. Unlike building your own models and comp sheets, using Tegus’s off-the-shelf models like, Canalyst, dashboards, and data reduces your time spent on undifferentiated work, allowing you to compete on your ability to analyze the data, not aggregate it.

Transform how you work with public company data to make quantitative investment research even easier. By streamlining access to SEC filings, earnings and event transcripts, financial documents, and more, BamSEC enables analysts to focus on what matters, save time, and do better work.

AskTegus

Tegus’ most recent AI innovation, AskTegus, is an AI-powered chat experience that allows investors to quickly cut through the noise and get the insights they need. AskTegus creates a super-charged analyst, giving users the ability to sift through Tegus’ extensive database—comprised of the largest investor-led transcript library —uncovering insights within seconds, empowering investors to drive to a high-conviction decision supported by proprietary and trusted data.

Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG)

Touted by experts as the “insight network for the whole world,” GLG provides access to a network of 900,000+ subject matter experts and on-demand expert calls in its platform. Primarily serving investors and financial managers, GLG’s comprehensive expertise database spans almost every geography, industry, and function. GLG delivers a range of products, including phone consultations, surveys, live in-person and virtual events, packaged insights and reports, and more.

To date, GLG serves leading technology, life science, and industrial companies, including 40% of the Fortune 100 and seven of the top ten global technology companies, leading investment and financial firms, top professional services firms, and hundreds of nonprofits and social entrepreneurs around the world. 

 GLG offers the following features:

GLG Direct

Entrepreneurs with adequate time to perform self-service research can connect directly with subject matter experts (SMEs) via GLG Direct for one-on-one sessions. 

GLG Syndicated Insights

Small businesses that want to rely on existing GLG content rather than interview an SME can utilize GLG Syndicated Insights, which provides access to GLG’s library of reports, surveys, transcripts, webcasts, etc. 

GLG Research

For mid-sized or large business owners, GLG Research allows them to outsource all research required for a new venture or unit to GLG. It packages detailed quantitative and qualitative research data from workshops, focus groups, discussion panels, voice-of-customer data, and market research to ensure a well-rounded outlook for consumers.

While these features are effective in helping GLG’s clients conduct qualitative and primary research, the platform ultimately lacks robust quantitative research data that is critical for gaining a 360-degree perspective in investment and market research.

Essentially, GLG only offers expert calls and does not provide other premium, proprietary data sources on public and private companies like AlphaSense. Additionally, the GLG platform lacks powerful AI research tools that streamline access to experts or extract valuable insights from complex content sets.

Related Reading:

GLG vs Tegus (and AlphaSense)

GLG Alternatives & Competitors

Third Bridge 

Third Bridge is a private research expert network firm that offers an extensive library of high-quality content for business, investments, and consulting purposes. Its extensive collection is regularly curated by experienced and talented executives so that you get the latest data and can make informed business decisions from the most trusted perspectives.

Third Bridge uses primary research techniques in its business model, including interviews with industry experts and professionals, to gather information on various companies, industries, and topics. It primarily facilitates one-on-one consultations and interviews, offering direct access to industry-specific knowledge. These insights help investors make better decisions, assess market opportunities, and develop business strategies.

However, Third Bridge is an expert network, so while it can provide specialized qualitative insights, it does not offer comprehensive market intelligence for data-driven, holistic market research. If you’re facing a unique business problem that does not require no pre-existing content offering potential solutions, you can take advantage of the following key features in the platform:

Forum

Forum is an archive of analyst-led investigative interviews, which provide global industry knowledge and full sector insights. The library has over 30,000 transcripts and conducts over 10,000 interviews annually.

Maps

Third Bridge keeps track of public and private company value chains to help users speed up their early research. It uses a proprietary market research model called Maps to rank, filter, and prioritize companies, enabling investors to make decisions faster.

Connections

Investors can gain direct access to prequalified industry experts in one-on-one consultations for better insights into the market.

Community

Community connects Third Bridge clients to relevant experts by leveraging its extensive global expert network, thorough pre-qualification processes, and compliance framework. These interviews are then anonymized and made available via Forum, so clients can get preferential fixed-rate pricing on one-on-one consultations versus traditional more expensive one-on-one expert consultations. Community’s investor-led content, generated from fixed-rate one-on-one consultations, offers clients unique insights into companies, markets and investor sentiment.

Overall, Third Bridge excels in providing high-quality, qualitative insights through its extensive network of industry experts. However, its focus on qualitative data can be limiting for organizations that need a more comprehensive view of market dynamics. Without quantitative data and powerful AI capabilities that separate the signal from the noise, Third Bridge may not fully meet the needs of teams that require a faster, data-driven approach.

Related Reading:

Top 6 Third Bridge Alternatives

Third Bridge vs. Tegus

AlphaSights vs Third Bridge

AlphaSights

AlphaSights is a leading global expert network that connects businesses with industry experts to provide insights and advice for strategic decision-making. AlphaSights provides its clients with information services that help them make better business decisions and deliver outstanding results. 

The AlphaSights network of experts is particularly suitable for investment bankers, private investment firms, mutual funds, management consulting, corporations, and non-government organizations (NGOs). The platform combines expert network coverage, technology, and compliance to provide business intelligence and analysis to its clients.

The company now also offers surveys, insights projects (similar to GLG’s Strategic projects), and a small content library named AlphaView. AlphaView is similar to the Third Bridge Forum content library, although significantly smaller.

AlphaSights focuses primarily on expert consultations, which can be costly and less accessible for smaller companies. Therefore, this platform may not be ideal for small businesses or startups with limited budgets, teams that require comprehensive quantitative data, or organizations seeking automated insights.

AlphaSights offers the following features:

AlphaSights Calls

AlphaSights provides calls for deep, one-on-one insights. Clients can request expert calls and share their requirements, and then AlphaSights will quickly source precisely matched experts. Clients can also select profiles they would like to speak with and discuss preferred meeting times. Additionally, AlphaSights offers a bench of ex-investors and strategy professionals to moderate calls on your behalf.

AlphaSights Transcripts

AlphaSights clients can order a transcript for a high-quality record of their call, which is ready within a few hours. Additionally, the platform can generate instant AI summaries of your call transcripts, which can be shared with your team.

AlphaSights Surveys

AlphaSights clients can run a survey for both quantitative and qualitative expert data, then monitor progress and access output in the platform. AlphaSights’ in-house survey team provides end-to-end survey support, from authoring to results and analysis. Guided by your project brief, AlphaSights can quickly build your panel of qualified experts.

AlphaSights Deal Advisors

AlphaSights allows its clients to add an industry veteran to their deal team by launching a Deal Advisor search and selecting an experienced Deal Advisor to map markets and support your deal execution. Users can also commission AlphaSights Executive Partnerships team to run a deep custom search against their requirements.

AlphaSights Research

AlphaSights provides its users access to structured expert perspectives on-demand with transcripts and summaries available in the platform. Additionally, clients can commission research on companies and markets of interest, and AlphaSights’ specialized research team can set up calls with leading experts.

Overall, AlphaSights is primarily geared towards qualitative insights, which may not suit teams that require detailed quantitative analysis, data-driven decision-making, and AI-driven efficiencies. Organizations seeking more automated insights may also find that AlphaSights’ reliance on human expertise does not fully meet their needs as it lacks valuable AI capabilities that accelerate and enhance research

Related Reading:

AlphaSights vs Third Bridge

Guidepoint

Guidepoint is a leading expert network platform that provides expert consultations to business professionals seeking industry expertise and insights. Its global network of over one million industry experts offers valuable insights and advisory services to help its clients make more informed business decisions.

This platform is ideal for organizations seeking expert insights and data-driven solutions for decision-making, as it provides expert consultations and access to a wide network of industry specialists. Guidepoint provides access to qualitative insights, helping users get insights into market trends and competitive landscapes.

Guidepoint is primarily used by finance, consulting, and corporate strategy professionals who require expert opinions and insights for primary research to research markets. Consulting firms leverage Guidepoint to gain access to high-level expertise for strategic planning, while private equity and venture capital firms use it to evaluate investments and conduct due diligence.

Key features include:

Guidepoint One-to-One Interactions

Guidepoint connects its clients directly and privately with pre-qualified subject matter experts within 36 hours of a request. Guidepoint’s One-to-One Interactions provide access to former C-suite executives, hands-on product engineers, leading research scientists, and customers.

Guidepoint Surveys

Guidepoint Surveys can accelerate clients’ identification of trends, validation of hypotheses, and uncovering of hard-to-access information by quickly canvassing a field of experts. This allows users to dive deep into a specific issue or understand consensus opinions.

The Guidepoint survey team works with its clients to build an effective questionnaire, deliver it to exactly the right respondent base, and turn it all around quickly.

Guidepoint Insights

Guidepoint Insights helps its clients fill gaps in their research and deepen their understanding of emerging trends and essential information. Researchers can gain topical perspectives from advisors through moderated calls conducted by Guidepoint’s Insights team and receive client-generated calls.

Guidepoint Qsight

Guidepoint Qsight is an approach to gathering intelligence that includes sourcing a combination of traditional and alternative data and providing analysis that leads to granular and real-time insights.

Guidepoint offers three ways to obtain the information required for critical business and investment decisions: leverage its collection of established datasets to gain insight into company and industry trends, gain access to its exclusive primary research data, or collaborate with Guidepoint to create a bespoke solution to your business needs.

Overall, Guidepoint offers access to a vast network of experts across various industries, making it a great choice for those who need specialized knowledge quickly. However, its high cost, time-consuming consultation setup, and limitations to qualitative insights are significant drawbacks, particularly for organizations requiring a broader range of data types.

The platform also lacks powerful AI search tools that could accelerate qualitative research and does not offer access to high-quality content sources beyond expert calls. 

Related Reading:

Guidepoint vs GLG (vs AlphaSense)

Guidepoint Alternatives and Competitors

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do you need an expert network?

Expert networks can provide clients access to various experts with specific, niche perspectives and expertise that cannot be found anywhere else. Rather than spending hours searching for answers to your queries through published research, expert networks can quickly surface the intel you need–whether it be from a consultation with an expert or a content library. More importantly, the best expert networks implement rigorous compliance standards that limit the exchange of information, safeguarding both client and expert from potential risk.

Expert networks also provide a more cost-effective way for investors to access industry insights in a shorter turnaround. Rather than spending countless hours searching for a person to interview, expert transcript libraries streamline the whole process by asking experts the pressing questions industry professionals have in a searchable format. When seeking out an expert network, look for depth of experience, both in the professionals helping you reach your research goals and the network that fuels its insights.

Who uses expert networks?

No longer just a powerful resource for the financial services space, expert calls provide valuable insights and a competitive advantage to top companies’ corporate strategists and competitive intelligence professionals.

Knowledge professionals, from individuals to teams and leaders, across industries and roles, rely on expert networks to enable strategic decision-making. The industries using expert networks the most are: information technology, industrials, media, healthcare, pharmaceutical, biotech, energy, consulting, asset management, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, investment banking, and sell-side equity research.

How do various industries benefit from expert networks?

​​Major industries leverage expert networks to evaluate market landscapes, understand various perspectives, and scout out trends worthy of investment. From corporate strategy to the MedTech space to the technology sector, professionals utilize expert insights to drive major financial and operational decisions that will impact their present and future performance–and consequently, keep them ahead of the competition.

How do you choose the right expert network for your needs?

If you’re questioning what to look for in an expert network, especially if it will be a long-term engagement, you need to outline your expectations and needs. Then, once you have a clear idea, use these questions below to help you decide what platform will give you the most ROI for your investment:

1. Do they have relevant experts specially vetted for your project or consultation needs?
2. Are their experts rooted in the subject or industry to ensure reliable insights?
3. Do they have a competitive pricing strategy in place?
4. Do they have a quick turnaround time to provide insights when needed?
5. What sort of support are you seeking from an expert network?
6. Do they have the kind of machine learning and AI functionalities that elevate and speed up research processes?

Try AlphaSense Expert Insights for Free

To stay ahead of the competition and perform agile decision-making, investment professionals need a centralized resource for primary investment research like Expert Insights. With AlphaSense Expert Insights, there’s no need to meticulously search global expert networks or spend hours reviewing documents to analyze a competitive landscape. 

Leverage our proprietary AI technology and an extensive library of expert transcripts to glean instant insights on new products, market sizes, and sector occurrences shaping various industries.

Discover how AlphaSense Expert Insights has disrupted the expert network industry in our whitepaper, The Future of Primary Investment Research: An Evolution from Expert Networks to Expert Insights.

Defy doubt in your research with expert insights. Start your free trial today.