About the Financial Times

The FT is firmly established as one of the world's leading business information brands, internationally recognised for its authoritative, accurate, and incisive news, comment and analysis. In print and online, the Financial Times is essential reading for the global business community.

Printed in twenty three cities across the world, the Financial Times newspaper currently has a circulation of 440,000 copies worldwide, and a readership of over 1.4 million people. FT.com has 5.5m unique monthly users and 86,000 subscribers.

The challenge

The FT wanted to provide corporate clients with a news alerting service that was flexible and easier to manage, on a company-wide basis, than the standard email and desktop alerts available on FT.com.

"We recognised the leading city institutions demanded a premium alerting solution and level of service that went beyond the functionality offered on FT.com," says James Mann, the FT's EMEA Corporate Sales Director. "It's not the best use of busy senior executives' time to set up their own news alerts themselves, especially if they are all tracking the same or similar topics." 

Standard FT.com alerts were fine for individual subscribers, but were not designed to be customized for corporate clients' content and delivery requirements.

"Every client is different," says Mann. "Our clients needed a solution which was highly flexible and which could deliver alerts at a time and in a format that was right for them."

The solution: customised, flexible content delivered company-wide

Drawing on its long experience in the field of current awareness and alerting, Magus developed a solution that combined the simplicity and ease of use of web alerts with a detailed understanding of proprietary paid-for content.

An enhanced and customised version of Magus's alerting solution CrucialInformation, allows FT.com corporate clients to view FT content any way they like, delivering only those elements they need e.g. Lex or Mudlark columns, articles by Lucy Kellaway, or all stories that refer to their own company.

• Alerts can be scheduled for delivery at any time of the day or night, or real-time when the story is published on FT.com.
• Stories can be viewed either by clicking through to FT.com, or on a page dynamically rendered by CrucialInformation.
• Email alerts are delivered in a dual HTML/text-only format, which is ideal for viewing on the move, using a mobile device, and in the office on a PC.
• The email format can be customised for corporate clients using different email platforms to ensure cross-device compatibility.

The email format and user interface were fully customised to incorporate FT house style and branding.

A fully managed content-delivery platform

The service is hosted, managed and supported by Magus, so it can be provided with minimal technical overhead or additional technical resource at the FT.

Magus has enhanced its content technology platform to support the selection, retrieval and delivery of FT content. This includes indexing by company, geographical region, industry sector and news subject, to enable more precise selection of results.

Magus also ensures the maintenance of a dedicated repository of FT content.

Ongoing enhancements ensure full compatibility with FT newsfeeds via FTP, XML and RSS delivery protocols.

Since launch, a number of major global financial institutions have subscribed to the service, including Merrill Lynch, Lehman and Standard Chartered.