Contributor: Brendan Farrell

A version of this blog post was originally published by Wall Street & Technology. Virtually every industry in every corner of the world has undergone technological or process evolution in recent times. There are countless examples of innovations that have addressed a challenge – the process takes too long, the process costs too much, the process is too risky – and changed the game by helping organizations or individuals operate smarter through efficiency, automation, or simplification. Let’s consider communication, or the transmission of messages, as just one area where evolution has occurred. There are ways to communicate that involve quite a bit of manual work, such as the use of a carrier pigeon. Not the quickest way to transmit a message, and not too efficient, as apparently a carrier pigeon typically only flew in one direction – home – and would need to be manually taken to a message’s original location to begin the process. Given the level of difficulty and manual intervention required, it’s no surprise we don’t see the skies full of email or text message pigeons today. On the flip side, if we look at a more modern messaging bird, it is evident that technology has changed the game for how individuals, organizations, and governmental entities can communicate and discover information. Twitter offers its users a simplified and efficient way to communicate specific messages to an audience across the room or across the world – pointing to why the social network has amassed millions of users in just a few years. A similar, albeit less feathery, evolution is taking place within the corporate actions space today.... read more