AXA Investment Managers
AI powered publishing for financial reports and data visualisation
SaaS platform
12 weeks delivery time
Overview
Activities
- Research and evaluation of AI, CMS, publishing and data visualisation technologies
- Audit of existing report production workflows and content structures
- Analysis of 17 historical GMO reports and identification of reusable template patterns
- Tool landscape assessment across digital publishing and data visualisation platforms
- Architecture design for an AI-enabled reporting workflow
- Prototype development for two solution paths (Custom Build and Hybrid Platform)
- Proof-of-concept build integrating AI, structured content and automated visualisation
- Technical feasibility validation including translation, export, and workflow automation
- Strategic recommendation and roadmap for implementation
Introduction
AXA Investment Managers partnered with Pattrn to explore how AI and modern publishing infrastructure could transform the production of its flagship Global Market Outlook (GMO) reports.
Pattrn conducted a technology and workflow exploration, prototyped multiple platform approaches and developed a proof-of-concept AI-powered reporting platform. The platform was designed to automate report production, standardise data visualisation and enable multi-channel publishing.
Background
AXA Investment Managers produces regular research reports that synthesise complex financial data and expert commentary for investors around the world.
These reports are critical communication tools, shaping how market insights are shared internally and externally. However, the existing process relied on a manual PowerPoint workflow that required significant editorial effort to update charts, adjust layouts, and maintain consistency across each edition.
Pattrn was asked to explore how modern digital publishing, structured content systems, and AI could dramatically improve the production workflow and enable a more scalable reporting platform.
Mapped the problem areas across the existing workflow
Challenge
The existing GMO reporting workflow created several operational and experience challenges.
Each new edition of the report required manually copying the previous presentation and replacing data, text, and visuals across every slide. Charts were recreated in external tools before being imported back into PowerPoint, making the process both slow and error-prone.
This resulted in several key issues:
- Defined and delivered strategic roadmap
- A fast and iterative design process
- Built a customer-centric and evidence based culture
- Formed strategic steering committees and working groups
- Barriers to scaling reports across languages and channels
AXA IM needed a more modern approach to producing and distributing research content.
Approach
Process taking us from research to proof of concept
Mapped the research and assessment workflow
Exploration to proof-of-concept
Pattrn structured the project as a technology and workflow exploration, designed to identify the most viable long-term solution for GMO report production.
The work was delivered in four phases:
1. Research
We evaluated a broad landscape of publishing platforms, data visualisation tools, and AI technologies to understand their capabilities within financial research workflows.
2. Assessment
Tools were assessed against the specific needs of the GMO reports, including structured content, chart generation, workflow automation, and compliance requirements.
3. Prototype development
Two prototype solutions were created to test different strategic approaches:
- A custom AI-powered publishing platform
- A hybrid solution using enterprise publishing tools
4. Proof of concept
The preferred custom architecture was developed into a working proof of concept to validate key features such as AI-assisted chart generation, structured content management, automated exports, and multilingual publishing.
Build routes to balance AI- content, data visualisation and scalable publishing.
Solutions
Explored a model that connected Sanity and Claude AI
Defined how AI could support scalable report production - Claude AI
Defined how AI could support scalable report production - Sanity CMS
AI-powered custom publishing platform
Pattrn designed a modular architecture combining AI automation, structured content management and modern data visualisation.
The prototype platform integrated:
- AI automation using Claude for chart recommendations, translation, and content generation
- Headless CMS for structured content authoring and reusable report components
- Modern visualisation libraries for production-ready charts
- Automated export workflows for web, PDF, and PowerPoint outputs
This approach created a dedicated report-production platform tailored to the GMO workflow.
Key capabilities included:
- Structured report authoring
- Automated chart creation from raw data
- AI-generated commentary suggestions
- Multi-language publishing
- Automated application of design system rules
- Dynamic digital report outputs
Defined a scalable publishing workflow for using Foleon
Explored how PDFs could be exported using the same model
Explored how Flourish could bring interactive data visualisations into the report
Hybrid publishing platform
To compare alternatives, Pattrn also developed a hybrid workflow combining enterprise publishing and data visualisation platforms.
This option allowed teams to create interactive digital reports using reusable templates while embedding visualisations from a specialist charting platform.
The hybrid approach delivered faster time-to-market and strong collaboration workflows but offered less flexibility and long-term extensibility than the custom architecture.
