The PMT should include members from both the buyer and vendor organizations. These individuals must learn to adapt to and trust each other, while balancing the needs of their respective organizations. This balancing act is difficult, but not impossible.

The project management plan established between the BPO buyer and vendor is intimately related to the contract between the panties, but is not confined to the contract alone.

The project management plan includes elements of interpersonal and interorganizational interaction that simply cannot be specified in a contract.

For instance, in order for strategic benefits to be realized through BPO, each party must develop trust in the other to understand and seek to advance each other’s come business competencies.

This means that companies must reach beyond the deliverables, timetables, penalties, and remedies specified in the contract and SLAs. Each party must strive to understand the competitive conditions under which the other must operate, excel, and remain profitable.

This requires that each party dedicate sufficient time and resources to the relationship to build trust. It is difficult to conceive how the requirement to build trust could be specified in a contract.

In fact, the very idea that it would be spelled out in legal terms seems to contradict the meaning of the term.

Trust is essential if the partners to the BPO relationship are to realize gains that go beyond those articulated in the contract.

A trusting relationship may lead to interorganizational transactions and to new, unexpected revenue opportunities that may not be included in the scope of the original contract.

In fact, a dynamic BPO relationship will constantly be seeking ways to extend and deepen the working relationship for mutual strategic gains.

Unlike the traditional buyer-supplier relationship, the BPO relationship must be meticulously planned and managed from day one with strategic intent.

That is, the project management plan established by the parties should be designed to manage the BPO project and achieve its basic goals, while seeking strategic gains for both buyer and vendor.

It is commonly accepted that the tactics to effectively manage outsourcing relationships vary as widely as the relationships themselves.

For example, the strategies for managing a BPO project that focuses on IT functions differ from those that would be used to manage a BPO project focusing on HR functions.

At the same time, there is overlap and general lessons to be learned from any BPO initiative that apply regardless of the target function.

We have examined hundreds of BPO cases and reviewed voluminous articles in both the popular and academic literature to seek patterns among the wide variety of successful BPO relationships.

Although each relationship is unique and has nuances that cannot be generalized, several ingredients of a successful relationship have appeared often enough to be considered mandatory.

Based on a basic foundation of trust, we have identified six other essential ingredients of a successful BPO buyer-vendor relationship:

Ingredients of a Trusting BPO Relationship
• Shared vision and expectations
• Consistency of actions
• Predictability of responses
• Respectful of confidentiality issues
• Long-term, mature, and enduring
• Aligned interests and goals
• Mutual respect and understanding
• Proactive and intense communication
• Integrated systems and processes
• Encouraging and participative
• Sharing of risks and rewards
• Operating as extended organizations

1. The BPO buyer must understand and respect the vendor’s need to make a profit. The BPO relationship cannot be driven by cost reduction above all other considerations. In order for the vendor to continue to be motivated to provide high-quality services, there must be profit in the relationship.

2. The contract should have provisions for service level agreements (SLA) recalibration. As business conditions change, the original SLAs may be out of line with industry practice and need to be recalibrated.

3. The buyer’s responsibilities should be clearly articulated. Many BPO contracts clearly articulate the vendor’s responsibilities, ignoring on minimizing those of the buyer.

4. The BPO project management plan should include provisions for changing the PMT structure or members. Although changes in PMT structure and membership should not be cavalier, allowances should be made for member attrition and rotation.

5. The PMT should use systematic problem identification and resolution techniques. Rather than waiting for problems to arise in the relationship, the PMT should use a systematic and proactive approach. Of course, such an approach must be based on interorganizational trust and honesty.

The project management team (PMT) should develop interpersonal relationship norms. Such norms should arise from within the group and should govern the manner in which PMT members relate to one another.

Profits and the BPO Relationship
A reasonable profit margin for the outsourcing vendor is essential to the long-term success of an outsourcing relationship.

In an outsourcing relationship, neither party should aspire to an unrealistic business advantage.

Outsourcing is designed to deliver financial benefits to the BPO buyer, to be sure. It must be kept in mind, however, that the vendor is also a business and must maintain a profitable operation to survive and excel.

The profit and reward that goes along with outstanding work motivates the provider to commit resources, ensure quality and service levels, identify new opportunities, address the client’s business issues in a timely and proactive manner, and innovate.

Outsourcing relationships that are focused exclusively on cost reduction often result in situations in which the vendor ends up delivering minimum levels of service to justify the continuation of the contract.

This can be avoided, and both parties can reap benefits, if the buyer expects a fair profit for the vendor and encourages reinvestment of profits in extension of the vendor’s core competencies. This will enable the vendor to commit additional high-level services to the buyer.

Recalibration of Terms
SLA recalibration clauses are effective tools for reassessing and adjusting contract terms. Incorporating and exercising a benchmarking clause in the contractual framework of a BPO relationship provides an opportunity to baseline service levels, repair a strained relationship, and adjust terms to new business or service conditions.

By identifying and quantifying the specific elements of service delivery that need to be recalibrated from time to time, the parties can stay motivated by virtue of the tenor of the contract.

The project management plan should incorporate any contractual clauses regarding changes to SLAs and should execute changes as required. This is not as easy as it sounds, of course.

Each change will require negotiations and a thorough review of the implications. The PMT should handle all changes according to its operating principles, which may include voting guidelines and issue resolution protocols.

For instance, in the case of a deadlock, it may be necessary to escalate the issue to the Steering Team for final resolution.

Buyer’s Responsibilities
The BPO buyer’s responsibilities to manage the outsourcing partner are one of the most neglected areas of outsourcing relationship governance.

Companies tend to minimize the internal management resources required to effectively manage a provider.

BPO buyers either devote too few resources to managing the vendor relationship or supervisory resources deployed in change of the relationship lack the skills, training, and inclination to make the relation-ship succeed.

Relationship management becomes especially difficult if the buyer views outsourcing primarily as an opportunity to reduce costs and cut headcount.

The general tendency to draw PMT members only from the affected process can also be problematic.

Although people from the process area may be technically qualified, they may lack the other skills needed to effectively manage the outsourcing process. Attention must be paid to the non-technical skills of individuals on the PMT, as discussed previously.

Changes in the Project Management Team
In a strained BPO relationship, the existence of ill will on one on both sides often presents a major hurdle to a successful resurrection of the relationship.

In some cases, it may be useful to replace team members who have become hostile to the BPO project on who have developed personal animosities.

The PMT may also want to turn over members, other than the BPO champion, from time to time. This can help reduce the potential for interpersonal conflicts to develop into lingering problems.

This approach may also bring in fresh perspectives and improve the possibilities of revitalizing the relationship.

Systematic Problem Identification and Resolution
Several tools are available to the PMT to constantly monitor and assess the results of the BPO project.

The metrics specified in the SLAs are the starting point for assessing the project’s effectiveness.

Beyond that, the team should regularly scout the external environment to determine whether strategic advantages are also accruing to the partners as a result of their BPO-based working relationship.

Many BPO partnerships have adopted the balanced scorecard approach in order to evaluate performance and facilitate discussion on value creation opportunities.

By using added value as one of the scorecard perspectives, the model provides the vendor with an opportunity to identify value provided over the course of the contractual term and to define the linkages between business needs and services delivered.

If an outsourcing relationship is damaged or strained, another strategy is for the PMT to use a Top Ten Issues approach.

Using this approach, the PMT identifies at each meeting the Top Ten Issues confronting the project.

Subsequent meetings track the progress on the issues and, hopefully, drive them down the list and out of the top ten.

This approach requires a substantial amount of due diligence to establish that the concerns are objective and can be unambiguously documented.

Once both sides agree on the nature and extent of the ten issues, they are given time to develop and implement acceptable solutions to each one.

The PMT’s responsibility is to establish monitoring mechanisms to ensure that the buyer’s or vendor’s actions agreed to for each of the issues are actually implemented.

In either case, the task requires a high level of senior management commitment to implement the metrics, mechanisms, and processes necessary to ensure that both sides are meeting expectations.

Develop Interpersonal Relationships
Tools and techniques will help in monitoring the relationship and the level of performance on the outsourced process, but there is no avoiding the necessity for buyer and vendor to develop trusting interpersonal relationships.

Most of the standard principles of interpersonal relationship development apply to BPO relationships.

Offshore BPO relationships will be challenging in that on-site meetings may require international travel.

Today, international meetings can be handled using a form of teleconferencing. Teleconferencing technology should be leveraged to help reduce costs associated with managing the offshore BPO project.

Nevertheless, each party should visit the other’s premises at least once pen year to keep the interpersonal feelings alive and to renew personal and business bonds.

The most important factor in the interpersonal arena is the establishment of acceptable norms that govern the relationship between the parties. The norms of behavior in a healthy BPO relationship are based on three dimensions:

1. Flexibility. Which defines a bilateral expectation of the willingness to make adaptations as circumstances change.

2. Information exchange. Which defines a bilateral expectation that buyer and vendor will proactively provide information useful to each other.

3. Solidarity. Which defines a bilateral expectation that a high value is placed on the relationship. It prescribes behaviors directed specifically toward relationship maintenance.

Tips for Developing Effective Interpersonal BPO Relationships
• Develop an approach for the relationship as allies.
• Regard attendance at the regularly scheduled PMT meetings as a top priority.
• Be tolerant of cultural differences as they apply to issues of power and authority,
• Arrange seating during PMT meetings in a manner that avoids furthering an “us versus them” mentality.
• Seek “win-win” in negotiations over SLA term changes or contract extensions.
• Develop an understanding of and appreciation for the other party’s business and competitive arena.
• Hold meetings at each other’s premises on a rotating basis, allowing each to serve as the “host.”

As the individuals assigned to the PMT interact and develop a sense of comfort with one another, norms of behavior will develop, although it may take a while for that to happen. One of the biggest mistakes in managing teams is to intervene with prescribed norms, circumventing the natural group team norming process.

Enabling the PMT to meet often during the early stages facilitates the norming process. The PMT should attempt to codify some of its norms into its project management plan, being cognizant that the norms may need to be changed and rewritten from time to time as the team matures.

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Service/portal name: http://www.usadata.com

Source description: USADATA is a direct marketing portal that provides an automated, self-serve process for direct mail marketing.

USADATA offers two customized corporate portal products: the Customer Acquisition Portal and the Customer Retention & Cross Sell Portal.

The Customer Acquisition Portal has two components: Consumer Prospecting and Business Prospecting. Components: Consumer Prospecting and Business Prospecting. Companies can choose to place a link to the portal on their internal Web site (or intranet) or they can access these prospecting tools through the USADATA Web site.

The target audience for the Customer Retention & Cross Sell Portal is the large corporation with a decentralized sales staff.

Pricing. The cost of data from USADATA varies. Mailing lists and mailers are priced per record by type of data, ranging from $50 through $1,501-$2,000 and up. Customized corporate is available on request.

Source content: usadata offers two customized corporate portals, the Customer Acquisition Portal and the Customer Retnetion & Cross Sell Portal, which may be made available on a company’s Web site or through an intranet.

These portals provide access to consumer or business lists that have been created especially for the company based on targeted criteria and selected geographic locations. Direct mailings may be generated and personalized for the individual company.

Targeting criteria include the following:
1. Consumer Mailing Lists
• Geographic Area Selects: state, city, county, ZIP code. Additional criteria through data specialist: area code, MSA, DSA, radius around an address.

• Demographics, Lifestyle, Behavior Selects: age, sex, estimated income (HH), home owner/renter, home market value, length of residence, dwelling type.

Additional criteria through data specialist include, but are not limited to lifestyles/hobbies/interests, marital status, property details presence of children, presence of children by age, race/ethnicity, religion, mail order buyers, donors and contributors, opportunity seekers, new home owners/movers, pool owners, RV/mobile home owners.

2. Business Mailing Lists
• Geographic Area Selects: state, city, county, ZIP code. Additional criteria through data specialist: area code, MSA, DSA, radus aroung an address.

• Business Selects: SIC code, employee size, sales volume, sales growth, contact names where available.

Additional criteria through data specialist include, but are not limited to, fax number, contacts by job title, contact by job function, franchise/branch affiliation, home-based businesses, ethnic-owned businesses, public/private indicator, year established, multiple contacts at same location, owner’s sex.

The resulting Consumer Lists include name, address, and telephone number of each prospect. Business Lists are available in Basic or Advanced formats, and the Advanced format contains additional data elements.

Implementation and support of the corporate portals is provided through USADATA’S Client Partner Group, which offers training to the corporate client and customer service to the end use.

Source evaluation: The Customer Acquisition Portal is surprisingly easy to use to create your own lists and mailings, although many targeting criteria are available only by calling a data specialist.

Results are sent via e-mail, in comma-delimited ASCII text format, and may be downloaded into Excel, usually within two hours of submitting the criteria. The mailing lists and mailer costs seem very reasonable.

Complete price lists are found in the Order Lists & Data section of the Web site. Payment may be made by credit card, or corporate accounts may be established.

Although the Acxiom data underlying the USADATA portal does appear to be fairly comprehensive, the source of the demographic information and how recent it is are not clear, so it is difficult to judge the reliability of the data.

Data source information indicates that data come “from more than fifteen of the nation’s top data sources,” but none of these sources are named at the site.

A ProQuest database search finds articles discussing USADATA’s resource partnerships with, among others, Arbitron, Scarborough Research, Hoover’s, MediaMark Research, and Seagate Software.

One negative about the USADATA Web site itself is the absence of a search option. The site is easily navigated using the section title links found at the top of the page, but neither these links nor the site map give the user insight into the content of each section.

Finding a useful tutorial and guided tour required diligent exploration of the site, and I would not have know these existed at all had I not methodically clicked every link I found on each page.

A site map is included, but the tour and tutorial do not apprear there; the map includes only two “levels” of the site.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   10
2. Relative timeliness of data:  8
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  9
4. Ease of use:   10
5. Search options available:  3
6. Level of support services:  8
7. Level of training offered:  8
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 9
Total Rating: 65

Useful tips
• A helpful list of Requently Asked Questions pertinent to the direct mail portal is hidden under the heading Order Mailing Lists.

• Before ordering from the prospecting portal, take advantage of the Learning Center tutorial and the Guided Tour, also found under Order Mailing Lists.
 

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Service/portal name: http://www.hoovers.com

Source description: Hoover’s Online delivers company information in the form of short company capsules and longer company profiles. It also contains industry snapshots, market intelligence, and sales prospecting tools.

Significant portions of Hoover’s database (company capsules) are available for free, and the more in-depth sections are offered on a subscription basis.

Hoover’s targets sales, marketing, business development, and other professionals who need to retrive a standard bucket of company, industry, and competitive information on a regular basis. It also works well for interviewees, small businesses, and personal investors.

Pricing: Hoover’s is very reasonably priced. With three pricing structures in place, Hoover’s Lite, Pro, and ProPlus (in addition to Hoover’s Corporate), a user can choose the level of access.

Options begin at $50 per month or $400 per year for individual subscriptions to Hoover’s Lite. A Hoover’s Pro subscription starts at $1,995/year for a 1-5 seat license, and Hoover’s Pro Plus starts at $4,9995/year for a 1-5 seat subscription.

Hoover’s offers a large amount of information for free, and icons indicate what is available for no cost and what is available to subscribers with their fee.

Source content: Hoover’s Online contains four linked parts that are described below. Companies & Industries, IPO Central, News Center, and Information Marketplace.

1. Companies & Industries. Hoover’s covers more than 18,000 public and private companies worldwide, 300 industries, and 180,000 corporate executives, as well as over 12 million companies from Dun & Bradstreet and 9,000 non-U.S firms from Mergent.

From a company capsule, one can find the top competitors and access Information Marketplace, News, Investor Information (SEC filings), and Key Executives.

Company profiles contain in-depth company descriptions, financial comparisons with competitors, and industry benchmarks.

Each industry snapshot contains a description of industry along with a list of trends provided by Plunkett Research, a glossary of industry terms, and lists of associations, selected Web sites, and print resources.

The Hoover’s Industry Snapshots are an excellent source for an overall look at an industry and its players.

2. IPO Central. Here users can search for IPOs (initial public offerings) by company name or ticker symbol. Subscribers can also search for IPOs by location, underwriter, industry, filing or trading date ranges, offering amount, price range, or annual sales.

Once IPOs are identified, Hoover’s links to the Companies & Industries section of the database.

3. News Center. This section can be searched by keyword, ticker symbol, date, or phrase. Archives are searchable for up to ninety days.

News items are selected by Hoover’s editors and are derived from NewsEdge, so they are primarily press releases and articles from Fortune, Business Week, For Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. The News page also links to company press releases.

4. Information Marketplace. This section includes over forty-five thousand reports from more than ninety publishers, including Dun & Bradstreet, Datamonitor, Freedonia, Harris, Jupiter and Reuters.

These reports are available for fees ranging from $5 for a D&B Credit Report to approximately $500 for as industry report. The reports are described in enough detail to make a purchase decision.

Source evaluation: Hoover’s licenses a good deal of content and puts it together in an easy-to-understand format. Nevertheless, the licensed content is available in many other sources.

The narrative on companies and industries are what the Hoover’s brand known for, forming the strongest part of this resource.

They are well written and interesting and provide useful information, and unlike more analytical sources, they are jargon free.

The profile are well written, with an eye toward providing a lear description of the issues that companies and industries face. Hoover’s narratives are also licensed to other information providers, such as Bloomberg and LexisNexis.

Dun & Brandstreet acquired Hoover’s in March 2003. This will add more companies to Hoover’s roster, but the acquisition is not expected to significantly change Hoover’s Online. Hoover’s is now part of Dun & Bradstreet’s E-Business Solutions Group.

Site design revised: Hoover’s launched a redesigned site just as this volume was going to press. Following are the highlights as reports by Hoover’s public relations director:

Improved Site Design
• The site is cleaner and less cluttered, making content and tools easier to find.

• A clear log-in page for free versus paid users more clearly differentiates the user experience, content access levels, and quantity/type of advertising.

• The user can more quickly understand all options for finding information using the new search box on the streamlined home page.

• Company and industry records share consistent, clear organization, including new record navigation in blue.

• A new, gree toolbox on every page showcases all relevant tools for finding, manipulating, and downloading information.

• Intuitively renamed features and tools reflect the content or the function performed; for instance, Advanced Company Search is now Build Company List.

• A new Financials page for each company, listing auditor, stock price, and other popular elements on a single page, thus saving time.

• Fewer ads on the subscriber site. Subscriber pages are personalized with customer’s name, and they consistently contain only one standard ad in the same place on each page.

• Instead of getting a simple “denial of access” page, users will hit “incentive” pages that detail what they’re missing and provide an example.

Enhanced Tools and Content
• Industry coverage expands from three hundred Hoover’s defined industries to over six hundred.

New industry records offer basic information, news, and industry codes for more than six hundred industries.

More than six hundred newly created industry codes were classified in an orderly and systematic process to make searching companies and products much easier. Includes the addition of NAICS Codes, Industry Keyword Search, and access to industry news.

• Even more parameters have been added to advanced searches, such as Build Company List and Build Executive List.

• Links to external content are clearly identified and open in a new browser window so you don’t lose your place.

• A report repository exists on each content page, with relevant pay-per-view third-party reports.

• More search results are downloadable, and users can choose the data elements to include in the download.

• Deeper subsidiary information is available, with a new hierarchical display that shows indirect relationships.

• ProPlus with Downloads features additional fields for searching (Net Income Range, Net Income Growth, Industry Keyword, and SIC or NAICS Codes0 in addition to the expanded Hoover’s Industry Names list.

• The Small Business Finder features additional fields to further fileter and refine your search (SIC, NAICS, Metro Area, Asset Range, Company Type, and/or Fiscal year-End).

• Users can set up news alerts for any of more than six hundred industries and can set up multiple ticker symbol alerts through one interface.

New Tools and Content
• A unique “reverse” search capability called Find Similar Companies locates companies with similar attributes.

• Users can easily track companies and industries with the Add News Alert tool, available on company or industry records.

• Every industry can be found with a specific keyword using the new Industry Keyword search.

• Users can browse lists of companies organized by stock index, geography, industry, and more.

• An extensive database of over forty thousand pay-per-view third party reports can be searched using Report Search. All pay-per-view third-party reports are grouped together intuitively on one page.

• SIC and NAICS codes are offered for industries and for Hoover’s companies.

• Users can see how a company has changed over time with the new archived Products and Operations Charts.

• Applicable 10-K filings can be quickly found using a stand-alone 10-K page.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   9
2. Relative timeliness of data:  8
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  7
4. Ease of use:   8
5. Search options available:  6
6. Level of support services:  7
7. Level of training offered:  6
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 9
Total Rating: 60

Useful tips
• To start working in Hoover’s, explore the Help Center and the FAQ section (in Help).

• Become familiar with the link for Companies & Industries, and investigate Industry Snapshots.

• Practice using the Search drop-down menu, which allows a variety of searches by Company Name, Ticker, Keyword, and other fields.
 

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Source description: EventLine is a directory listing conventions, conferences, symposia, or other events held worldwide since 1989. It is narrowly focused on medicine, biotechnology, and science events.

This source is useful for marketing or sales staff looking for sales venues, for event planners, or for individuals who wish to attend an event in the medial or science fields. As a historical record, this directory verifies information on past events.

It answers questions such as “How many AIDS conferences are held in North America?” and “If I plan a conference for October, what events will conflict with it?”
PRICING: $0-50, depending on the amount of time spent searching.

The cost will depend upon your subscription, but costs are generally affected by how much time you spend online and how many hits you print out. Unless you have a flat-fee subscription, EventLine costs about $.58 a minute to search, and each record costs $1.50 to print out.

Source content: More than 350,000 conferences, conventions, trade fairs, symposia, and exhibits events are profiled in this directory.

You can search events by title, venue, date, country, contact name, subject, and type of event. In addition to this basic information, contact information for the organizer of the event is included. Events are never deleted.

The data serves marketing, sales, and competitive-intelligence needs. A common use of this directory is to create lists of events with exhibitor areas or trade shows that offer opoortunities to sell or buy products related to medicine or science.

For instance, regional manufacturers could use EventLine to find national events in their region to attract national customers in order to exapand. Another use of the source would be to identify educational opportunities.

Perhaps a company is considering a new line of business, or an employee is given responsibility for an industry in which he or she has little background.

In either case, attending the key conference in the industry would provide an immersion experience, with information and personal contacts not available from other sources.

Because people are usually familiar with important events in their own area or specialty, this source is most useful for finding events outside of one’s usual sphere of knowledge.

It is also unique on offering historical information on past events, providing details of events and a record of onetime commemorative events.

A similar source in print format is Trade Shows Worldwide, published by Gale and priced at $350. This source covers all subject areas and thus has wider scope than EventLine.

The Gale source is more limited geographically, however, covering only the United States and Canada, and it does not cover the more esoteric events such as symposia.

As a resource for event planners, the Gale source provides more detail on how to exhibit, fees, number of exhibitors, square footage of exhibit space, and the number of exhibitors, square footage of exhibit space, and the number of hotel rooms used in conjunction with the event.

For instance, a city planner could learn whether the city’s hotel space was sufficien to accommodate certain conferences.

MediConf (http://www.mediconf.com) is similar to EventLine in its coverage of global events and conferences in the science and medical fields.

Produced by Fairbase Database in Hanover Germany, MediConf contains information similar to that in Event Line: event name, dates, location, description, and organizer contacts.

You can access it via the Web or via Dialog. On the Web version, MediConf is devoted to forthcoming events and lists only ten thousand events, compared with EventLine’s thirty-five thousand. Access costs $49 annually.

Source evaluation: EventLine is a comprehensive source from a reputable science publisher.

The search capabilities are powerful on any of the vendors of this source. For event planners, the Gale source gives more useful information on hotels or other service likely needed for the event.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   7
2. Relative timeliness of data:  8
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  7
4. Ease of use:   7
5. Search options available:  10
6. Level of support services:  10
7. Level of training offered:  10
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 5
Total Rating: 64

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Source description: The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU0 ViewsWire provides business intelligence for 195 countries.

The product is targeted at busy corporate executives, business researchers, and investors. ViewsWire is a distillation of the larger Economist database of political and economic news, background, and analysis.

The EIU has been gathering and analyzing political and economic information for decades. The company is well known for publishing the weekly magazine the Economist, but it is also the publisher of other, less well-known periodicals, including the Journal of Commerce, Since 1997, the EIU has offered a large variety of reports on the Web.

The EIU as a whole is a large and potentially intimidating resource, but it provides data extending back many years.

ViewsWire bundles together the most relevant parts of EIU and presents them in an easy-tonaviagate format. ViewsWire is a current awareness service, briefing decision makers with insightful and authoritative analysis as well as news.

Pricing: ViewWire is available by annual subscription, with pricing based on the number of users and the number of geographic regions selected (see Table 4-16).
Table 4-16. Global Network Pricing for EIU ViewsWire

Number of users Annual subscription cost
Up to 5   $11,950
Up to 10  $16,400
Up to 25  $21,850
Up to 50  $27,300
Up to 100  $32,750
More than 100 Call for pricing information

Subscriptions for individual regions are available at lower prices.

Source content: ViewsWire is organized by country and by channel. Users can choose a country and then a channel, or vice versa. Channels include Politics, Economics, Business, Finance and Regulations. An additional channel, EIU RiskWire, provides risk ratings for 60 of the 195 countries.

The content of ViewsWire is drawn from both the EIU database and from strategic alliances with organizations such as British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the World Bank, the Financial Times, China Online, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Because ViewsWire incorporates articles from business publications, it provides stronger company and industry coverage than does the traditional EIU database. ViewsWire’s main strength, however, as with EIU, lies in political and economic analysis.

Information is presented in the form of articles, tables, and graphs. Data may be downloaded in Excel format, and articles and tables may be reformatted into a printer-friendly format with a single click.

ViewsWire features a powerful internal search engine and the entire database can be searched by keyword. Limiters including country, industry, channel, category, date, and source can be used to narrow the search.

ViewsWire provides country-specific information to support organizational decision making.

This database stands out above other services in two important aspects: First, it is produced by the authoritative Economist Intelligence Unit. Second, ViewsWire adds a tremendous amount of value with its insightful analysis and forecasts.

Source evaluation: ViewsWire take the most useful parts of a large, relatively expensive database (EIU) and distills them into a concise, powerful service, ViewsWire cuts through the clutter to the information needed by busy managers.

For many organizations it is a reasonable alternative to a full EIU subscription. The various parts of ViewsWire are updated at different times.

Analysis of major news events is presented within forty-eight hours, and ViewsWire provides daily updates for some items, such as stock indices and currency exchance rates.

There are many sources of country information on the Web (Country Commercial Guides from the U.S. Department of Commerce, for example), but ViewsWire takes country information an extra step and provides five-year forecasts of the data items covered.

Business planners can therefore use ViewsWire as a tool to reduce uncertainty. The interface is intuitive and very easy to use. A special feature of ViewsWire is an e-mail alerting service based upon the interest profile set up by the user.

Technical support is included free of charge and is available during normal working hours. ViewsWire is well designed and straightforward to use, and training is available at no charge.

Phone assistance is available during business hours, and account managers can provie face-to-face assistance when they are in the customer’s geographic area. ViewsWire is unmatched in its concise, timely and authoritative reporting.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   8
2. Relative timeliness of data:  9
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data;  9
4. Ease of use:   10
5. Search options available:  9
6. Level of support services:  9
7. Level of training offered:  9
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 8
Total Rating: 71

Useful tips
• Use British spelling when searching. For example, use “labor” instead of “labor.”
• Use the advanced search feature to limit your searches to your country of interest.
 

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Source description: Country Data, produced by The PRS Grroup (http://www.prsgroup.com), provides a complete dataset of political economic, and social indicators to help any company doing business in a foreign country keep up with trends that may affect current and future business.

Among the target audience for this resource are purchasing agents, project planners, marketing and sales organizations, and risk management departments.

What are the current political risks to foreign investment? Are there any negative risk factors that might affect my company’s upcoming supplier contract negotiations?

My company has a successful business relationship in Bulgaria and would like to assess the risk of expanding into Armenia. How do the factors in these countries compare? These are just a few of the questions that can be answered by this resource.

Pricing: The cost for a search on Country Data is based on a pricing discount model and is the same regardless of which search method you use.

The more factors you choose, the lower the per-factor cost. For example, selecting ten ICRG risk factors (see description below) costs 10 times $0.75, or $7.50.

Choosing one hundred factors costs 100 times $0.32, or $32. The scale for the economic indicators is different. A link on the data-point selection page provides a complete chart of the pricing model.

Note that the estimated price and the final price may not be the same. This is not a problem, since the user has the option to retun to the selection screen to make any needed changes before agreeing to purchase a report.

Source content: Country Data includes a variety of domestic economic indicators (e.g., GDP, real growth rate, and unemployment rate), international economic indicators (foreign direct investment, debt service ratio, and foreign trade balance), International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) ratings (foreign debt as percent of GDP, international liquidity, and exchange rate stability), Coplin-O’Leary ratings and forecasts (eighteen-month and five-year risk projections for most likely political regimes, direct investment, and export market), and social indicators (annual population growth, ethnic groups, and literacy).

These are but a small sampling from the complete list of factors available. A thorough description of the data points and methodology for determining each rating is provided online.

The second tool for retrieving data from this site creates a report based on a single country. After selecting the country, the user is presented with a page where various risk factors can be selected.

The number of factors available depends of the country chosen. Some selections allow for the addition of a time frame. Again, the screen is updated to show an estimated cost.

The data for this resource come from a variety of publicly available sources. Researchers at The PRS Group compute the factors based on this information, and the final ratings are uploaded to the site monthly.

In addition to viewing and printing online, the user can download all retrieved reports as comma-delimited files.

Source evaluation: Country Data is fairly easy to use, but a lack of consistency in design keeps the site from receiving high marks in this category.

The two methods provided for creating reports work differently. When interacting with the Data Wizard, it is possible to use the common control-click keystrokes to select multiple options before adding the data points for includsion in the final report.

This is not possible when creating a report for a single country, in which case the user must add options one at a time.

The site does not offer online training. Instead, the user is directed to customer support; there is no charge for this service. I had a question while reviewing the site and contacted customer support by e-mail. I received a response the next day with the answer.

Documentation for the site is provided in a FAQ section (the link is on the PRS home page) that provides answers to questions for all of the services provided by The PRS Group.

Nevertheless, I found myself going in circles trying to learn more about the Country Data service. For instance, under the Country Data portion of the FAQ (under the question “What data is available?”) there is a link to a “complete listing” of the data available.

Following this link takes the user to a page showing “some of the data” available on the site. There I found a list of about eighty data points that seemed to be complete. Although the path was a little less than intuitive, I found it easy enough to follow.

Nevertheless, the link should instead point to the Our Methodology page, which provides examples of how the data can be used, descriptions of various risk factors, and an explanation of the ratings system.

This is a must-read. (Note: The Our Methodology page is another of those links available from the left-side menu bar. It does look useful for understanding this data and where it comes from.)

Overall, the Country Data site is easy to use and cost-effective. The ability to select only the risk factors of interest for a particular request helps to keep costs reasonable, and the large number of factors to choose from allows for a complete look at the risk involved in doing business in a foreign country. If a company needs an in-depth view of a particular country, the Country Reports resource, also published by the PRS Group, may be more appropriate.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):
1. Relative cost-to-value:   10
2. Relative timeliness of data:   10
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  10
4. Ease of use:     8
5. Search options available:   8
6. Level of support services:   10
7. Level of training offered:   6
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 10
Total Rating:     72
Useful tips
• Read the Our Methodology section of the FAQ to understand the rating system.

• To save money, make sure you thoroughly understand the question before starting your search.
 

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Since the mid-1970s Adweek has published a series of regional titles, including East, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, New England, and West. In eary 2003 the six regional titles were combined into one national edition.

Service/portal name: Adweek and Brandweek can be accessed through their Web sites at http://www.adweek.com and http://www.brandweek.com.

Searching is free, but full access to all articles requires a subscription. Adweek and Brandweek references and articles are also found in databases such as PROMT and ABI/Inform.

Source description: Adweek and Brandweek are both weekly publications, and both come from VNU Business Publications. Until early 2003, the Adweek print edition offered six regional titles.

The print edition is now consolidated into one national edition, with regionally tailored classified advertising.

Regional news stories can still be viewed separately on the Web site. For this evaluation, I want to look at Adweek.com and Brandweek.com, compared with access through databases such as PROMT.

Pricing: An Adweek twelve-month premium subscription, including archive access, costs $238.95. Brandweek can be added for an additional $149. Full-text records from PROMT, File 16, can be downloaded for $3.45 each.

Adweek is also available on Factiva back to January 1, 1991, with downloaded articles priced at $2.95 each. LexisNexis also includes Adweek, with coverage back to February 1989. The data format is Selected Full-Text.

Pricing depends upon your individual subscription plan, but the credit card option allows searchers to purchase articles for $3 each.

Source content: Adweek claims to have the most in-depth news coverage and industry analysis of the advertising industry from a national and international agency perspective.

According to its Web site, Adweek covers the “players, the pitches, the deals and the decisions shaking up the advertising industry.”

It also covers public relations; direct marketing; and sports, event, and promotion marketing.

Brandweek targets marketing executives and management decision makers working in product advertising, research, and promotion.

It offers competitive information and insights by covering top brands and the executives who market them.

According to the Brandweek Web site, “special emphasis is placed on breakthrough campaigns and new advertising/promotional spending.”

The Adweek and Brandweek archives on the Web, which go back to 1993, can be searches using a simple keyword.

Advanced Search allows you to limit a search to a specific VNU publication, searching by byline or date range, and sorting by date or keyword. Retrieved articles can be viewed and printed one by one.

The Web site includes tabs to accounts in Review, where subscribers can view a list of companies or products for which new advertising agencies are being sought, including the agency that currently holds the account and the agencies in contention. The Web site also offers a link to Industry Groups.

From this page you can view lists such as Adweek’s 2002 Hotlists, Top 50 Interactive Agencies, Brandweek’s Superbrands, Top National Agencies, and Top Agencies by Region.

Clicking on Brandweek’s Superbrands, for instance, leads to annual lists of the top two thousand brand names (in groups of five hundred), and by following the link to America’s Top Brands of 2001 (1-500), we find out that McDonald’s was the number one brand based on media expenditures.

The site also offers articles discussing the brand categories. For instance, the Fast Food article addresses market share, product positioning, promotions, new products, and branding strategies in this category.

Subscriptions in both Adweek and Brandweek include print and online access, with the online edition providing the national edition along with articles related to the six regions.

When you log in to the online version of Adweek, you see the headlines and breaking stories in the center, with regional news segmented along the right side of the page. The Brandweek home page is dominated by headlines and links to the full articles.

Adweek and Brandweek full-text versions are also widely available in Factiva, LexisNexis, and several Dialog databases, including File 9: Business & Industry, File 15: ABI/Inform, File 16: PROMT, File 148: Gale Group Trade & Industry, and File 553: Wilson Business Abstracts Fulltext. In File 16, for instance, full-text articles from Adweek go back to 1990; for Brandweek they go back to 1992.

Source evalution: Adweek and Brandweek offer a unique perspective in market and industry research.

For advertising strategies, expenditures, product positioning, branding efforts, rankings, and industry overviews, these publications present depth and detail. Full access to the Web site content is available to subscribers.

The Web sites are updated daily and offer standard Web site search capabilities. Unfortunately, the Web sites contain advertising banners across the top and down the sides. These banners often contain animated graphics, which can prove annoying to the searcher who spends more than a few minutes on the site.

A trial keyword search on Pepsi in Adweek retrieved thirty-four pages of articles. Although the advanced search option allows searchers to request results sorted by date, this function did not seem to work well.

On one page of results there were articles from 1993, surrounded by articles from 1997 and 2002. When searching Adweek and Brandweek through an aggregator such as Dialog, the researcher has access to much more powerful search tools.

Indexing allows precise limiting by date, geographic names, product names, industry names, and NAICS codes.

Some databases, such as PROMT, have indexed event names, allowing retrieval related to details such as product information, market share, market size, prices, new products, or public relations.

If your organization already subscribes to either Adweek or Brandweek, you will definitely want to register to use the publication’s Web site.

The information available there is useful and includes graphics, charts, pictures, and tables not available through the online database aggregators.

Whethere or not you choose to subscribe will depend upon the anticipated frequency of use.

If you are pulling articles from Dialog, Factiva, or LexisNexis on a regular basis, you may find a databse subscription to be more cost-effective.

If you prefer or required colorful, nicely formatted graphics, you will want to consider subscribing to the publications themselves.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   7
2. Relative timeliness of data:   10
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  10
4. Ease of use:     5
5. Search options available:   3
6. Level of support services:   5
7. Level of training offered:   5
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 3
Total Rating:     48

Useful tips
• If your organization already subscribes to either Adweek or Brandweek, you will definitely want to register to use the publication’s Web site.

• For advertising strategies, expenditures, product positioning, branding efforts, rankings, and industry overviews, these publications present depth and detail.

• The Web site search capability works best when using a single keyword.

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Service/portal name: Accessed through InfoTrac on the Web for review (http://infotrac.galegroup.com) but also available through Dialog dial-up and Web versions (http://www.dialog.com)

Source description: PROMT is a full-text database of international trade and business journals, industry newsletters, and newspapers, plus summaries from investment and brokerage firm reports.

This resource is owned by the Gale Group, which is in turn owned by the Thomson Corporation. Using PROMT through Dialog requires knowledge of search expressions and should not pose a problem for experienced Dialog searchers.

If you are not experienced in using Dialog, I recommend accessing PROMT through InforTrac instead.

PROMT is best used for general research when you need to gather articles on a company, industry, or topic.

Although a researcher with advanced knowledge of search terminology will be able to use this resource most effectively, beginning researchers with a minimum of training can also find data fairly easily.

Pricing: $3.45 per full-text article retrieved from the database, plus connection fees.

Source content: The full PROMT database includes roughly 3.5 million full-text articles, updated daily, from over 850 separate sources.

The InfoTrac Web version provides data for the current year plus a rolling three-year backfile, and the Dialog version goes back a number of years, depending on the specific publication.

The majority of the sources in PROMT are business and trade publications, and there are also quite a number of local newspapers and business journals.

Most of the content consists of full-text articles or abstracts formatted for online viewing or downloading. In some cases, the full-text article can be downloaded as a PDF file.

From a list of search results, the full text of a number of marked articles can be printed, saved as a complete file, or e-mailed.

The best use of this resource will be for general information research on a company, industry, or topic and in cases where the researcher wants to see a good overview of recent press coverage on a topic.

For historical coverage beyond the past three years, the researcher will want to use PROMT through Dialog, as the InfoTrac version only includes the current and previous three years.

The sources are not limited tocoverage, so this resource can also be used to find international news.

Sources similar to PROMT include both ProQuest and Factiva, but each has some unique content and search abilities.

Whereas Factiva provides more complex search strategies through the browser interface, PROMT requires an understanding of the search terminology and codes in order to get the most use out of the product.

The coverage in PROMT is deeper than that available in ProQuest, and the search functionality is also more robust.

In the PROMT search interface, there are four basic choices for the type of search that can be conducted.

The Subject Guide, Relevance Search, and Keyword Search options are all fairly basic and offer the simplest search mechanism.

Researchers who want to take full advantage of the search functionality of PROMT through InfoTrac Web will want to familiarize themselves with the Advanced Search interface.

The advanced options include the ability to use the built-in PROMT search codes familiar to users of the product through Dialog.

A few of the more interesting functions include the ability to search by journal name, product or event code, or subject list. A full list of the searchable fields and codes would be useful to have handy when you first start using the product.

The search results in PROMT are provided in a basic citation list, which includes the article title, source name, date of publication, and word count. There does not appear to be an option for presenting more information in the result list.

The title of each article is linked to the full text, and you can mark each desired article in the result list or from the full text of the article itself. The exporting options (calle “retrieval options”) include printing from the Web browser in HTML or as a PDF, or e-mailing the articles to yourself.

Source evaluation: Many researchers find PROMT to be a useful resource through Dialog. Taking advantage of the full search functionality available through the InfoTrac Web version involves a bit of a learning curve.

If your research needs are primarily in the area of current awareness using trade publication coverage, then PROMT is a great source to use.

The coverage is excellent and quite thorough, with hundreds of the top publications in dozens of industry areas. Although primarily focused on U.S. news, PROMT can also be used for international news, as it includes a number of key sources.

Researchers looking for very specific industry-related material may be less likely to use PROMT, not for any shortcoming of this resource but because there are other, more appropriate databases to use.

In PROMT, for example, I cannot specify that I want to search only in health-care-related publications or trade journals covering the technology industry.

I can certainly use Subject or Product codes, and I can search on one or more specific publications, but I may choose to use a different industry-specific database for material other than general busines coverage.

For example, health-care researchers may opt for the Adis newsletters or clinical trial databases, and technology researchers may need the details available through IEEE publications, neither of which is included in PROMT.

For general business information and top-line current awareness coverage, however, PROMT is a good source and can be used by both beginner and advanced researchers alike.

PROMT is updated daily, and its source lists, downloadable in HTML, PDF, Word, or Excel format, do a good job of describing when each specific source begins full-text coverage.

If you need to find results from any one specific trade publication or business journal, be sure to check the title list to find out when coverage strats in that source.

I found actual searching in PROMT to be a little frustrating at times, and I had to refer to the help files numerous times to check my search syntax.

Although there is a clear link to the Help file from the left-side menu and there is an index to the Help section, there does not appear to be any downloadable Help file or guide, and the Help section itself could be a bit more organized and could use more examples.

A concise printable guide would be helpful, as I found myself having to click through to the Help files numerous times throughout the search process.

I found the support staff at Gale to be very helpful answering any questions I had about for additional information.

They are more that happy to walk you through the product over the phone, and depending on your organization’s specific needs, an in-house training session can also be arranged.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   8
2. Relative timeliness of data:   10
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  7
4. Ease of use:     7
5. Search options available:   7
6. Level of support services:   6
7. Level of training offered:   6
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 7
Total Rating:     58

Useful tips
• Use Event Codes to find articles about specific business topics, such as Mergers & Acquisitions.
• Use the Advanced Search screen to create a more precise search strategy.
• Check the title list to make sure the publications of interest to you are included.

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Service/portal name: LexisNexis (http://www.lexisnexis.com/research or http://nexis.com)

Source description: Markets and Industry Library on LexisNexis is a compilation of thousands of sources that together contain an extremely wide and industry research.

Searchers will find company information, demographics, marketing and advertising resources, overviews of markets and technology, market research reports, full-text news stories, news by industry, and selected reference materials.

For a complete listing of sources included in this LexisNexis library, go to http://www.lexisnexis.com, click on the Customer Service Center link at the top, and go to the Searchable Directory of Online Sources.

Pricing: A number of pricing models are available to LexisNexis subscribers. Some researchers will choose a flat-fee account, diminishing the importance of individual search costs.

For transactional searchers, a search in the PROMT or Marketing & Advertising Reference Service (MARS) sections of the MARKET library costs $15, with viewed documents costing $4 each. The News (ALLNWS) section costs $36 to search, with viewed documents priced at $2.75 each.

Source content: The Market and Industry Library contains the full text of information previously published in the business, news, trade and market research literature.

The content is grouped in databases within the library, with familiar sources such as Gale’s PROMT, IAC’s Marketing & Advertising Reference Service (MARS), Investext Reports, the Encyclopedia of Associations, and a multitude of newspapers.

There are, among other things, business directories; Hoover’s company profiles; and directories of advertisers, banks, information centers, and governmental advisory organizations. These sources can be searched individually, in customized groups, or in total.

To access the content of the Markets and Industry Library on http://www.lexisnexis.com, use the library group file name MARKET. On http://nexis.com, use the Power Search tab, click on Find More Sources, and choose Market & Industry.

The Nexis.com portal contains a few more databases in the Market & Industry category than the MARKET group file does. For exact differences, contact customer service.

The content is presented in plain-text documents as taken from the original source. In some instances tables or graphs have been omitted.

Documents can be downloaded to a file or e-mailed to the researcher. Shows results of asearch for wd-40 and lava in MARKET;MARS (MARKET=Markets and Industry Library; MARS=Marketing & Advertising Reference Service).

There are similar sources for the type of information found in the LexisNexis Markets and Industry Library.

The Gale Group business databases overlap MARKET, as the business and news databases on Dialog and the news files on Factiva. All of these sources have value and should be part of a researcher’s arsenal of resources.

Keep in mind that no single source has everything, and that each source has some things not available elsewhere. It is good strategy to search multiple sources when a comprehensive search is needed.

The opportunity to pay by credit card makes Nexis.com a more workable alternative for some searchers (note that DialogSelect also has a pay-by-credit-card option called Open Access).

Another feature recently added to the LexisNexis search service is the ability to customize source selection. Searchers can create tabs leading to frequently used sources. Click on the tab to jump directly to the desired source.

Source evaluation: Market and industry researchers have any ongoing and consistent need for information, ranging from the broadest industry overview to the smallest statistic or data point.

The find that information in a timely and cost-effective way, researcher need to be able to search broadly across the published literature as well as to drill down with a precise search strategy. The Markets and Industry Library meets this need.

The various pricing models available to LexisNexis subscribers are competitive with similar sources.

It is hard to say whether any one of these models presents a good value, since research budgets and needs vary so widely.

Suffice it to say that if the Market and Industry Library provides just what you need to answer the question at hand, especially if the answer is not available in other sources, then it offers tremendous value.

LexisNexis keeps its databases as current as possible, uploading information as it becomes available. Depth is often a more important factor, one that researchers often consider when choosing which source to search for a given project.

For example, on LexisNexis, the PROMT database goes back to 1985, whereas on Dialog that database goes back to 1972.

For the majority of searches, such differences probably will not matter; however, for those projects where it does matter, it is important to be aware of the relative depth of the various research sources.

Historically the database aggregators such as LexisNexis, Dialog, and DataStar have offered powerful search capabilities to subscribers. The trade-off for these search capabilities is the fact that they can be a little intimidating to search.

A bit of training and practice is generally requied. But that should not keep the beginning researcher from exploring these resources.

LexisNexis offers a fairly user-friendly interface through the Nexis.com portal, and the LexisNexis Web site provides comprehensive FAQs and search tips. Also, trainers are available for free telephone training and will spend as much as an hour at a time instructing the new searcher.

Customer service is top-notch and available at no cost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

This level of customer service coverage is not universal. For instance, Dialog’s Knowledge Center operates only Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, and it is closed on major U.S. holidays.

The Markets and Industry Library compiled and offered through LexisNexis is an important tool to the market and industry researcher.

The costs may seem high compared with some of the business databases available through libraries, but the transactional pricing and powerful search capabilities make it a worthy addition to the researcher’s toolbox.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   8
2. Relative timeliness of data:   10
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  10
4. Ease of use:     7
5. Search options available:   8
6. Level of support services:   10
7. Level of training offered:   10
8. Amount/kinds of special services offered: 10
Total Rating:     73

Useful tips
• Take advantage of LexisNexis training. They are good at it.

• Call customer service and ask them to suggest search terms or syntax. Ask them to try your search for you to see how it works before you run it.

• Use the Online Directory of Sources to see if the source you need is available and what dates are covered.
 

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SOURCE DESCRIPTION: Market Share Reporter is published by Gale and made available online through the LexisNexis information source (http://www.nexis.com or http://www.lexisnexis.com/research).

The print version, often available in libraries, is a source database in Business 7 Company Resource Center.

The data is gathered from 1,133 sources. According to the Gale Print Catalog, Market Share Reporter presents “comparative business statistics in a clear, straightforward manner.”

It “affords an immediate overview of companies, products and services and cites original sources.

Each entry features a descriptive title; data and market description; a list of producers/products along with their market share; and more.”

Market Share Reporter often contains otherwise hard-to-find market share data for individual companies or products.

Nexis.com is one of the search services that permits credit card or transactional searching, so for the occasional search this is an excellent source. This option also makes the Market Share Reporter available to any online searcher.

Pricing: According to a July 2003 price list, Market Share Reporter costs $6 to search and $2.75 per hit to print. A transational/credit card option is available on Nexis.com.

Source content: Market Share Reporter is a complilation of statistics from the business literature that contain information on products and producers and what share of the market they hold.

This online version goes back to January 1991, so researchers can gather information to understand trends and changes over a number of years.

The LexisNexis Searchable Directory of Online Sources describes the content this way: Market Share Reporter provides information on over 2,000 national and international companies.

A unique resource for competitive analysis and economic research featuring coverage of public and private sector activities.

Provides extensive coverage in the areas most frequently in the news, such as automotive industry and electronics and oil industries.

Many of the analyses provided are relevant due to product recalls, new product introductions, mergers and acquisitions and other high profile events.

The content of this database is updated every fall, within two months of publication of the new print edition. To access Market Share Reporter, log on to http://www.nexis.com or http://www.lexisnexis.com/research.

Choose the Market Share Reporter from the database list or enter the command BUSREF;MKTSHRM.

Then simply enter the keyword of interest and review the results. This interface allows the searchers to view the keyword in context to verify relevancy. The results are presented in plain text as excerpted from the original source.

Source evaluation: Market Share Reporter, accessed through either http://www.nexis.com or http://www.lexisnexis.com/research, is an important tool in the online market researcher’s toolbox.

Market share information can sometimes be elusive, and this source makes it easy and relatively inexpensive to find.

The content is not untimely, but because it is updated according to the publication schedule of the print version, it could seem a bit dated if searched just before the annual update.

A researcher who needs to obtain information that might be a bit more current than what is found in Market Share Reporter can always search the online version, identify useful sources, then go to those sources directly to see if they have published any updates.

LexisNexis and Nexis.com on the Web are extremely easy to search. Once you are logged in, the search screens are intuitive and contain both simple and advanced search options.

They provide extensive online training material, and the customer service call center is staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Training and customer service assistance are available at no cost. Market Share Reporter via LexisNexis offers a unique online resource that might not otherwise be available.

When it provides the information you need, it is invaluable. It is cost-effective to search and available on a transactional, credit card basis.

Source value rating: All of the data source reviewers were asked to rate each source on the basis of the following eight categories, using “10” as the highest rating and “1” as the lowest (“80” being a perfect score):

1. Relative cost-to-value:   10
2. Relative timeliness of data:   5
3. Relative comprehensiveness of data:  10
4. Ease of use:     10
5. Search options available:   10
6. Level of support services:   10
7. Level of training offered:   8
8. Amount kinds of special services offered: 10
Total Rating:     73

Useful tips
• Search using a keyword or a company name.

• If you have any doubts or reservations, call customer service. They will often try your search strategy and let you know generally how it works. They will also suggest alternatives searches.

• With LexisNexis it is agood idea to keep your initial search broad, then narrow as needed. Use the Focus feature to increase precision at no additional search charge.
 

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