Faced with fixed budgets, lone competitive intelligence managers are always
faced with cost-cutting decisions. On a yearly basis, questions such as the
following are posed:
- "Should we cut our investment in training?"
- "Should we hold off on hiring an extra analyst?"
- "Should we cancel our subscription to the leading
business-information portal?"
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How do you decide?
The objective of this article will be to guide you in the right direction to
find free company and industry information on the Web and evaluate your options
to answer the third question stated above. These sources will provide you with
sufficient information to do the following competitive intelligence related
tasks:
- Create competitor profiles
- Begin industry-specific analysis
- Track industry and company news
- Extracting financial data from statements for analysis for investment
purposes
The following sources of data have been online for a while although the
content providers behind them are constantly updating their Websites to supply
information seekers with current and relevant business information.
Business.com
Tagged as "The Search Engine for Business Information,"
Business.com furnishes a great amount of data on the key players in 24 of the
top industries from around the globe. As users enter the Website, the portal
offers access to information by utilizing two methods listed below:
- Company Finder - The Company Finder permits individuals to search for
company information by using a company's stock symbol. The results of
utilizing this service are pretty impressive. This resource provides
information in the form of daily stock quotes, news headlines, executive
biographies, brief reports on key issues and financial statements.
- Website Directory - This directory allows users to browse for information
according to industry. Each industry section is stacked with reports on the
key players in respective industries and daily news stories highlighting
major developments in a particular sector.
Business.com makes available detailed information on 10,000 US public
companies, 14,000 international companies, and 44,000 private companies.
The Business.com portal is located at http://www.business.com
.
Company Sleuth
Dedicated to serious investors in the stock market, Company Sleuth offers
individuals financial information on companies that are publicly traded. As of
the month of May 2001, Company Sleuth became a paid service but there a handful
of free resources and services that users can access after registering for a
limited subscription. A limit subscription entitles users to use:
- Stakeout Tracker - This service automatically tracks the performance of
stocks of two companies at one time. You may alter the companies that you
would like to monitor on a daily basis.
- Daily Headline News Archive - This archive allows you access to the news
headlines discussing the two pre-selected companies. The section stores
press releases from newswire services around the world.
- Stock Quote Reports - These reports furnish individuals with up-to-date
detailed stock quotes of two companies. Users can view the reports
graphically by means of charts or raw numeric form in tables.
- The Buzz Report - Users can read the latest rumors on stocks from the
different online discussion groups from reputable sources. Company Sleuth
makes available discussions from Yahoo Messenger, CNBC Messenger, and Motley
Fool.
For individuals who are in need of more information in a rush, Company Sleuth
permits users to have free access to data and services devoted to full members
for only 14 days. These services include:
- 25 in-depth company reports to find data on companies that you wish to
track.
- The ability to develop a Stakeout list to track new information on up to
50 companies.
- Access to the Company Sleuth Research Library to search hundreds of online
and traditional media sources.
- E-mail notifications with the new findings on your Stakeout
companies.
Company Sleuth is located at http://www.companysleuth.com
.
Corporate Information
The Corporate Information portal is an one-stop location for company and
industry information. Visitors are given four different options to find
data:
- Company Profiles - Equipped with a reliable search engine, the portal
provides 350,000 company profiles to its users. The profiles originate from
different sources on the Web such as Hoover's, Edgar, and Multex Investor
Network Research Reports. Each source supplies bits of data that can be used
to create a very good competitor analysis report.
- Country's Industries - This section provides brief reports and links to
information sources on the Web dealing with over 30 industries in 65
countries.
- Country Profiles - Supplies thousands of resources to investigate
companies, industries, and economic environments in over 100
countries.
- Research Reports - Offers in-depth financial research reports of the top
companies in 65 countries.
As an extension to the sources of data mentioned above, the portal grants
users the ability to access more country-specific business related information
via designated Web pages for Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy,
Japan, and United States.
The Corporate Information portal service has been discontinued as of July 1,
2001.
Hoover's Online
Hoover's Online is one of the main places on the Web where competitive
intelligence professionals go to extract information regarding a particular
company and/ or industry. Although there is a fee to access the in-depth company
profile sections, individuals can obtain valuable content without subscribing.
Hoover's allows non-subscribers to retrieve the following pieces
information:
- Industry Profiles - Hoover's publishes profiles for more than 300
industries that are broken down into 28 sectors.
- Company Capsules - These capsules gives users a brief overview of the
company with a list of the key executives. In addition, a list of the main
competitors in the industry is provided.
- Financials - This part of the portal supplies key financial data such
as:
- Annual Financials
- Archived IPO Information
- Current Quotes
- Investor Resources
- Quarterly Financials
- Real-time Filing
- News and Analysis - This service offers users the ability to read the
latest news headlines and analysis from various experts and content
providers from around the world.
All of the information and services mentioned above are available for
researching private companies.
As of the month of July, Hoover's Online is available for individuals who
wish to research companies in North America, United Kingdom, France, Germany,
and Spain.
Conclusion The purpose of this article was to highlight some of the key free
sources for company and industry information. If you are part of a competitive
intelligence unit that is considering investing in a database to access similar
information mentioned through out this article, you may want to put off the
investment. By utilizing a combination of the resources, you should have access
to various pieces of information that can be analyzed to make informed decisions
for your company.
Looking For More Free Industry Information? Consider visiting these Web
resources:
- Competia Express
- Google's Industry Directory
- Ecompany's Webguide
