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Company Research
Uses of Company Research
Company research provides a full picture of the business landscape a prospect, customer,
competitor or supplier works in. It is used to meet research, analysis and planning
goals related to:
- Preparing for meetings and sales calls
- Assessing new business opportunities
- Executing marketing campaigns
- Sales and financial forecasting
- Recruiting
- Evaluating merger and acquisition targets
- Tracking industry trends
Company research involves gaining an understanding of a business by tracking relevant
news, researching key executives, reviewing regulatory filings and corporate family
structure, and analyzing revenue and growth.
Types of Company Research
The business information to look for when conducting company research include:
- Company structure data providing accurate mappings of the target
organization with listings including corporate family name, subsidiaries and organization
charts
- Company profiles summarizing a companys history, media track record,
executives, financials and other information
- Business reports on specific areas of interest, often with expert
analytical coverage on a companys market size, top players and financial forecasts.
- News and press releases including recent events and at least one
year of archived coverage
- IT profiles showing investments being made on infrastructure
- Analyst reports with objective evaluations of a companys status
and prospects
- Industry market research and segment reports showing the context
within which a company operates including its concerns, challenges, issues, and
even the mindset of its managers
- Annual Reports with 10K data submitted to the SEC as well as management
discussion of products, infrastructure and key initiatives
- Listings of senior staff including profiles of key executives
- SEC filings with important financial and company direction information,
as well as financial health data
The Value of Business Information Services
With the huge volumes of content available today, time-pressed business professionals
can optimize efficiency by using a proven, business information service for company
research.
A leading provider is OneSource Information Services, Inc. OneSource does the work
of selecting premier content providers, collecting all relevant information, and
blending and normalizing many data streams into one consistent, easily consumable
asset. Many steps are taken to optimize information quality with sophisticated automated
processes and expert editorial oversight.
A growing number of organizations use business information services to avoid the
error and inefficiency of aggregating, integrating, analyzing and managing information
in an ad hoc manner.