ZANA Network Partners with Kompass

ZANA Network, a business-to-business online marketplace for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has partnered with business information provider Kompass in a move that will provide ZANA Network members access to Kompass import and export directory.

When they register with ZANA (http://www.zananetwork.com/), companies can purchase leads from the Kompass database of more than 2.4 million global companies at a 10 percent discount off the regular subscriber cost. Members can access the Kompass content through ZANA's homepage.

The Kompass database is a prospecting tool for buyers and sellers who want to reach potential customers, resellers and distributors. Users can conduct advanced searches and obtain search results through more than 25 search criteria and 57,000 product and service categories. Subscribers can also access company profiles, PDFs of all listed companies, as well as financial data. Other options include an email messaging system to contact companies, the ability to select lists, and language selection. Subscribers can also utilize geographical selection (covering a country, region or the globe) and automatic access via IP addresses.

This partnership is certainly a smart move for ZANA Network. It truly enables the company to offer a much more robust service to its customers. The breadth of Kompass' database isn't something ZANA could have likely created on its own. So, in this case, a partnership to gain access to this data was the right thing to do. ZANA members will definitely benefit from this additional content and Kompass gains additional exposure in the process, which could help it gain new customers for its other offerings. Such partnerships can be very effective marketing tools for companies such as Kompass.

Searching for Insight

I am just now reading a new book called Click by Bill Tancer, who is head of research at web analytics company Hitwise. The subtitle of the book, "What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters," gives you a good sense of what the book is about. The underlying premise: that people's online search patterns are not only telling, but are a far more accurate way to get at people's real interests and activities than conventional surveys.

The book and its premise build on a termed coined by John Battelle way back in 2003 called "the database of intentions." Batelle defines it as:

The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends.

As someone who has spent more time examining server log files than I care to admit, I know first-hand the power of this concept. It is possible to glean from search activity what users, individually and in the aggregate, are thinking and doing. That's not as scary as it might sound, because online searching is still largely anonymous, and search patterns are often more useful in aggregate.

We're going to see a lot more activity around competitive intelligence built on analysis of search activity, and it's not too early to think about your own site traffic as a source of such intelligence. Consider as just one example Kelly Blue Book, which in a presentation at the 2006 InfoCommerce Conference detailed how it had built a substantial subscription business selling to auto manufacturers data on how many consumers had looked at what car models in what geographies.

And if you're interested in a quick demonstration of the power of "search intelligence," pay close attention to the Google search box. Depending on the search term you enter, you'll see not only similar search terms entered by others, but a count of the number of times each search term was entered. Want to assess a market? Fine-tune your paid search program? See how many people are querying a competitor's website? It's all there for you, fast, free and at your fingertips.

Google Search Box Example

As the example above shows, you don't have to search at all for these search insights.

Labels: bill tancer, database of intentions, kelly blue book

Chemical Information Services Launches New Tool

Chemical Information Services has released the ChemInfo MarketPlace, a new addition to its slate of chemical sourcing tools. It is a web-based exchange service that is targeted to the buyers and sellers in the pharmaceutical, biotech and custom chemical manufacturing industries to help with their procurement and sales functions. Chemical Information Services partnered with Chemfinet Services, a web-based sourcing platform, to launch this new tool.

To use ChemInfo MarketPlace, buyers post RFQs (request for quotes) on the site for molecules they need, while sellers submit bids for the chemicals they make or provide. Buyers are able to find what they need quickly, saving time and search costs. Sellers have access to better opportunities and can save sales and marketing dollars in the process.

This was a smart idea by Chemical Information Services since it provides one more way in which customers can access its information. This could certainly help the company reach a new set of customers, while making that access even easier for current customers. In addition, the company has increased its value to customers by providing this venue that equally serves the needs of both buyers and sellers by helping both more effectively reach their target audiences. Chemical Information Services expects this solution to help buyers and sellers save time and money. If it can accomplish that, this will be a big winner for the company.

User-Generated Sales

In February of this year, I brought to your attention a UK-based online yellow pages start-up called BrownBook.net. While online yellow pages is a crowded and generally unremarkable category of online content, BrownBook was coming at it with a fresh and audacious approach by relying on the wiki model. Yes, user-generated content for yellow pages.

We know wikis can work. Just look at the success of Wikipedia. We know that databases can be built with user-generated content. Witness both Jigsaw and LinkedIn (both former InfoCommerce Models of Excellence winners). But the general thinking to date has been that users will contribute only when they're passionate about a topic or there's something in it for them. Most would agree that "yellow pages" and "passion" are rarely seen in the same sentence.

Despite this, BrownBook has persevered with this new approach, and by all reports, it's working. Strong site metrics are suggesting BrownBook may be onto something big with this innovative model.

Not content simply to revolutionize how yellow pages databases are built and maintained, BrownBook has just announced an equally remarkable innovation: it wants to turn its registered users into a commission sales force.

In a nutshell, if a registered user of BrownBook contributes content about a business, and that business later pays to enhance its listing, the registered user receives a portion of that revenue. But to make things more interesting, this isn't a one-time payment. It's a lifetime commission stream to that user as long as that business remains an advertiser. So while users can likely make a few dollars passively, they can potentially make a lot of money by actively encouraging the businesses they write about to advertise in BrownBook, and to remain advertisers in BrownBook as well. Consider too the potentially viral aspects of this model as BrownBook users start to receive checks, initially for not doing anything. It won't take them long to spread the word to their friends and recognize that by talking up BrownBook to their favorite retailers, they can develop a nice stream of ongoing cash.The best way to get the full story on BrownBook is to be at InfoCommerce 2008 in Philadelphia - just 16 days from now - where you can hear Marc Lyne, BrownBook's co-founder, on our kick-off Meet the Evolutionaries" panel. See you there ...

Labels: brownbook, jigsaw, Linked-In

RDC, Alacra Partnership Yields Compliance Product

Regulatory Data Corp. International (RDC) and Alacra Inc. have formed a partnership that will enable compliance professionals at financial institutions and other organizations access more than five million risk-relevant records that ensure compliance with Know Your Customer laws.

Existing Alacra Compliance customers will be able to access RDC's Global Regulatory Information Database (GRID), which contains risk-relevant records that are aggregated from more than 15,000 public sources. GRID is also searchable by specific customizable risk codes.

Alacra customers can access the GRID database through Alacra Compliance, which is a workflow-based application that provides a single access point to search across multiple databases. RDC customers have had access to the GRID database since RDC was founded in 2002.

This alliance is a smart move by both companies. As compliance continues to be an important issue in the business world, professionals will increasingly rely on related solutions. By working together, RDC and Alacra are well positioned to serve such an active customer base.

Both companies should be able to attract new customers as a result as well as maintain their current customers with their ability to provide access to such an abundant number of records. In the news release announcing the partnership, RDC notes that the company will likely form other alliances in the coming years. Such a strategy will only help RDC compete in the marketplace, especially if the demand for compliance products remains as steady as it is today.