A Model in Distribution Partnerships

Thomson Financial this week announced a strategic distribution relationship with Paladyne Systems, a provider of technology solutions to the hedge fund marketplace. As part of the deal, Thomson DataFeed (a real-time market and pricing data service) will be provided directly to Paladyne customers. Paladyne will distribute the content through its PALADYNE product suite, which is a fully-hosted front- to back- office solution. The product suite includes order management, real-time profits and losses and portfolio management, portfolio accounting, custom reporting, data warehousing and analytics, and reference data management.

According to both companies, the integration of Thomson's data with Paladyne's order management and portfolio management tools will provide customers with more comprehensive data for electronic trading, order management and real-time P&L and position tracking. The two companies have also teamed to create a new delivery model that allows Paladyne to offer direct real-time pricing to customers.

Both Thomson Financial and Paladyne are positioned to greatly benefit from this alliance. It will enable Thomson to reach even more customers with its valuable content while making Paladyne a more prominent service provider to its customer base. While current customers will immediately yield the benefits, the solution this partnership yields will likely attract new customers to both organizations.

Publishers of all sizes should really take note of this deal. It proves that you're never too big to form distribution deals. There are always opportunities to expand the breadth and depth of your offerings and, regardless of the size of your company, you should always be on the look-out for such alliances. They don't require a reinvention of the wheel, and have the potential to yield respectable additional revenues and an expanded customer base without much leg work.

VSS To Acquire Vault.com

Private equity investor Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) last week announced it is becoming a major investor in Vault.com, an online career information service that focuses on more than 30 professional industries (such as investment banking, consulting, real estate, law, government and media). Vault was a 2004 InfoCommerce Group's Model of Excellence award winner.

Vault's founders and senior executives, Samer Hamadeh, Hussam Hamadeh and Mark Oldman, will remain prominent shareholders in the company and part of the management team led by veteran media executive Erik Sorenson, who will be named CEO of the company when the deal closes. Sorenson, of Ledgemont Capital Group, is one of the investors in the deal, which is being financed with funds drawn from VSS Communications Partners IV, L.P., a $1.3 billion private equity fund managed by VSS.

According to a press release announcing the deal, VSS plans to grow Vault.com's current slate of offerings that cater to a younger audience. Vault.com already had a strong brand name in the marketplace, but expect that name to become even more prominent with VSS resources behind it. VSS apparently feels Vault.com has a lot of potential to become an even stronger platform in the career development field and will do what it can to expand on Vault.com's already steady growth. Online career sites have certainly become extremely popular and valuable resources in recent years. It seems that most individuals looking for new job opportunities flock to niche portals such as Vault.com to locate the latest job postings as well as resources to help in the hunt. And Vault.com was already positioned to benefit from this trend.

In the press release, VSS also revealed that Vault.com's growth would be generated both internally and through add-on acquisitions. It will be interesting to see what deals VSS closes in the near future to further bolster Vault.com's profile.

Manta.com Adds In-Depth Profiles

Manta.com, the business information Web site operated by ECNext, this month announced the availability of in-depth company profiles of more than 45 million companies--both public and private U.S.-based and international organizations.

Manta.com aggregated several sources of information about each featured company into these complete profiles. The profiles include overviews, analysis, deeper executive profiles, emerging trends and opportunities, press announcements and news coverage. Users don't purchase a subscription to Manta.com. Instead, they pay only for the content they want.

Manta.com also offers access to company news, industry analysis, contact information and job postings. The site recently added a community feature that enables site visitors to add content to company information.

These new company profiles are a perfect--and necessary--addition to Manta.com. While Manta.com is geared toward individuals who can't or won't purchase an expensive business information subscription, these customers still want the same type of content. Manta.com has to offer similar content offerings to remain competitive and give customers a reason to try Manta.com, make that initial purchase--and return.

Jigsaw Launches Two New Offerings

Jigsaw last week announced the release of two new offerings, Jigsaw Clean and Jigsaw Team. Jigsaw Clean is a subscription-based service that automatically and regularly cleans, maintains and builds the data in corporate CRM systems. It scans a company's CRM database to update and augment out-of-date contact information. It then finds, flags and deletes dead records by comparing the database to records in the Jigsaw graveyard, which contains more than 1 million contacts. Jigsaw Clean also automatically identifies and removes duplicate records; and by using the Jigsaw directory, it updates inaccurate data and augments incomplete records with up-to-date information (direct-dial phone numbers, email addresses and titles).

Jigsaw Team is a subscription-based service that lets employees acquire contact information in bulk from Jigsaw and share it across their teams. It uses Jigsaw's online directory of more than 6.5 million business contacts to import contacts into CRM systems. The contact information users access from the directory includes a person's name, title, company name and address, direct-dial phone number and email address. The data can be integrated in CRM systems such as Salesforce.com, Oracle and Siebel, so team members can track their progress.

Both Jigsaw Clean and Jigsaw Team are interesting new offerings that really address market needs. Data cleansing is a necessary function, but not traditionally an easy one. Sales and marketing professionals know that their data isn't always the most accurate, but can't always find the time to clean it. Jigsaw Clean seems to be a very user-friendly service that will, at least at first, attract current Jigsaw users.

As an extension of Jigsaw Clean, Jigsaw Team will ensure that everyone within an organization who needs access to accurate business contact data will have it. This could be just what companies (especially sales organizations) need to gain a competitive advantage in their marketplaces. Integrating the service into these main CRM systems is a crucial function--and one that will likely motivate business professionals to give Jigsaw Team a try. Jigsaw Team also seems to be a easy-to-use offering, which should be another positive factor as Jigsaw markets its potential and current customers.

A Thomas Merger

Thomas Technology Solutions and ThomComp Inc., integrators for ThomasNet.com, are being combined into a single business unit--Content Data Solutions Inc.--effective Oct. 1. The new company will continue to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Thomas Publishing Company, which publishes the Thomas Register.

ThomasTech and ThomComp were previously sister companies. Their merger won't yield any changes to their product offerings. Combined, they will continue to provide prepress and content management solutions to publishers, manufacturers and other industries, as well as the Digital Publishing Website Solution, Directory Publishing Solution and Database Extract Tool.

This merger is definitely a good move by the parent company; and a move that should really have taken place a long time ago. In addition to the same parent, both companies competed in the same market with overlapping services and their headquarters were fairly close as well. By combining their efforts, the new Content Data Solutions Inc. will have an immediately strong presence in the marketplace. Customers will most likely get even more robust services as a result of the melding of both companies' capabilities. In addition, Thomas may be able to yield some cost savings in the process if the merger involves eliminating some redundancies (particularly in back office functions).