Zagat Rated Physicians

Zagat Survey, publisher of the eponymous restaurant guides, has just announced a partnership with WellPoint, the nation's largest health benefit company, to produce -- yes you guessed it -- a Zagat guide to physicians.

You won't find this new guide in bookstores. The database will only be available online, and listings will be limited to those physicians allied with the Blue Cross subsidiaries owned by Wellpoint. That's not exactly as limiting as it seems: Wellpoint companies collectively insure nearly one in nine Americans, with a meaningful percentage of all physicians participating in its plans. The purpose of this new collaboration is simple: to provide more information to members of Wellpoint insurance plans so that they can make more informed decisions when they need to select their physicians.

You know the current drill. When you join a new health plan, you are presented with a print or online directory. It provides names, addresses and not much else on thousands of physicians. Which one do you choose? Overwhelmed and under-informed, most patients choose a doctor who is nearby, hardly a rigorous selection process.

Very few doctors who participate in health plans do anything to market themselves, so there's long been a dearth of information, particularly comparable information. For years, information entrepreneurs have seen this as an area ripe with opportunity, but have been stymied by one major obstacle: while everyone seems to want this information, nobody wants to pay for it.

Wellpoint may finally be cracking this conundrum by giving its members the ability to exchange information among themselves in an organized manner. It's an ambitious user-generated content initiative, with the Zagat brand adding buzz and panache to what otherwise might be a humdrum undertaking. Further, Wellpoint and Zagat are cleverly focusing on the kind of information that patients want most: not mind numbing medical outcomes statistics, but ratings around trust, communication, availability and cost, all driven by the highly successful Zagat survey methodology.

This is clearly a gutsy brand extension for Zagat, which is moving outside its comfort zone into an area that's complex, emotionally-charged and political. Partnering with Wellpoint gives it immediate market credibility and access, along with some protective cover as it rolls out a database that is sure to draw criticism for being too fluffy, biased, incomplete and unfair. But if Zagat can get past this kind of criticism -- which has beset everyone else who has tried to play in this area -- it will be standing at the doorway of an enormous opportunity. And of course there would be delicious irony in having a restaurant guide providing the remedy for one of our national healthcare system's greatest afflictions.

Labels: physician ratings, wellpoint, zagat

IHS, SAP Launch Joint Venture

Technical information provider IHS Inc. and business software giant SAP have launched a joint offering for Master Data Management of Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) materials data. IHS already serves this niche with its Intermat offering that provides content and services that create standardized and enriched descriptions for industrial MRO items (such as pipes, valves and bearings).

As a result of the joint venture, the item descriptions and Standard Modifier Dictionary (SMD) description formats can seamlessly populate the SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management platform. As part of the solution, IHS will leverage its SMD "Powered by NetWeaver" content certification.

Both companies expect this alliance will help customers better manage their MRO inventory. Because of the companies' international presence, companies around the globe will benefit from the venture. And both organizations will certainly benefit from the strengths of each other. It won't be surprising if IHS and SAP find other areas in which to collaborate.

United Business Media/CMP Use Acquisition to Further Bolster Electronics Group

United Business Media plc this month announced its acquisition of Portelligent Inc. on behalf of CMP Technology. CMP is United Business Media's U.S.-based marketing solutions business that serves the information technology industries.

Portelligent is a provider of teardown data and analyses of high volume portable consumer electronics products--from cellular phones to digital cameras. The company's teardown reports feature a structured overview of system features, a complete bill of materials, system architecture analyses and performance metric assessments. Portelligent has a database of more than 500 reports and adds more than 100 reports each year.

Customers license online access to these teardown analyses and also use related services, such as Key Metrics Reports, database access tool and extracts from the Portelligent Product Profile Database. These products help customers with their decision-making processes in a variety of business areas, including product development, technical marketing and competitive benchmarking. Portelligent boasts an equally diverse customer base that is comprised of semiconductor and electronic component manufacturers, fabless integrated circuit design houses, cellular handset makers, consumer electronics manufacturers, wireless carriers, financial analysts and intellectual property licensing firms.

This acquisition is certainly a boost to CMP's Electronics Group. In a press release announcing the deal, Paul Miller, president of the Electronic Group, noted how Portelligent would meld with Semiconductor Insights (which was acquired by CMP in July) and a recently-announced Intellectual Property Symposium. He also noted how the group has invested about $40 million in the group over the last two years to further develop this part of the business. This includes the acquisitions of TechOnLine and Ho Machines Work.

All of these deals are positioned to help CMP provide the broadest array of offerings for its customers. In the process, the company has effectively made the transition from print to alternative offerings as well. Miller notes that print products will generate only 20 percent of the group's revenues in 2008. The rest will be generated by data-based products, including those produced by Portelligent, and online and event products. CMP has really made a strong commitment to move beyond print, and this acquisition just helps illustrate that dedication to providing customers with the content and delivery methods they demand these days.

Two Recent Moves Position D&B For Long-Term Growth

D&B recently announced two separate initiatives designed to position the company for long-term growth. The first is a joint venture with Japan's Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR) of which D&B will become the majority shareholder and trade under the name Dun & Bradstreet TSR Ltd. This venture will enable D&B to simultaneously bolster its presence in Japan and in its risk management sector that targets large business customers and global multinational firms. Operations related to the venture are expected to kick off in fiscal 2008.

D&B also announced its acquisition of Purisma Inc., a commercial data integration (CDI) software solutions provider, for $48 million. The deal is designed to help D&B bolster its presence in the CDI market. According to a press release announcing the acquisition, Purisma's data hub and CDI software appliance are built to leverage the D&B database, which will simplify the integration of D&B data with customers' internal systems and further embed D&B offerings behind the customer firewall.

Both deals seem like smart moves by D&B for different reasons. It's so important these days to have the most comprehensive products and services available. And Purisma will help D&B do just that by raising its profile in the marketplace. But that's certainly not the end of the story. It's also vital that customers, wherever they are located, can have access to your company's solutions. In today's global marketplace, that means being aggressive in markets beyond your home country's borders. Doing so may seem like an intimidating proposition, if you go it alone. That's another reason why D&B's joint venture with TSR makes sense. This established player undoubtedly understands the nuances of its customer base and will help position D&B for success.

Case Settles with Nothing Settled

ECRI, a not-for-profit information provider serving the healthcare industry, is often referred to as "the Consumer Reports of medical products." ECRI obtains and tests a broad range of medical products for quality, safety and efficacy and relays its results back to buyers of these products via written reports. Its influence in the industry is enormous.

As an offshoot of this core business activity, ECRI also publishes something called PriceGuide, an online service that shows actual prices paid for disposable and consumable medical products. ECRI gathers this information from hospitals, aggregates and standardizes the information, then sells it back to hospitals and other interested parties. It's a classic data publishing model.

PriceGuide was a good -- and quiet -- business for ECRI for more than ten years. Then, in 2006, it received a complaint from medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific, which claimed that all its hospital customers had signed confidentiality agreements that prohibited them from distributing this information to third-parties. ECRI took the stance that the information was accurate and voluntarily provided to it by these hospitals.

There are two important issues at play here: a) can companies keep their negotiated prices secret, and b) can a publisher be liable for violating a confidentiality agreement it never signed? Indeed, it's reasonable to ask why Boston Scientific didn't sue the hospitals that had disclosed this allegedly confidential data. According to some industry pundits, Boston Scientific wanted its pricing kept confidential but didn't want to offend its hospital customers, so it instead went after the publisher.

The stakes in this case were high. With product price data being viewed as "the final frontier" by many data publishers, any right of manufacturers to hold their pricing confidential would severely limit this area of opportunity. Further, can a data publisher be held liable for information it publishes that it received voluntarily and in good faith from an often large number of individual companies? A court ruling in the wrong direction could rattle the foundations of the data publishing industry.

But someone has blinked. With the December 3 trial date fast approaching, the New York Times reports that the two parties have settled, with no terms disclosed, and neither party is commenting. So now there will be far more eyes than usual scanning to see if Boston Scientific pricing appears in the next update to PriceGuide. And we should expect to see more cases like this in the future, as manufacturers become increasingly worried that the transparency of the web coupled with sophisticated data products give them less room to wheel and deal. While this case may be closed, the threat is still one our industry needs to keep an eye on because the underlying issues still remain.

Labels: Boston Scientific, ECRI, PriceGuide