Let's break the question down into some manageable bites. First,
defining the tools.
You're looking for a tool to perform web searches to ferret out
company information from what is publicly available on the Web, manage
the data in an internal database, analyse the data, and possibly
market the tool you develop.
What information is available on the Web?
Thousands of companies worldwide utilize the internet to present a
variety of information about themselves to their customers and
suppliers.
"Information provided by company web-sites does not just include the
obvious information held in the "About Us" page. Much more can often
be found by a judicious study of the site contents and overall
structure. As an example, we have come across companies that reveal
their complete supplier list on their web-sites, or even worse,
documents containing words such as "Confidential, not to be
disclosed". Such information was not held in password protected areas
but was available to anybody studying the company."
Internet Intelligence - Analysing web-sites for competitive
intelligence, by Arthur Weiss and Steve England, Freepint.com, Issue
#65:
http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/220600.htm#tips
However, Weiss and England also make this clarification:
"Many sites hide pages from obvious view. Links to such pages will not
be easily observable from the actual page. You may have to click on a
single full-stop or space to enter the unmarked area. In some cases,
pages may be publicly accessible, but without any pages physically
linking to them. Such pages may be used by internal company staff for
navigation or testing. They may be old pages not yet removed, or pages
not yet linked to the main site."
"As well as pages that are not linked to the visible site, pages can
be password protected. It is often possible to gain access by signing
up for membership. In these cases (and for forms in general) we note
the information requested. "
This outlines a basic difficulty or barrier for the intelligence
gathering Agent. Pages which are password protected, or which are
contained in a membership area of a website will not be accessible by
an Agent.
David Gikandi, author of "Gathering Intelligence on the Web" outlines
his perspective on the process:
"Before the Internet, businesses had to invest considerable sums of
money in international competitive intelligence gathering. The process
was slow, tedious, expensive and cumbersome. Businesses had to rely on
the telephone, fax machine and interviews as their main competitive
intelligence tools. Only the largest companies could afford to do
adequate intelligence gathering. Today, just about anyone with a PC
can conduct a substantial amount of international competitive
intelligence gathering all within a matter of hours. Of course, the
multi-nationals still have far much better research resources at their
disposal, but small import-export businesses can now get almost all
the intelligence they need for successful world trade, at a price they
can easily afford.
"To start off your online international intelligence gathering, begin
with free resources that give you a cursory analysis of the
competition in general. A good place to start is your competitors and
their suppliers and customers Web sites. By browsing through these,
you should be able to quickly guess what their business models are,
their offering, structure, pricing, relationships and the like are.
Keep in mind, however, that information generated by your competitors
will often be more subjective and #rosy# than those prepared by a
neutral third party. You can also collect a fair amount of free
financial information on your competitors if they are publicly traded
companies. Most countries now have the profiles of their publicly
traded companies online. In most cases, you can get summary financial
information on any public company free of charge, with more detailed
analysis costing some money. In the USA, for example, you can get such
information from Web sites belonging to various financial houses such
as Fidelity and E*Trade, and from the SEC. One other great free
resource to use is online business directories. These are slowly
becoming more detailed and powerful as time goes by. A good example of
one is the Asian Sources directory (www.asiansources.com) which has a
very large catalog of products and profiles from Asian suppliers. At
Asian Sources, you will not only be able to get a free short profile
on thousands of exporters of a wide variety of products in Asia, but
you will also be able to see these products in full color and get a
price quote on them online or confidentially by email. When using
online business directories, keep in mind that they could be
inaccurate. A free resource is almost always bound to have more
mistakes that one that charges money. All the same, they are a great
resource. A full list of such directories worldwide is available at
the Global Business Toolkit (www.access-trade.com)."
"Once you have a general idea on the competition, it is now time to
get the critical details. For this, you will need to use fee-based
intelligence from services such as Dun & Bradstreet, Dow Jones,
Hoppenstedt, Kompass, Teikoku and the like. These services can give
you detailed financial, historical and credit information and
evaluations on companies worldwide. The cost for this information
ranges between $5 and $230 per report, depending on the level of
detail required and the location of the company being researched on. "
Gathering International Competitive Intelligence on the Web, by David
Gikandi, 4hb.com, Idea Viewer:
http://www.4hb.com/0111intlcompetintell.html
Links related to this article:
Dow-Jones
http://www.dowjones.com/corp/index.html
Hoppenstedt
http://www.hoppenstedt.de/
Kompass
http://www.kompass.se/
Teikoku Databank America
http://www.teikoku.com/
Again, the need for purchase of critical, specific information,
despite your access to public information, will very likely be a
necessity. Perhaps subscription data may be licensed for integration
into your application. The major Web providers of proprietary
Commercial Intelligence are LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet, and
Morningstar. Their content is not available directly to an
intelligence Agent. The cost of obtaining this proprietary information
would be in addition to the costs of developing a tool to mine public
information.
Products available from these sources include:
LexisNexis
Products for Business Analysts and Strategists
http://www.lexisnexis.com/busanalyst/
Products for Comercial Intelligence Pros
http://www.lexisnexis.com/Cipro/
Dun & Bradstreet offers several levels of business financial
reporting. Their proprietary CI products include:
Risk Evaluation Reports: Business Information ReportTM - The
recognized standard for in-depth business information and financial
risk assessment, Compact ReportTM - Identification and business
information for low level credit decisions on European companies,
Comprehensive ReportTM - A comprehensive picture of a company's
financial position, Credit Check ReportTM - Basic information for
checking credit on lower risk decisions, U.S. Public FilingsTM - Web
Report
Access the largest database of business-related public filings,
Industry Credit Score Reports - Predicts a company's likelihood of
payment delinquency to businesses in a particular industry,
Integrate & Enhance Data: Data Integration Toolkit - Automate the
integration of D&B information directly into your systems or B2B
e-commerce applications by creating your own, unique application to
interface with D&B, Global DecisionMaker -
Minimize risks, maximize opportunities,
Country Analysis: Country ReportTM - Comprehensive information for
evaluating risks and opportunities across the globe, providing a
unique insight into the relative performance of different countries,
Export Guides - Online Book - Guides to global market and export
information on more than 185 countries
Verification Tools: Business Background ReportTM - A cost-effective
preview of a business, Global Family LinkageTM - View background
information on businesses worldwide as well as corporate family
members, International Company Profile - A business fact sheet on
companies located outside of the United States,
Monitor a Company: Continuous MonitoringTM - Keep an eye on accounts
that matter most.
-----
Software - of the software packages currently available for Web search
and records management, Knowledge Works by Intelliseek offers the most
comprehensive set of tools, as well as access to a variety of
proprietary data. It is the closest in features and capabilities to
the custom application you've described. In searching for a cost
estimate for your own project development costs, you'd do well to
discover the sort of capitalization available to Intelliseek, and an
estimate of the R&D budget for the development of their Enterprise
Search Server.
Intelliseek
Enterprise Search Server
http://www.intelliseek.com/prod/ess.htm
What CI software has in common is the inability to provide a truly
useful analysis of the information gathered. It'll store facts and
figures in a database, but there is little analysis and correlation of
the data, therefore reports tend to be light on helpfulness. A key
element of your custom project would be to determine ways of reporting
the data gathered.
Records Management
An Oracle database would be possible records management solution. Your
intelligence Agent could easily be set up to report data in an Oracle
readable format. MySQL and MS Access are two additional database
options available to you. While your final database will not be
excessively large, you will also need to make allowance for the
storage of temporary records, and their management. A robust database
solution is a must.
Marketing Analysis Tools
The tool you've described for analyzing the visitors to your own
website should most likely be a separate entity, since these tools are
already commercially available from many sources. Descriptions,
listings and comparisons are so numerous, I would recommend
researching them as a separate item. It's not likely that you'll be
able to develop a custom application package that is better than
what's available for any reasonable cost. These tools are referred to
as log analyzers and link managers. Costs for top of the line, ready
to use software will be in the range of $1,000 for each package.
Tools for analysis of the data mined by an Agent will likely be the
most expensive part of the development process, because this is such a
proprietary field. Large corporations, and third-party CI sources like
LexisNexis, et al, have entire departments devoted to just this
application, applying analysis and reporting algorithms to their
proprietary databases. I would venture that it would be necessary to
estimate this as an ongoing yearly expenditure, rather than a one time
cost.
I hesitate to give a dollar figure because of all the possible
permutations. You will need to commission a feasibility study which
defines the project more completely before you have any accurate cost
figures. Based on my understanding of the tasks involved, and the
scope of what you are seeking to accomplish, I would estimate the
project as requiring the services of two to three programmers and/or
database analysts over a period of approximately 12 months, perhaps
longer. Using an average salary figure of $50,000, minimum
development cost range would be $100,000 - $150,000. I believe this
estimate to be low, because of the difficulty in development of
reporting options.
Should you decide to seek recovery of the development costs of your
custom application by making it available to others, you'd need a very
careful analysis of the target market available. I suspect it would be
a somewhat limited market, as most custom software applications are,
and that the pricing would have to make it more attractive than
subscriptions to the commercially available services. It would require
a rather high volume of sales to make inroads into R&D costs over
marketing costs.
Should you decide to pursue that route, one approach is to solicit
partnership with established companies in the field who have a hole in
their product offerings that could be met by your application.
Financial arrangements vary from an outright purchase of your
application to licensing, to assistance with development, and
marketing. Software development and marketing methods is another broad
topic that would probably be better covered individually.
Search strategy:
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&q=%22commercial+intelligence%22&btnG=Google+Search
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&q=%22economic+and+commercial+intelligence%22&btnG=Google+Search
I hope this information and analysis offers some insight. Should you
have any questions, I'll be happy to clarify.
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