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Beginners
How To Guide
The Internet as a Business Intelligence
Tool
Introduction
SMEs need to empower decision-makers at every level
with business intelligence—about promotions, online
sales results, market shifts, competitors' gains, partners'
supplies—so they can compete effectively. Gaining the
agility to evaluate complex trends, patterns, and relationships
quickly is a competitive advantage. In this respect
the Web can be both a research blessing and a time devouring
curse
Before you begin your research it is a good idea to
outline all you currently know about your company and
the industry/market that you are in. To begin with:
List the main keywords and phrases
in your industry
- What
category is your industry in?
- List
all the names that your industry group is known by
- List
all of your known competitors
- List
all of your known suppliers
- List
all of your known partners
We
have provided a number of websites to get your research
started. Eventually you will probably bookmark all of
the sources that are relevant to your industry and that
best satisfy your information needs. However, it is
always a good idea to check for new sources and to make
sure the websites you are relying on have not become
stale.
1.1 Search Engines
Search engines are a great place to start your research.
To maximise the value of a search engine make your keywords
as specific as possible or enter a phrase in quotes.
Beware however, as they tend to return more data than
information. Here are a few of the more popular engines.
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Alta Vista |
One of the largest and most powerful search engines;
particularly useful for complicated searches.
Also offers a free translation service, a full-text
index of Usenet newsgroup archives and a business
and residential telephone directory. Has a local
Irish site ie.altavista.com |
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Dogpile |
Meta search engine consisting of many WWW Search
engines. |
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Google |
Google has become the pre-eminent web search engine.
It will bring you directly to the most popular
websites (based on number of incoming links).
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MetaCrawler |
One of the best meta search engines, this one
allows searching for an exact phrase and offers
a single interface for nine search engines, including
FAST, Ask Jeeves, Looksmart, Lycos and Overture.
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Yahoo! |
One of the largest and most popular Internet directories.
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Here is a list of websites that provide business intelligence on individual companies.
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AllBusiness |
Search engine, searchable by company name or industry,
that returns home office address, telephone number
and web address, if available. |
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Annual Report Gallery |
Links to over 1000 free annual reports, some in
full image format, including most of the Fortune
500 companies. |
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Annual Report Service |
Public Register's Annual Report Service - online.
You have the choice to view the online annual
or to request a free hard copy. |
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Business.com |
This site offers 64,000 company profiles for public
and private international companies, biographies
of executives, industry profiles and news. |
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Company Annual Reports On-line |
Free annual reports available online for companies
in Europe, Asia and United States. |
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Corporate Information |
An excellent starting point to find companies
and corporate information from around the world.
Organised by countries, this site offers links
to corporate directories and other useful information.
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Factiva
CI Center |
A Dow Jones & Reuters company that provides
business information via articles from more than
8,000 sources worldwide. |
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Free Annual Reports |
Annual reports on over 3,600 public companies.
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Hemscott
UK |
Annual reports and company guides on UK listed
companies. Information on UK corporate advisor
and investment trust companies. |
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Hoover Company Listings |
Company directory listings searchable by company
name, location, industry and sales figures. Includes
percentage gains or loss in sales for the most
recent year, and links to web sites if available.
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IRIN |
Free online annual reports, quarterlies, fact
books and press releases for over 2000 companies
available in full image format. |
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Kompass |
Access information on 1.5 million companies, 2.7
million executives, and 23 million product and
service references worldwide. Search by company
name, product, or geographic region. Detailed
reports available for a fee. |
Manning & Napier
Information Services |
Several innovative information services, including
DR-Link, a natural language search system with
visualisation capabilities, and MAP-IT, a patent
data mining system. |
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Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals |
Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals
homepage, featuring SCIP publications, electronic
discussion groups, expert/speaker database, events
calendar and information about the organisation. |
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Starting Point |
Starting Point links to business-related resources
in marketing, the law, corporations, computing,
careers, news and reference materials. |
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Thomas Register |
Automated searching of the Thomas Register of
American Manufacturers by product or service.
Free membership. |
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White and Yellow Pages |
Gives users access to all white and yellow pages
worldwide. There are 76 countries with links to
52 different databases available. |
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