As information services have evolved they have continually added data feeds to service their customers. Data feeds can be new product announcements, pricing alerts, executive shuffles, or any other sort of timely data with influence on industries and markets.
The creation of these data feeds involves different tasks than the creation of news articles, the hosting of events, or other types of traditional media activities, so it can often be challenging for niche information businesses to create and deliver these kinds of services.
The key to creating a valuable data service is primary research: contacting sources directly to obtain information that is not publicly available. That includes information such as:
- The vendors that a company uses.
- “Intention” information like that gathered by controlled circulation magazines (e.g., “Do you expect your company’s spending on X services to increase, decrease, or stay the same in 2018?”).
- Contact information for executives in certain mission-critical departments subject to employee “poaching.”
The challenges to the managers of business-to-business information services who want to create these services are that:
- It’s hard to find call centers willing to work on small-scale projects of less than hundreds or tens of thousands of calls.
- In-house staff members are usually swamped, interns are unreliable, and outsourcing firms are not designed to handle anything besides massive multi-year projects.
- Outsourcing firms headquartered abroad can be notoriously unaccountable.
Information Evolution has specialized in serving the unmet needs of those who need a reliable and competent partner to build and maintain databases. We offer experienced researchers, proficiency with sophisticated information gathering tools, and deep knowledge of information industry best practices.
