Inforum 2000-Prednasky/Presentations

	OUTSMARTing the Competition! Virtual Publishing Comes of Age
	Sjoerd Vogt, The Dialog Corporation, Whitney, Great Britain
	Outsmart - a new product from The Dialog Corporation – was launched in March 2000. Drawing on Dialog's unparalleled content collection, Outsmart offers pre-formatted reports prepared by Dialog search specialists on a wide variety of business, scientific, and technical topics. Serious users of information are now able to instantly access detailed reports through a unique user interface or through Dialog’s Internet portals. We look at how these “virtually published” reports improve on the traditionally published primary sources .

Info Resources for Business & Economics Session:

OUTSMARTing the Competition! Virtual Publishing Comes of Age

Sjoerd Vogt - VP & General Manager – OnDisc/@Site Division

Outsmart - a new product from The Dialog Corporation – was launched in March 2000. Drawing

on Dialog's unparalleled content collection, Outsmart offers pre-formatted reports prepared by

Dialog search specialists on a wide variety of business, scientific, and technical topics. Serious

users of information are now able to instantly access detailed reports through a unique user

interface or through Dialog’s Internet portals. We look at how these ”virtually published” reports

improve on the traditionally published primary sources .

BACKGROUND

The need for pre-packaged, topic-based reports has been clearly in the virtual publishing

marketplace in both the core and end-user markets. Dialog has therefore combined the content

already available on existing products and has made it accessible via a single interface.

Outsmart is built around a base of Dialog functionality and delivered on the Web. It uses Dialog

infrastructure to present the information via a unique user interface. The goal here is to draw on

the depth of the Dialog collection and provide a pre-packaged report with no searching required.

TARGET MARKET

By job function

Information need is a function of what type of job the prospect has. The top information intensive jobs,

occurring throughout all industries, are those that have a need to monitor the outside world, such as:

- Competitive Intelligence Professional - Keep the organization competitive. They collect, store,

access information about competitors and industries, keep informed about new players in a market,

track personnel changes, monitor technologies.

- Sales Professionals - Identify potential customers, track activities of current customers, track news

about competitors and industries, maintain technical product knowledge, update sales skills and

monitor trends.

- Merger & Acquisition Analysts - Require strategic business information to help identify potential

acquisition targets or alliance opportunities. Need to keep from being a target themselves while also

watching the competition.

- Marketing Professionals - Require strategic business news information to help build business plans

and marketing strategies. Includes PR, product management, product development, etc.

- Financial Analysts - Require strategic financial information to help build strategic plans. Want to see

the numbers behind the numbers as well as what is being said in the news, what is under development

and what the analysts have to say.

- Technical and Engineers - Need to stay in touch with industry developments, track information

about new technologies and tools, new standards/specifications, identify distributors/vendors for

needed components.

- Consultants and Researchers - Track clients and monitor industry change, new product

development, trends etc

Potential users can be found in virtually any industry. Outsmart reports will provide each of these targets

with the WHOLE picture delivered in one, easy-to-use format with a few simple clicks.

Introduction

The basic principle behind Outsmart reports is simple: to add value to our products and services by pre-

fabricating reports. By creating topic-based reports that help customers answer specific questions or

reach specific decisions, we can save them time. Essentially, we would be doing the ‘search’ and

‘formatting’ for them. Pre-packaging information also makes it possible to offer fixed-price information

products that can be sold to non-subscribers over the internet (made possible by the introduction of credit

card billing), thus opening up an entirely new market.

Not all searches lend themselves to this new initiative. For example, complex searches (where the search

strategy is essentially developed during the search itself), or simple customer-specific searches (that are

unlikely to be of value to customers at large), are not candidates for virtual publishing. However, many

search objectives can be pre-programmed and pre-formatted such as reports on individual companies,

analytical reports in specialized technical areas (for example, ‘prior art’ for patents), and summary reports

based on topic (for example, ‘diabetes’).

Figure 1 Evolution of Simplicity

In many ways, Outsmart is simply the next logical step in making access to our information files easier

for customers. Indeed, this evolution is already reflected in our product strategy: from unstructured

search (highly skilled users leveraging the full power of our search capabilities) to structured search

(directed at end users through products such as Web and Select/Toolkit). Outsmart changes the physics

of a ‘search’ by reducing it to the identification of a target or a subject.

The Competitive Landscape

Today, many information services provide the equivalent of ‘virtual reports.’ Dun & Bradstreet and

Lexis-Nexis package business information reports on individual companies, The Economist provides

reports on countries, and there are numerous examples of specialized reports by topic available on the

internet (at vertical market sites). Therefore, the question is: how can Dialog add value?

Figure 2 Leveraging Dialog’s Position as an Aggregator

Figure 2 illustrates how Dialog can leverage its position as an aggregator to create virtual publishing

products that are more powerful than existing products. Because most competitive offerings are based on

one information provider’s (IP) content, the scope of reports that can be created by such IPs are limited by

the scope of their content (and/or their reach beyond their own content). Dialog has access to a larger

content ‘dataset’ and therefore can create reports that include information features that competitors cannot

match.

This is but one way Dialog can exploit the aggregator model – a model that has lost value over the last

few years as a result of structural changes in the marketplace, but one which still has life in it. While

design will play a key role in market acceptance of Outsmart reports, only the added content component

represents a sustainable advantage. It will be our ability to identify added content value (over and above

competitive content) that will determine the viability of any given virtual publishing product

Key Competitors

? Lexis-Nexis Company Dossier

? Hoover’s Company Capsule

? Disclosure Company Profile

? S&P Stock Reports

? OneSource Business Browser

? Individual Company Profile

Differentiating Outsmart from the competition

Initially, content, ease-of-use and price are where we can differentiate. InfoSort is one of our greatest

advantages. The fact that we have one user-interface providing a single commonly indexed source of

information will appeal to those who are not happy with the competitors search engines or other basic

reports.

No other product currently offers all this information in this type of simplified format

Product Life cycle – the future

The first Outsmart report to be introduced is the Corporate Profile. This report will be described in greater

detail in the next section. Users will initially be able to purchase reports on the companies listed on the

S&P 500 Index Directory. The Corporate Profile will eventually be expanded to cover more than 25,000

international, public and private companies.

As enhancements are made to the interface and it becomes a more robust, competitive offering, Outsmart

will become the principal choice of pre-formatted reports.

OUTSMART REPORTS

Outsmart reports will be available through a centralized Outsmart web site, through Dialog Web, or

ordered through portals. For example, by establishing specific types of reports, customers could order

reports from vertical market web sites in partnership with Dialog. By clicking on Outsmart, the customer

would be connected to our virtual publishing site where they could order reports or even search Dialog

files using an end user interface (Web or an industry version of Toolkit).

Reports will be ordered by literally clicking a button (once the target or subject has been identified by

either by entering a company name or selecting a topic). Generic on-line descriptions of the content and

format of any given report will be available so customers can evaluate the report before ordering it. Once

ordered (click!), the customer will be requested to enter credit card data. Upon authorization, the report

will be downloaded as a Microsoft Word™ document. Initially, an MS Word document will be the only

option available. Other formats and delivery options will be evaluated once the products are proven.

Figure 4 Ordering Outsmart Reports

Corporate Profiles Available Now !!

The first Outsmart reports to be available is the Corporate Profile. Simply by entering a stock

ticker symbol or browsing by company name, you can quickly access profiles containing vital,

detailed company information:

? Company Description

? Financial analysis

? Latest news stories

? Management structure

? Merger and acquisition activity

? Patent and trademark data

? Product information

? Stock Performance data

Use Outsmart to access the most comprehensive, preformatted company reports available on

thousands of public and private companies around the world. And coming soon -- Outsmart

Reports on thousands of products and industries.

How Outsmart Can Work for You

Outsmart reports from Dialog is designed for anyone who needs the essential facts on a

company, product, or industry to help their company get ahead in the marketplace.

Get Outsmart when you need to:

? Explore new markets

? Identify acquisition targets

? Monitor current client activity

? Pitch prospective clients

? Plan strategic alliances

? Profile competitors

? Research competitor products

? Track industry trends

? And more…

How You Can Get The Facts – Fast

Outsmart reports can be purchased by anyone who needs in-depth reports using a Dialog credit

card, Mastercard, or Visa. Dialog subscribers can also contact their account representative for

information about flat-fee contracts.

Just visit http://www.dialog.com/outsmart and you can quickly access the Corporate Profiles that

you need using these simple steps:

Figure 1 – To access a Corporate Profile, simply enter a stock ticker symbol or browse for a

company name.

? Search for a Corporate Profile by entering a ticker symbol or browsing for a company’s

name (see Figure 1).

? Review the Table of Contents for the Corporate Profile that you selected.

? Add the Profile to your order and search for any additional Profiles that you need.

? When you have all of the Profiles that you need, Proceed to Checkout.

When you proceed to checkout, you will be asked to sign in as a registered user or a visitor:

? Registered Users - To register, fill in the New User section on the Sign In page. Once you are a

registered user, you will only need to enter your user name and password to purchase reports. You

will not have to reenter credit card information during each visit.

? VISITORS - IF YOU SIGN IN AS A VISITOR, YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION

WILL REMAIN ACTIVE UNTIL YOU LOG OFF OR UNTIL YOU ARE

AUTOMATICALLY TIMED OUT (NO ACTIVITY FOR ONE HOUR). VISITOR

CREDIT CARD INFORMATION IS IT NOT RETAINED AFTER A SESSION.

After you checkout, you will have the opportunity to confirm or cancel your order before logging

off.

Visit http://www.dialog.com/outsmart today to view a sample report or access the Corporate

Profiles that you need!

OUTSMART CORPORATE PROFILE CONTENT

Snapshot (Address, Website, Description, Top 5 Officers, Stock Price)

Ticker Symbol --- Auditors

Annual Sales --- Annual EPS