A report by IDG Research concluded that companies with effective data as their backbone achieve Growth rates 35% higher, year-on-year, than comparable organisations which don’t have quality information. The impact of BREXIT, competitor activity, declining customer loyalties and major changes in the way we work, make it more important than ever to make decisions and execute plans efficiently and precisely.
Since we communicate and sell to people rather than the organisations they work for, the state of the information about individuals is particularly important.
This type of data is the most perishable, typically decaying at up to 70% per year, people’s lives evolve continuously – they change jobs or titles, move up, down, sideways or onwards. Companies go bust, merge, grow, shrink, split and relocate.
Acquisitions and mergers happen, spin-offs and new divisions appear and company names change.
Keeping on top of all of this is a massive challenge but the outcomes of all sorts of activities including sales, marketing, customer service and business prospects generally depend heavily on it.
The data held by most organisations about people, other than their own staff, will usually have a focus on current or lapsed customers, partner firms and previous business leads.
For most B2B sales and marketing campaigns however, the objective is to find NEW customers, so the acquisition of external data from reputable sources to power these activities is a key issue.
Find out how Alert Business Information can help you or view our scenarios, testimonials and case studies.
At its worst, if you choose the wrong BI supplier you could end up with expensive, unfocused and out-of-date information that doesn’t help you at all – data that could even damage your position and reputation.
We’ve compiled some questions below that you should ask a potential business intelligence or data provider before making a decision on which company to use:
| Question to Ask | How Alert Stacks Up |
|---|---|
| How extensive is your contact information and is each contact up-to-date and verified? | Alert adds 50,000 new contacts per month to the million contacts it already lists and updates regularly and all have a validation date to show when they were last checked. |
| Do you offer flexible, affordable pricing? | Alert gives prices for one-off purchases, examples of prices for our more bespoke services, and offers a no-obligation quote. |
| Do you offer a short-term evaluation period or service holidays on your subscription services? | Alert offers a three-month drop-out clause for new users and service holidays for companies playing catch-up. |
| Can you tailor the service to cater for my niche requirements? | Alert covers hundreds of sectors and sub-sectors in minute detail and in the unlikely event we haven’t got the information you need, we will research it for you at no extra cost. |
| If you have an online data system, is it easy and quick to use for the non-professional researcher? | Alert’s data interfaces are designed to be intuititive and easy top operate. Information can be located and downloaded in seconds. |
| If you have an online data subscription service, can it be tailored so that I only see and pay for the data I need? | Alert can provide a bespoke Data Dashboard which zooms in on precise contacts, sectors, geographies and business leads – and you only pay for what you can access. |
| Do you have an in-house research team who are actively checking and updating the information or are you simply a data reseller? | Alert has built an industry-leading research team since 2005, based in the UK and internationally, who are always ready to conduct bespoke research. |
| Do you have a customer service team to provide support for clients using the online subscription services or purchasing one-off data sets? | Alert has a customer service team and account managers with a strong customer service ethic. |
Alert has been looking after the reputation of its clients since 2005.
Not sure which, if any, of our data solutions or subscription options would best suit your situation and needs, or just want to learn more and to discuss the possibilities?
Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation and get impartial advice from one of our data experts.
Alert Business Information
Alert Business Information – the UK’s most innovative supplier of B2B company data and business intelligence.