I will pay 50.00 to create the following paper with the Peer Journal I have proveded:“Research in an organization”. Topic ideas include the role of research, development of research studies, integ

F BYBARBIEE. KEISER inding information on private companies has long been challenging for researchers. These companies are called "private" for a reason: They're not required by law to reveal financial data, so most don't. For years, the sparse resources available consisted of D8¿B credit reports, with their minimal information, and Irloover's, now owned by D&B.

Each state has company registration data online, but only LexisNexis consolidates them. For news, local papers searchable through NewsBank (newsbank.com), American City Business Journals (bizjournals.com), and ProQuest .

ABI/INFORM's Dateline (aka Business Dateline on Dialog, File 635) sometimes contain a few gems.

To combat this dearth of data, two companies launched f onhne services to bring transparency to private company research: PrivCo and InfoArmy. While there are systemic differences between these two firms' approaches, there are similarities—most notably the entrepreneurial track record of the founders. One co-founded Vault.com, Inc.; the other dreamed up Jigsaw.

PRiVCO Launched in 2009, PrivCo (privco.com) provides access to private company information, private market investors, venture capital funding, private merger and acquisition (M&A) data, and private equity deals. The founder, Sam Hamadeh, also started Vault.com, which was acquired by private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson in 2007.

PrivCo contains profiles of approximatelyl70,000 major private companies with sales greater than $500 million. Of these, 60,000 are U.S.-based; the other 110,000 are domi- ciled primarily in Western Europe (U.K., Italy, Germany, and France!

Coverage has nol expanded to Indîl PrivCo plans to cover other emerging markets, such as Brazil and China, soon. Approximately 10,000 new private company profiles aie added to the database each montli.

Company coverage is based on revenue size, M&A and venture capital funding activity, media attention, and client requests.

16 onlinesearcher.net The company claims that its "sophisticated analytics" guides it to noticing when searches occur for companies not in the database.

Designed to help cor- porations and investors keep an eye on start- ups, PrivCo profiles concentrate on financiáis, details of venture capital fund- ing, and M&A deal information.

When available, supplemental exhibits, such as corporate organization charts, key SEC filings, internal memos, plans of reorganiza- tion, and company presentations, are provided. The database also contains analyses of venture capital funding deals—M&A deals involving private companies and investor profiles (PE Firms, VC Firms, Angel Groups, including partner and executive names and direct email addresses).

CONTENT EVALUATION Not all elements are complete for each company profile, but full company profiles include the foUowing sections:

• Business summary • Recent news, updates, and analysis • Overview and corporate organization, including year founded; fiscal year-end; 1- and 3-year revenue growth rate; 1- and 3-year employee growth rate; city, state/ province, postal code, country; phone, fax, website; parent company, subsidiaries, brands, and founders • Industry information • Competitors and comparables • Charts, financiáis, and statistics (tables and graphs), including income statement, balance sheet, cash fiow statement, employment figures, location statistics, and revenue by segment, as available • Mergers and acquisitions • Public/private history (indicating companies that were formerly publicly traded and are now private) • Detailed business description (business overview, recent developments, company history) Each report contains internal links, making it easy to nav- igate through PrivCo to reports on related companies, com- petitors, investors, industries, and similar transactions.

The PrivCo Industry Classification Scheme (PICS), 1,800 industry segments, is an attempt to home in on emerging industries that have no SIC or NAICS code as yet. The table on page 18 indicates the distribution of coverage by indus- try in the database.

USER INTERFACE AND SEARCHABILITY Although the homepage is somewhat cluttered, it offers even nonsubscribers access to an overview of recent initial MAR I APR 2013 ONLINE SEARCHER 17 public offerings (IPO Watch); private company M8¡A, pri- vate equity, and venture capital deals; and featured private company research. Users can search by company or investor using the basic search box at the upper right.

The top navigation bar provides access to advanced search pages, offering the user multiple ways to screen for the following:

• Private Companies:

By location (country, state, city or postal code), industry sector, annual revenues (and growth rate), number of employees (and growth rate), and by ownership criteria (including private equity [PE]/venture capital [VCl-based firms; exclude PE/VC-based firms; only include PE/VG-based firms).

• Private Market Investors:

By region/location, investor type (angel, business incubator, private equity, venture capital), preferred stage (seed, early, restructuring, buyout), investment activity (most recent 6 months, past year, 3 years, 5 years, 10, years), and industry.

• VC Fundings:

By fund round size, total funding raised, transaction date, region/location, industry.

investor types (business plan competition, cooperative, corporate, crowdfunding platform, and family).

• Private M&A Deals:

By region/location, deal size, target industry, and deal date • Private Equity Deals:

By region/location, deal size, target industry, and deal date The sixth navigation option is PrivGo's Knowledge Bank, which consists of articles and white papers on private com- pany topics.

COMPETITIVE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES PrivGo boasts accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of data, particularly in terms of M&A transactions. The com- pany says it combines the information it gathers from more than 15,000 unique sources with expert human analysis (entrepreneurs, former employees of the Big 4 accounting firms, MBA/corporate strategists, corporate lawyers, engi- neers, former Wall Street analysts, and technology and data experts). "We don't speculate, and go to great lengths to confirm accuracy, which means that often a deal or figure will be footnoted to add even more information or back- ground context for the business researcher." Agriculture, fishinsj forestry and huntirj Clean energy technology Construction S * real estate f Consumer product Energy and utiiitii (traditional) Financial- PrivCo's Data Sourcing & Quality Assurance Processes: A Bird's Eye view Our Proprietary Data Technology Human Expertise + Extensive Validation Processes PrivCo's Accurate & Reiiable Data PrivCo Data Sources y, Adiiance Private coniDanlejSgiimi Private Company Advanced Search Technology Transportatio.

Warehousing & Wholesale Distribi PrivCo's Advanced Search Screen 18 onlinesearcher.net Bringing Transparency to Private Company Research: PrivCo and InfoArmy The major weakness is the website look-and-feel. While easy to navigate, it appears oriented to end users and less to experienced researchers familiar with OneSource, LexisNexis, and Factiva.

A more formal redesign would con- vey a more serious approach and respect for the content.

Don't expect to find smaller private companies in PrivCo— those are outside its scope.

The InfoArmy website boasts a three-point corpo- rate mission:

Recruit an army of disciplined global researchers.

Create Competitive Intelligence Reports that customers love.

Create a report for every company on the planet—in multiple languages.

Gamification and social networking aspects are an integral part of InfoArmy.

A helpful addition to the Knowledge Bank would be a list of sources tapped. This level of transparency would give the profiles more credibility and be more congruent with researchers' expectations in the 21st century TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS Each report can be downloaded as a PDF and printed; data can easily export to Excel. Multiple reports from lists of up to 100 companies can be downloaded to Excel with one click. Every page features buttons for Linkedin, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, allow- ing users to share what they are researching or to recom- mend specific PrivCo reports.

Subscribers can set up alerts and request a deeper look at a company PrivCo sees itself as its clients' "back office," with turnaround often as little as 24 hours.

Nonsubscribers can search the database and choose an instant download of a single report ($99). Single-User Online Premium Subscriptions cost $999 for 1 month, $1,595 for 3 months, $2,595 for 6 months, or $3,995 annu- ally A flat annual rate model for corporate clients is based on the number of authorized users.

INFOARMY Based on a crowdsourcing philosophy, InfoArmy (info army.com) takes a very different approach to private com- pany information than PrivCo's. It claims that editorial over- sight delays getting information into the hands of users and believes that the crowd helps correct and add to company reports. InfoArmy was started in 2011 by Jim Fowler, the cre- ator of Jigsaw.com, who used the proceeds of his sale of Jigsaw to Salesforce.com to start InfoArmy.

Fowler's "data as a service" approach is designed in response to what he views as Data 2.0. "IW]e want to fun- damentally disrupt the business information industry while at the same time creating a platform where researchers from all around the world can eventually earn a living cre- ating InfoArmy reports" (techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/ data-2-0-goes-large-infoarmy-raises-17-3m-to-build-out- its-crowdsourced-competitive-intelligence-platform).

YOU'RE IN THE ARMY NOW According to the InfoArmy website, anyone can try to cre- ate a company report—but if the report is not high-quality, it will not be published. (Before a report can be published, it must be approved by a senior researcher or "officer" in the Army.) Once trained, claims the company, a private in the InfoArmy can turn out a good company profile in 3 to 4 hours!

Researchers are trained to compile raw data and given a template for the structure of the report.

InfoArmy gives new researchers help with "best prac- tices" and suggested resources. With 80% of a company report relying on published information (20% estimates by the researchers), the reports practically write themselves.

Researchers use the online discussion board to exchange tips with one another and ask/answer questions (https:// vkfww.infoarmy.com/discussion.htm).

There are three simple steps to becoming a researcher:

Claim a company, then follow InfoArmy's guided process for creating a company report. Researchers have 7 days to complete their report.

Upon completion, primary researchers submit their report for review and collaboration with a senior researcher, who combines company data with competitor data, creating a sleek iPad report.

When a report is published, the primary researcher receives $10. Each time the report is purchased (at $99), the primary researcher receives 40% of the proceeds, the senior researcher gets 10%, and InfoArmy gets the rest (50%). Researchers agree to update the report every quarter (if they want to continue getting paid).

Gamification and social networking aspects are an integral part of InfoArmy. Researchers can move up the ranks (from private to five-star general) by creating additional reports and earn badges by recruiting additional researchers.

The success of InfoArmy depends on the quality of its researchers. It wants to build a team of researchers—librar- ians, information professionals, M.B.A. students, members of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals MAR I APR 2013 ONLINE SEARCHER 19 (SCIP), and the like. Currently, there are 8,000 registered researchers, though not all have published reports.

Researchers are located on six continents, illustrated on a wall map (correspondence.infoarmy.com/post/379176982 23/infoarmy-a-truly-global-community).

InfoArmy has been publishing 100 reports each week, but fewer than 7,000 are available. All are in English and about U.S.

companies, but the plan is to recruit researchers around the world to write reports about private companies in their countries in their native languages.

CONTENT EVALUATION InfoArmy began with reports on private venture-backed technology companies, but since October 2012 it includes public companies as well. The focus is on companies with high growth potential and their competition. Companies are automatically added to a queue when researchers spec- ify competitors or partners in another company report.

Once approved, these are added to the list of company pro- files to be developed. This ensures that "competitive ecosys- tems" of companies are created.

Segments of a company report include the following; • Overview: Presents one sentence about the company, headquarters contact information, total revenue, funding, people, estimated number of employees, products, and competitors.

A company timeline is accessible for users to graphically view significant events in the history of the company.

• Competitors: Lists the competition by name, including website address and contact information.

Clicking on the View Comparison button will present a brief table comparing your chosen company with this competitor in terms of date founded, revenue, and number of employees.

A competitive matrix adds a column to this table for "employee productivity," a calculation derived by dividing revenue by number of employees.

A bar graph illustrates the level of funding for your chosen company versus the competition, a line graph shows each competitor's revenue over time, a bar graph compares number of employees, and a "social score" adds Twitter followers + Linkedin followers + Facebook likes for its total.

• People: The timeline indicates when principals came onboard or left the firm. The executive team is listed by name, title, and month/year joining the company, along with pictures. Each has a View More option that links to other profiles available via the web, for example on the company's own website, MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, CrunchBase, board roominsiders.com, investing.businessweek.com, and pitchbrite.com. The same applies to members of the board of directors, and founders. An area graphic illustrates the growth of employees over time.

Job postings are also listed in this section of the report so that users can see the types of individuals sought over time.

• Products: Specific products are named with links to the company website.

Revenue by product is estimated in a pie chart. The product timeline is interactive—slide to view the quarter in which each product was launched.

• Customers: Links are provided to the website of customers using the company's products, and a separate page indicates the same for partners.

• Financiáis: Displays graphic of revenue by year or quarter, revenue growth, employee productivity, funding history (investors and amount by round), basic corporate information including registration (state and ID number), and location of offices.

• Press: Includes a bar graph illustrating the number of press releases and news articles about the company by quarter, links to press releases, and links to news articles.

• Statistics: Social media (number of followers and likes) on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

• Links: Mentions on sites such as Company Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Wikipedia, YouTube, Compete, Quora, SilideShare, and Alexa.

• Researchers: Provides bios for the primary researcher creating the report and senior researcher responsible for its publication, with a list of reports written by the same individuals.

USER INTERFACE AND SEARCHABILITY Visitors to the InfoArmy site can browse all of the reports in the system by clicking on the View All the Reports option in the top navigation bar. This returns a list of all the com- panies, including company name, website, date of last consulting Optimizationinsurance mobiiedigitalweb 1 • ^^^ ddvitory ^ 9 trsnspcftation clinical travel g medical intelligence customer-.""» management Word cioud for infoArmy reports 20 onlinesearcher.net Bringing Transparency to Private Company Research: PrivCo and InfoArmy update, cost ($99 or Free), and action (purchase subscrip- tion or add to My Reports). Once a user has logged into the system, the top navigation bar changes slightly so that users can access reports they have purchased. Click on Purchase Reports, and the same listing of all entries avail- able is presented.

Options for a company profile include search hy name, website, or ticker symbol. The advanced search page allows users to limit the search by ownership (Private Only, Public Only, Either). Today, location options are the 50 states.

District of Columbia, and Other—I'm not sure what "other" means, but there are four profiles for companies in this "other" jurisdiction. There is another pull-down menu that indicates other countries are to be made available in the future. Additional options for targeting a search include estimated employees, revenues, total funding, and age of company.

COMPETITIVE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES InfoArmy sees its crowdsourced approach, which allows for massive scale when the system gets up and running, as its main strength. The value is in data over time, not just a snapshot in time, and technology has enabled some inter- esting innovations, including the creation of interactive timelines. The feature that pervades everything InfoArmy does is transparency. It's all laid out for users to view on the website (https://www.infoarmy.com/leaderboards.htm).

However, constant vigilance is required if InfoArmy is to maintain any level of quality; overseeing the product of thousands of researchers will be a challenge.

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Company reports are priced at $99, but quite a number are free, at present, and InfoArmy is committed to preserv- ing this freemium model to introduce its product to the public. Purchase a company profile, and you get three quar- terly updates of the report. (Researchers compiling a com- pany profile commit to tracking the company and updating the profile through the year.) Once there are 10,000 reports in the database, InfoArmy intends to offer companies unlimited view subscriptions (for $5,000).

LIFTING THE LID ON PRIVACY Researchers have many reasons why they're looking for information on private companies. You need one level of detail if you are meeting a company executive for the first time, but quite another if you are thinking about investing in the firm.

For individuals looking at a company website and Googling for news (even going so far as to create a Coogle alert), either of these services' company profiles may be better than could be done on their own. Information pro- fessionals are more concerned, when they lift the lid on private company data, with data quality and sophisticated search capabilities. We're good at synthesizing the infor- mation we gather from disparate services, reconciling dis- crepancies, analyzing the data trends, and making decisions based upon a comparison with other companies and operations. PrivCo and InfoArmy are important addi- tions to our repertoire, but they won't answer every ques- tion by themselves.

InfoArmy's crowdsourcing will work well for company profiling, as opposed to PrivCo's reliance on proven experts.

Imagine, though, if all of the readers of Online Searcher completed even one InfoArmy profile—just to demonstrate what could be achieved when information professionals take up the challenge. For those interested, you can enlist at https://www.infoarmy.com/becomeresearcher.htm.

[On Feb.

1,2013, InfoArmy acknowledged that its crowd- sourcing model didn't work and announced it would no longer pay researchers for their reports. All reports cur- rently existing will be free on its site. In a letter to its researchers made public by TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/ 2013102101/infoarmy-retreats-after-crowdsourced-research- business-goes-through-the-floor-all-reports-now-free), InfoArmy said that quality problems and lack of sales pre- cipitated the decision. It further stated that it was looking for a new business model and lauded its mobile delivery mechanism. —Ed.] Barbie E.

Reiser ([email protected]) is an information resources management (IRM) consultant located in the metro Washington, D.C., area.

Comments? Email the editor-in-chief ([email protected]).

MAR I APR 2013 ONLINE SEARCHER 21 Copyright of Online Searcher is the property of Information Today Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.

However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.