Company Background:
The client isa private equity firm with more than $1.3 billion under management. The firm focuses on partnering with service-based businesses that offer outstanding potential for capital appreciation. Areas targeted by the firm include companies that range from marketing, infrastructure, health care, direct-to-consumer, technology to business process outsourcing services and more.
Challenge:
A key strategy for this particular private equity firm is to target specific markets, identifying the ost unique companies in each segment. To find the best companies, they needed to leverage the most up-to-date information. The Internet, which contains many millions of U.S. companies alone, is a rich source of real-time information. The challenge is to mine this vast resource and create actionable results.
Solution:
This Chicago-based private equity firm needed to create a targeted list of companies that meet its criteria. The investment firm uses the Broadlook suite, including Market Mapper, to create an exclusive list of companies based on their specific search criteria. Market Mapper allows firms to layer their requirements and exclusions, automating their searches. Once the firm creates their unique list of companies, they use the integration with Broadlook's Profiler to mine each company for critical contact, email and biographical information.
Results:
This private equity firm has seen a significant impact in their business. "Our gains by using Broadlook's solutions come in two areas. For us, it comes down to productivity and return on investment," said Howard C., Research Associate. Broadlook's Market Mapper saves them significant time in their research efforts. "We used to use the search engines to do our preliminary research. With Market Mapper, we have cut down the amount of time to perform searches by about 50%."
Leveraging time means that Howard can get more research done in less time. "It not only has allowed the client to get more done in the same time, but to better manage the number of resources needed. Broadlook not only helped the team with their initial research, but also to find the detailed contact information needed to take the research to the next step.
Once a company is found, research needs to be done to identify the key contacts and ways to communicate with them. To find the best and most current information about the company and its contacts, the normal process would be to search not only the site but also PDF documents, Power Point presentations, and news releases on the website. Broadlook's Profiler automates this process, saving Howard's firm even more research time.
"Finding the right companies and adding them to our portfolio has a signficant impact on our business," said Howard C. "We look at Broadlook from a return on investment perspective. If we identify and add just one company to our portfolio, through any combination of Broadlook's tools, the products pay for themselves. I suppose we could do the research without it, but why would you?"
