Dear Colleague

Competitive intelligence and the associated techniques of data mining, text mining and visualization are areas of critical importance to organizations. Please sign up for our Competitive Intelligence seminar to learn more about locating vital information to become more competitive. See sidebar story for details.

In this issue we introduce a new Dialog linking feature to enable you to retrieve D&B fulltext business reports, including a new Private Company Insight Report. Also, review information about Verdict, a new market research database on Dialog.

We are also continuing to highlight a specific area of competitive intelligence that will be important to your business needs. Stories in this issue focus on information about market research sources on Dialog and DataStar, as well as search techniques and important considerations in analyzing the data you retrieve.

Bob Stewart
Thomson Scientific

Link to Fulltext D&B Business Reports

Business information searchers can now link directly to fulltext reports from Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) in HTML format through Dialog.

The reports provided by D&B include:

• D&B Comprehensive Report
• D&B Supplier Evaluation Report
• D&B Credit Evaluation Report
• D&B Private Company Insight Report

D&B report links are present in D&B - Dun's Electronic Business Directory® (File 515), D&B - Dun's Market Identifiers® (File 516), D&B - Duns Financial Records Plus® (File 519), and D&B - Who Owns Whom (File 522). D&B reports can be accessed via hyperlink through DialogLink 5, DialogWeb, DialogSelect and other Dialog Web-based products.

New D&B Private Company Insight Report on Dialog!
Find key information on the top 250,000 U.S. private companies with Private Company Insight report. Each D&B Private Company Insight report delivers hard-to-find data on a company that is not publicly traded and, therefore, not required to disclose financial performance.

Review the D&B Web page to see descriptions and samples of each report, as well as those reports that will be coming soon. Check the comparison table to help you decide which D&B report best fits your needs and look at the tips on how to retrieve the reports.

Verdict Market Research Reports for Retailing

Verdict Market Research reports (File 769/VERD) are now available on Dialog. Verdict Research Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Datamonitor Plc., is the U.K.'s leading authority on retailing and publishes independent analysis of the retail industry concentrating on the U.K. and Europe. Their reports focus on specific markets and topical retail issues, combining comparative and statistical data on markets, companies and products with an in-depth commentary on recent and current developments.

Four types of reports are available:

• Sector reports
• Location reports
• Forecast reports
• Consumer reports

The file is structured similar to all files in the market research collection in that the reports are broken into individual records, providing access to small pieces of the report at a fraction of the cost of purchasing the report in its entirety. For more details consult the Dialog Bluesheet or DataStar Datasheet.

Highlight: Trusted Market Research Sources for Competitive Intelligence

With Dialog you have fast, easy access a varied and trusted collection of market research sources. Verdict has now been added to the Dialog collection. This article highlights some of the sources on the Dialog and DataStar systems containing data for market research.

Fulltext Market Research Reports
An important part of competitive analysis is gathering market research on an industry or a company and its products. Market research reports provide valuable data on the size, growth and potential of an industry in the United States and worldwide markets.

Dialog offers a collection of market research reports that provide detailed, in-depth analysis of various industries internationally from both primary and secondary sources in its DIALINDEX®/OneSearch® category—MARKETFULL. The reports in MARKETFULL contain detailed, in-depth analysis of many industries, including key statistics on market share and sales. Key sources include Datamonitor Market Research (File 761) and Euromonitor Market Research (File 762) with coverage of consumer goods and services in the world's major markets. Reports contain discussion of sources of supply, consumption, prices, brands and manufacturers, advertising and promotion, distribution, market sectors and future outlook. Frost & Sullivan Market Engineering (File 767) provides in-depth analyses and forecasts of market trends in 11 industries, such as automotive, defense, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications, to name a few. Each industry-specific report within the database contains five-year forecasts of market size by product category. Check the MARKETFULL category for a complete list of the databases.

General and Specialty Business Databases
Databases such as Gale Group Trade and Industry Database™ (File 148/INDY), Business & Industry™ (File 9/BIDB) and Gale Group Promt® (File 16/PTSP) are multiple-industry databases that provide broad, international coverage of companies, products, markets, and applied technologies for all industries. Encompassing the world's important trade and business journals, local newspapers, regional business publications, national and international business newspapers, industry newsletters, research studies, investment analysts' reports, corporate news releases, and corporate annual reports, these databases provide ample information for an industry overview. Other databases covering multiple industries include Dialog Global Reporter (File 20/REPO) and Investext (File 545/INVE).

Dialog also has databases that focus on specific industries, for example, Foodline®: MARKET (File 54), covering the international food and drink market and Dialog Telecommunications Newsletters (File 696), a collection of fulltext newsletters from primary publishers in the field of telecommunications.

Databases in the Market Research (MKTRES) and MARKETFULL categories on Dialog will provide key components of a market analysis, such as market size, sales, major players and market share, trends, and forecasts. This data is vital for a company to be competitive in the marketplace.

The Importance of Analyzing Data

As discussed in the previous article and search techniques, Dialog can provide you with market research information from a variety of trusted sources using quick and easy techniques. You can search across databases and pinpoint exactly the pieces of information you are looking for. Now you have the time needed to do a competitive analysis on the information you have retrieved.

Read the article "Focus On: Competitor Analysis—Turning Data to Insight" by Liam Fahey, internationally recognized as a leading consultant on competitor analysis. In the article, appearing in A & C Black Publishers Ltd., 2006, the author discusses the importance of analyzing data about competitors and the marketplace and the factors you need to consider when doing so.

Call for Contributors

Participate in knowledge sharing with your colleagues interested in topics related to competitive intelligence. Share your story suggestions with us at support.dialog.com/enewsletters/contribute/.