 |
|
|
Where the Buys Are: Small and Medium
U.S. Businesses Step Up to Business Information |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
20 June 2005 |
|
|
|
|
Shore's new survey of small and medium sized U.S.
businesses reveals aggressive spending on business
information that these businesses find to be highly
valuable. Not surprisingly much of it is now online
information, but it's not just purchased information that
powers these businesses to success. A combination of
original sources outside of subscription products and
carefully purchased premium content is the key to small and
medium businesses making the most of business information
without huge I.T. investments. There's lots of opportunity
in this changing mix of business information usage for
vendors that want to help these businesses to grow. |
|
Major
publishers and aggregators of business information have given a
good deal of attention to small and medium sized businesses and
their purchases on the Web these past few years. Implementing
ad-supported sites, credit card-activated subscription services
and one-off purchases, special content baskets and interfaces -
and now the widely ballyhooed Yahoo! Subscription Search beta -
these sources of business content are pushing to gain inroads
into what appears to be a growing segment of business
information
use and purchasing. There's lots of money to be made in this
market segment according to Shore's latest piece of research,
Business
Information Use in Small to Medium U.S. Businesses: 2005
Survey. This detailed survey specs out the
purchasing, usage, sharing and importance of various business
information sources used by small and medium U.S. businesses.
The survey shows that almost a third of these businesses are
expanding their budgets for business information in 2005, with
few cutbacks in the mix and a robust 2006 outlook. That's good
news for business content producers trying to lock in to
growing sources of revenues.
But this quantitative research also shows that the
purchasers of business information who make acquisitions for
their business units are far from locked in to premium sources
of business information. They're certainly very interested in
information on other companies to support their sales and
marketing operations, for example, but show a strong
willingness to go out to the Web sites of companies directly to
get this information. They want news and magazines, but
increasingly go to non-subscription Web sites to find these
sources rather than subscription services or print. They
respect the quality of subscription data services, but 87
percent of them rate Google an excellent or very good source
for finding business information. They rate news as very
important information for doing company research, but when
looking at extremely important or very important sources of
business information overall weblogs are about as important a
source as newspapers or magazines.
So as much as small and medium businesses are willing to go
where the buys are they are also very willing to look beyond
purchases for credible business information and content
services. This is good news for publishers and content services
providers who are willing to take a broad look at business
content usage and develop services creatively. Here are a few
points to bear in mind in approaching small and medium
businesses in their use of business content:
- Assume that openness works for business content
purchasers - even if it doesn't for I.T. The data
in our survey is a strong confirmation that the savvy online
user of business of information is not forgetting what works
well for them at home or on the road when they settle into
their office space to get things done. And unlike their
brethren in major corporations, business content purchases
and users in small and medium businesses have far fewer
hassles with I.T. to get at this content. Intranet portals
and search engines are in relatively short supply in these
environments so the Web is an accommodated necessity that
helps users to gain an edge on those who are locked out from
Web content sources by overzealous corporate security
policies in larger institutions. Where there's a will and a
good service on the Web, there will be a way to get it into
any company.
- Look carefully at what they're finding beyond
your services. In many instances business content users
at small and medium sized businesses may be looking at
sources such as company Web sites, ad-supported sites and
weblogs for a good reason, not just because they are not
willing or able to part with funds for your service. Don't
assume that they'll hop for joy once they can get your
subscription database via a Yahoo! or other search engine.
There could be things that you've left on the cutting room
floor in creating that database that are considered valuable
stuff by content consumers a step or three ahead of you in
what's really useful and easily found out there. Consider all
of the increasingly real-time needs of business information
users that are addressed by a source-agnostic Web and try to
get on top of as many of them as possible within your scope.
- Focus on integration-less integration. While
major corporations can invest in knowledge management tools
far more easily than small and medium businesses that's not
to say that integration is out of the game for these
companies. Tools such as Salesforce.com, Google Desktop and
the relatively-painless-to-implement Google Search Appliance
point to a business information environment that takes many
I.T. and content specialists out of the loop in providing
integration of internal and external premium content sources.
While some of these tools may be the start of more complex
I.T.-based implementations it would be a mistake to assume
that people content with solutions that avoid such
complexities will be eager to migrate. What works in one
place is bound to work in another, a generalization that can
take the 80 portion of most 80/20 sales equations rather
quickly.
It's exciting to see in detail from this survey just how
advanced small and medium sized businesses are becoming in
accessing business information, with our without high
technology and expensive subscription services. They still have
one foot firmly planted in the old business information world
of print, but in migrating aggressively to online sources they
are learning how to bypass many expensive options that may not
have served their bottom lines effectively. The future of
business information is in many ways modeled on the success of
these companies. As publishers learn how to meet business
information users in the "where" and "how" of their online
content consumption habits they are building more effective
business information services that provide more value from more
useful sources than ever before with flexible services and
purchasing plans. Rapidly evolving business information
services stand to profit from this changing environment very
handsomely - if they understand where the buys are.
-
John Blossom
To top of
page
 |
