As part of Avention’s launch, they provided beta access to a few industry analysts to obtain their feedback. I was one of those lucky individuals to get a sneak peak at the future of sales and marketing intelligence. It was exciting to see all the new functionality that was being built around the market leading Live Content database along with a set of unique capabilities that set the new Avention apart from the competition. As a former OneSource product marketing manager it was also thrilling to see the future of business information being developed by more former colleagues.
What was even more exciting was to see a product that completely re-engineered the approach to information discovery. Whether you use OneSource products for sales, marketing, or research, you’ll find that the new Avention is more than a re-skinned Business Browser or iSell. It contains the underlying components of both of these products along with cutting edge functionality and a great new user interface.
Conceptual Search℠
Avention offers four new capabilities that elevate its ROI well beyond the traditional business information services. The first new capability is Conceptual Searching which is more powerful than the taxonomic news searching found in Business Browser and traditional subscription news databases. Taxonomic searching requires that editors pre-define the topics for meta tagging. As such, they are backwards facing in their logical construction. Thus, if your subject isn’t in the taxonomy, then you are left to simple keyword searching. Furthermore, taxonomic search generally returns news articles, not companies or executives. As a user, you must then filter through the news and link to the related company and executive profiles. Turning a taxonomic search into a target list generally requires a great deal of rekeying and cutting and pasting.
With Conceptual Search, you begin with a topic and you receive companies, executives, articles, or triggers associated with that topic. It could be a
· New technology (e.g. fracking, Internet of Things)
· Product category (e.g. beta blockers, smartphones)
· Law (e.g. Affordable Care Act or Obamacare if you prefer)
· Social movement (e.g. living wage, gluten free)
or any other term or concept of interest. Conceptual Search isn’t bound by a pre-defined vocabulary.
On a lark, I keyed in “Harry Potter” and was returned 214 companies including entertainment and publishing firms, licensors of Harry Potter products, and miscellaneous companies that worked on the films.
Conceptual Searching has a secondary benefit in that it recognizes companies that may be investing in markets outside of their local geography or core industry. For example, if you were searching for energy companies investing in the Marcellus Shale region (Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and West Virginia), you are likely to find a significant number of them based in Texas. Likewise, because Conceptual Search isn’t industry-centric, it will find a broad cross-section of companies associated with the search topic.
If all that was added to OneSource products were Conceptual Searching, it would be viewed as a nice enhancement to assist with research and discovery. But it’s only the first of four new capabilities.
Business Signals℠
The second advancement is the addition of Business Signals. Here is where Big Data comes into play. Each company is analyzed across 1,200 dimensions to capture a deeper understanding of each firm. Examples of Business Signals include
· Does it conduct business in China?
· Has it exhibited partnering activity?
· Does it outsource its data center?
· Does it have a recent history of product launches?
These are much more powerful than the iSell sales triggers. First, there are thirty times as many Business Signals as sales triggers so they are both more expansive in their overall scope and granular in their specificity. Secondly, while sales triggers are binary (either there is an M&A trigger or their isn’t one), Business Signals are scored on a 0 to 100 basis in comparison to other companies providing a mechanism for prioritizing companies during lead qualification, account planning, or company research.
Some Business Signals align with the iSell-style sales triggers, allowing the user to research companies, executives, or trigger events. For example, if you are looking to find recent contract wins for firms fracking the Marcellus Shale region, you enter “Marcellus Shale” into the Conceptual Search box and then click on the Contract Awards Business Signal and set it to Yes. The company list is immediately filtered to “Marcellus Shale” companies that have recent contract awards.
The user can then click on contacts, articles, or triggers to view additional details about these companies. Articles provide a broader set of news coverage than triggers and can be filtered by industry and traditional news categories (e.g. publication, byline, publication date, keyword search) while sales triggers can be filtered by trigger type, blurb keyword, and industry.
The Marcellus Shale scenario is an example of the power of Avention for both sales reps and researchers. You will notice that Avention leverages capabilities from its predecessors (e.g. iSell triggers and Business Browser news search) in combination with the new Business Signals and Conceptual Search. Using traditional information services products, it would be difficult or impossible to answer a question such as “Which Marcellus Shale drilling companies have received recent contract awards?”
With Avention, the user can build such a list of companies in under thirty seconds and then:
· Research any company on the list (either by drilling down to the company or clicking on the quick view popup icon)
· Download the list to Excel or upload to a CRM
· Identify executives by job function, title, and level at those firms; research the executives; and export the list
· Review the triggers related to the contracts
· Peruse general news about these companies
Such is the power of Conceptual Searching combined with Business Signals.
Ideal Profile℠
The third capability is called Ideal Profile. It is a ranking tool to assist with quickly qualifying or targeting companies for research. The Ideal Profile provides a weighted average of Business Signals defined by the user or the Site Administrator. It goes beyond simple firmographic searching (e.g. New England firms in SIC 7372 with revenue between $50 million and $200 million) in determining best fit companies. Like triggers, traditional firmographic prospecting is binary. Either a company fits the parameters or it doesn’t. With Ideal Profile, the user identifies the most important Business Signals that identify a strong candidate and then applies a set of weights to the variables along an eleven point scale.
Avention then performs all of the calculations and displays an Ideal Profile score next to each company. Within company lists, the Ideal Profile Score is also used for sorting.
Ideal Profiles are valuable to
· Sales reps during lead qualification
· Marketers when determining whether a lead is sales qualified or requires additional nurturing
· Job hunters when putting together company target lists
· Researchers when weighing companies for exploration
As Avention builds out its Business Signals, the Ideal Profile Score will become even more valuable. I foresee applications for purchasers in evaluating suppliers, credit risk managers for determining trade credit lines, marketers in building micro-targeting campaigns around technology platforms, and business development managers for identifying potential partners.
SmartLists℠
The fourth new capability is SmartLists which allow the user to maintain dynamic lists that update based upon Business Signals and Conceptual Search. Users can quickly save SmartLists and pin them to the home page. SmartLists can consist of companies, executives, news, industries or sales triggers. Avention describes SmartLists as “continuous hyper-segmentation” as users can define complex queries with Conceptual Search, filter them with Business Signals, and sort and qualify them with the Ideal Profile Score. These lists are then dynamically updated by Avention and available on the home page.
Thus, the Marcellus Shale researcher can pin the company list along with news and contract awards to her home page and receive ongoing intelligence into the topic.
Avention also supports SmartList alerting.
In Good Company
I’m not the only one seeing Avention as a game changer for sales, marketing, and business research. You can view YouTube commentary from Nancy Nardin (Founder and President of Smart Selling Tools), Joe Ripp (former OneSource CEO), and John Blossom (President at Shore Communications). I would also recommend John’s blog post where he focuses on the value of Business Signals.
Author information
Michael Levy
Michael R. Levy is a contributing writer to our blog and the principal of GZ Consulting, a market research and competitive intelligence consulting firm based in Massachusetts. Michael founded the firm in February 2012 after leaving Infogroup where he was the Manager of Strategy and Competitive Intelligence. Michael focuses on information services including sales intelligence, CRM, data hygiene, and marketing automation.
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