AlacraBlog

Eight Years Old!

Yesterday afternoon Alacra celebrated its eighth birthday! (A few pics are here.) Each year we give a special tribute and gift to the employees that have been with us for 5 years. The fact that Alacra (or Data Downlink, as we were formerly known) survived the two year period from mid-2001 to mid-2003 is truly a testament to the dedication and determination of our team.

I read many of the blogs written by venture capitalists as well as OnlyOnce, written by and about being a first-time CEO. There have been many posts on how important it is to hire “A” players, and how “A” players are critical in attracting other “A” players. Clearly one key to Alacra’s success is the line-up of “A” players we have and the fact that so many of them have stayed with Alacra for so long.

Know Any Good Salespeople?

Postings have been light lately because it’s summer and everything seems to move more slowly. There’s been little industry news, other than the increase in M&A activity in space. One bit of Alacra news is that Denise Slifer, one of our senior account executives, recently left to take a sales position at Snapshots International, one of Alacra’s content providers. So if anyone knows a terrific, high-level sales person, please have them contact me. The last time we needed a new account executive, we hired Dale Dreps, a talented and experienced sales veteran of our industry, largely on the recommendation of several Alacra customers.

M&A in the Info Space

Two notable acquisitions in the information arena in the past couple of weeks. FactSet bought JCF, the European-based collector and processor of earning estimates and LexisNexis bought Seisint, a leading provider of public records solutions. Looked at another way, two value-added database aggregators bought two other value-added database aggregators and both deals were very high multiples. While the JCF acquisition looks to be a way for FactSet to control more of its destiny by owning content, JCF is known for an excellent database complemented by excellent tools. And Seisint successfully creates specific products on top of huge disparate databases and superb technology. For an excellent write-up on the Seisint deal, see the InfoCommerce blog here.

DRM For Premium Content

John Blossom at Shore Communications has an interesting post on Digital Rights Management and how this often maligned technology is “no longer a capability that premium publishers can afford to avoid.” I think it depends on the publisher and what they’re publishing. In the business information space, the majority of premium information used on a daily basis has a very short shelf life and is only of interest to a handful of people working on a particular deal or project. It’s not like a song or a movie, which has a much longer shelf life and may be of interest to many people over an extended period of time. The exception, of course, is an expensive market research report that is published say, annually, where restrictions on use makes economic sense for the publisher.

More On Google vs. Factiva

Factiva's top executive has dismissed suggestions that the company's paid search services are under threat from high-profile free rivals such as Google. CNET News, July 2.

"Google has actually complemented Factiva," CEO Clare Hart told ZDNet Australia, adding that while it was useful for generic information, news access required a more sophisticated approach. "Our customers recognize the value in the comprehensive service they're getting and the time that they are saving. Time is one of the most important assets to business people.”

In their core market of professional service firms, financial institutions and information-intensive departments of corporations, I have to agree with Clare – Google can be complementary. As an example, with the Alacra Corporate Connections service, customers have told us they love the ability to conduct a Factiva news search on a person and “Google” the person right from their bio. Google results often include shareholding information from Yahoo! Finance right at the top.

It’s hard to imagine an investment bank, accounting firm or consultancy managing without a premium archival news service. Just as it would be impossible for a law firm to live without LexisNexis or West. But at the margins, free has a lot going for it and I think that’s where the battle will be fought by the established players against the free services. For more on this see Rafat Ali or John Blossom.

$31 Billion in Wasted Time!

A recent survey by FIND/SVP reveals that business executives are frustrated with consumer search engines and “an astonishing 74% are not confident that their results are reliable.” So FIND/SVP has partnered with Empire Media and TripleHop Technologies to create a better business search engine that contains premium information as well. Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org is skeptical that this can work and cites business.com, allbusiness.com and Alacra’s own Portal B as failed entries in the space. Although the former Portal B web index is still a frequently used component of Alacra, Rafat is correct in his view that this will be an extremely difficult stand-alone business, especially for a newcomer.