AlacraBlog

Survey Monkey

Every January we ask customers to fill out our annual survey via email. We use SurveyMonkey for the entire process – survey creation, users responses and response analysis. It’s one of those rare services that is extremely well-designed and works every time. We do need to bribe customers to complete the survey – this year we’re randomly selecting three respondents and giving them their choice of an iPod mini or a Bose SoundDock. The survey results are always interesting. We get to present some new ideas to clients and see if they generate interest. If so, we follow up in person. If not, we toss it. What’s hot now? Customers are struggling for more comprehensive information on private companies. We’re working on it.

A New Publisher Joins Alacra

I’m often asked if I’ve come across any interesting new publishers.  Although the barriers to entry in the publishing space have dropped dramatically over the past few years, there are still only a handful of recently established, premium business information publishers that are noticeably successful.  Perhaps the fastest growing one that I’ve come across lately is CreditSights, and their unique investment research offering just became available on Alacra.  I had an email conversation with Peter Petas, a CreditSights co-founder and their Head of Research.

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What is CreditSights?
CreditSights is the leading provider of independent integrated research. The firm was established in 2000 and has quickly grown to a staff of over 100 and a client base of more than 500 leading investment institutions by offering services that successfully meet today's research needs.  We have over 19,000 stories in our archives.

How is CreditSights different from rating agency research or fixed income research from the Street?
CreditSights takes a dramatically different approach to traditional research offerings. As a firm that is 85% employee-owned and does not engage in trading, we have a structural independence and a singularity of purpose that ensures our research is free of bias, timely and insightful. This independence also enables us to transcend the historic barriers between debt and equity research that are entrenched in the products of the rating agencies and the Wall Street investment banks to deliver an integrated service that embraces all aspects of the company capital structure.

How would you describe CreditSights’ coverage?
CreditSights research products are designed to integrate the many factors that now influence markets into a comprehensive service that offers investors a fresh perspective. Our service runs from market-wide strategic commentary to our distinctive company capital structure analysis, which considers risk variables across the debt, equity and derivative markets. Our fundamental research aggressively covers over 550 companies touching on almost 1200+ companies and is supplemented by and draws heavily upon a full suite of proprietary quantitative models that provide comprehensive risk management and trading tools. This multi-faceted approach greatly enhances the value of the CreditSights service and one of its hallmarks is how well it complements the work-flow of our clients. Research is no longer about just being the smartest guy in the room, it's now about the most useful guy as well.

What is your primary target market?
The CreditSights team delivers a truly multi-market service that is relevant to those active in the debt, equity, derivative and hybrid markets whether they are leveraged or cash investors. We have products tailored for the full range of market participants from portfolio managers to traders, from CIO's to research analysts, from issuers to regulators.

How do you see your business or the market you sell to changing in the next 12 months?
In our view the convergence of traditionally distinct investment markets will continue, spurred on by the rise in the number of leveraged investors, the proliferation of structured and hybrid securities and the difficulty of achieving appealing investment returns in the current environment. CreditSights will continue to develop its services to target the growing need for a research service that is aligned with this new market reality.

Any other comments? 
Independent, integrated, insightful commentary surrounded by a full suite of research products and offered by a market leading team of veteran analysts. If you're not already CreditSights client go to www.CreditSights.com or www.alacra.com for a free trial of what your competition is reading.

CEO Succession

I’m going to be more careful crossing the street. 

Alacra board member Fred Wilson has an excellent post on CEO succession titled Being Hit By A Bus.  Matt Blumberg and Jason Calacanis have commented on their blogs. 

We have the CEO succession issue pretty well figured out here.  Alacra is run by three people: Mike Angle,  co-founder and CTO, Don Roll, our MD for Europe and myself.  Alacra would be in great hands if, for some reason, I wasn’t around.   But, I suspect things would be different. 

I’m sure it’s related to the size of the company, but from personal experience, when a sitting CEO dies, there’s a ripple effect that touches lots of people.  If it were not for the untimely death of Jim Batten, Knight-Ridder’s CEO in 1995, I’m certain there would be no Alacra.

Prior to Jim’s giving up his CEO spot and his subsequent death from brain cancer at the age of 59, Knight-Ridder was looking to diversify.  At the time, about 80% of the company’s revenue came from newspapers.   The strategy was to add to its business information assets – the part of the company where Alacra’s management came from.  We looked at many new businesses all over the world to invest in while at the same time being an extremely well-respected newspaper company, both journalistically and commercially.  Jim was a brilliant leader – smart, personable and with a succession plan in place.

Tony Ridder took the reins upon Jim’s death and the company was immediately different.  Tony is a gifted leader as well – I’m still a Knight-Ridder shareholder – but the company was quickly reshaped.  People were fired, businesses were sold off, headquarters were moved and KRI became a pure US newspaper player.  Of several thousand talented Knight-Ridder Business Information employees that the company had in 1995, I believe the last one – HR Vice President Steve Stein – just left. 

So, getting back to Fred’s post, if you have an investment in a company and the CEO suddenly dies, it’s imperative that there’s a strong number two to take over.  But odds are the company and the people won’t be the same.

Visualization Software

Back in October, Judith Gelertner wrote a nice piece for Information Today that reviewed a handful of visualization software products.  I’ve investigated a few of these over the past 12-18 months – Anacubis, Grokker, KartOO – and while I’ve found them interesting pieces of software, they’re really only helpful solving very specific data problems and are best used by specialists. Anacubis, for example, sits nicely on top of D&B family tree data, but it’s really for someone who needs to drill down into the data all the time.   I found these products either too complicated for “everyday” use or just very simplistic.  Not to be overly pejorative, but to me, they seemed like toys.

For less serious subjects though, visualization software can be a fun.  Check out www.musicplasma.com and type in the name of your favorite band.   Perhaps more seriously, John Battelle suggests that visualization software like this can be used to find like-minded blogs, much as musicplasma reveals similar musical artists.

Good Things Happen to Good People

Congratulations to Jim Sussman, Tom Quinn and the whole team at Truecourse Info on being acquired by FactSet.  Truecourse are the creators of SharkRepellent.net which provides in-depth research on US public companies’ takeover defense strategies.   

Slow News Day or a Glimpse of the Future?

I was checking out some end-of-year blog postings last week – reviews of 2004, forecasts for 2005, that sort of thing.  John Battelle’s was worth reading, as was John Blossom’s.  I don’t have any specific predictions but I will highlight something that struck me at the time and now seems even more pertinent.  Perhaps it was a slow news day, but on December 14^th the lead article in the New York Times was about Google’s plan to digitize university library collections.  The second lead in the Times that day was about how Bernard Kerik was poorly vetted by the White House as a nominee for Homeland Security Secretary.  So one article covered the continuing improvement and innovation in information and research tools and the other article covered the fact that with all the information and tools available, the White House couldn’t figure out that a well-known public figure wasn’t clean. 

The poor vetting was an embarrassment for the White House. A similar circumstance, however, could spell financial disaster for a financial institution or professional services firm.  While some recent discussions with Alacra customers have touched on better ways to conduct background checks for compliance and Know Your Customer programs, I think that this problem will take center stage this year.  There will be more and better tools and content developed to assist in the vetting process and librarians and researchers will be re-deployed to ensure that nothing is missed.

Alacra’s Year-End Wrap-Up

Last week we sent an email correspondence to our customers and content partners that wrapped up all the Alacra corporate, content and service highlights for 2004.  In case you didn’t receive it, or are interested in how 2004 shaped up for Alacra, please feel free to read it here.