Models of Excellence 2014

InfoCommerce selects its top picks for industry stars for 2014

Every fall, the team here at InfoCommerce Group announces our pick for the InfoCommerce Model of Excellence awardsThis program profiles industry exemplars to show how real revenue is generated by selling and distributing information online.  To decide what companies are selected to become a model of excellence, we scan the business information landscape to identify companies whose products – both new and established – that have important new business models, or offer technological innovation within the field of online information and highlight them as a (ahem)model for other companies to emulate.

Below are our picks for the 2014 InfoCommerce Model of Excellence, with a short summary of each.  Click the PDF link to open up a detailed “Business Information Framework” report for each company, which includes detailed company information on products, ownership and other information.

1DegreeBio

Location: Toronto, ON

Website: www.1degreebio.com

Business Model: Advertising and Subscription

Subscription Model: Manufacturers subscribe to feature products.

About: 1DegreeBio is community review site used for biomedical research that provides user reviews and published third-party research to help buyers select specific products, which can be purchased directly from the website.

Products/Services: Legacy buying guides are challenged business models due to the emergence of search engine capability in the area of product discovery. 1DegreeBio has filled this void by creating the next generation of product search functionality and purchasing tools that provide deep details on individual products, user ratings and reviews, and links to third-party journalists that reference the use of specific products.

1DegreeBio doesn’t just supply product and contact information – it also takes orders through deep links to supplier e-commerce sites.

With deep product detail, structured data presentation to facilitate product comparison, granular searching, direct ordering and a strong social layer to provide valuable peer input, 1DegreeBio meets a real market need – confirmed by its base of over 150,000 users – making it an attractive place to advertise and generate business. The company is a prime of example of blurring the lines between information and commerce and the new revenues that can result.

To view the InfoCommerce Group Business Information Framework for 1DegreeBio, click here.


 

CompStak

Location: New York, NY

Website: www.compstak.com

Business Model: Subscription

Subscription Model: Investors, banks and hedge funds subscribe for access to data.

About: CompStak is a platform for the exchange of commercial real estate information, where CRE brokers, appraisers and researchers submit leasing deal information in exchange for leasing deal information supplied by others.

Product/Services: CompStak offers a platform for commercial real estate professionals to provide access to leasing deal details such as the length of the lease, name of the tenant and amount paid. This information is highly valuable to brokers, but had been rarely shared and never centralized before CompStak.

By utilizing a “give-to-get” model, real estate brokers can upload their own leasing comps in exchange for points that can be used to purchase other comps in the database. While this does not generate revenue for CompStak, it creates a huge incentive for brokers to upload their comps in order to get others. CompStak also maintains a rigorous data quality review process and will penalize brokers supplying bad data by taking away some of their points. CompStak claims to have nearly 100% of all lease transactions in Manhattan for the last three years, and 80% and growing coverage in a number of other major cities as well.

For revenue, CompStak sells access to the database to other players in the real estate industry who also value these comps, but who aren’t in a position to supply them; for example, investors, banks and hedge funds.

CompStak is a brilliant application of the user-generated content model that has managed to collect and centralize information that not only didn’t exist in a single database before, but was jealously guarded by those who had the information.

To view the InfoCommerce Group Business Information Framework for CompStak, click here.


 

Equilar

Location: Redwood City, CA

Website: www.equilar.com

Business Model: Subscription, Advertising, Sponsorship

Subscription Model: Corporategroup subscriptions. (Note: See Subscription Insider’s Equilar Case Study from 2013.)

About: Equilar is a big data company that provides data and SaaS tools used in executive compensation governance, business development and networking contexts.

Product/Services: In the late 1990s, Equilar recognized the value of the data buried in SEC filings, which at the time were stored on microfiche. The company has been compiling, organizing and analyzing executive and company data for over 14 years and Equilar has become an established leader in compensation benchmarking data and software solutions.

Since then, Equilar has expanded on its big data technology and affinity analysis. Equilar Engage is a new web-based professional networking platform designed specifically for the needs of executives attending events and conferences. One of the primary reasons why executives attend events is the opportunity to make meaningful business connections with peers.

For most events, executives receive a list of attendees with just one of their current affiliations. Occasionally, the event organizers will ask attendees to fill out a profile. However, being some of the busiest individuals in America, they or their assistants often do not find the time. At the event, it is largely up to chance whether those meaningful conversations happen.

Equilar Engage was created to solve this problem. Attendees can now easily identify other executives they would like to connect with at the event and show up prepared for conversations. The platform comes pre-populated with executive and speaker profiles based on information from trusted public sources, and merged with user-contributed data. Executives can instantly see complete profiles that show how they are connected with each other through company affiliations and mutual acquaintances.

Executives can also easily message each other through Equilar Engage, facilitating value-added conversations before, during and after the event. Prior to the event, executives can efficiently prepare and make a short list of the people they would like to meet. During and after the event, executives can keep track of the people they met, make notes about those meetings, and access the information at any time.

Given the amount of time and money involved, executive event planners are under high expectations to make their event worthwhile. By facilitating these value-added connections, the event planners and attendees both benefit from Equilar Engage. The platform also makes event info, agenda, and session materials accessible from any web-connected device.

Equilar Engage has already been successfully used at numerous executive events held by institutions like NYSE, Stanford University Law School, Ernst & Young, Wharton Business School, Corporate Board Member and others.

To view the InfoCommerce Group Business Information Framework for Equilar, click here.


 

KnowWho

Location: Mt. Vernon, VA

Website: www.knowwho.com

Business Model: Subscription

Subscription Model: Services are available on a subscription basis.

About: KnowWho offers political contact information and profile data to help advocacy organizations and lobbyists make contact and manage relationships with officials and elected representatives at the federal, state and local levels.

Product/Services: KnowWho Salesforce Directory Solutions is an umbrella offering, composed of a number of applications where a user first selects a desired dataset and then subscribes to any number of functional applications.

What really sets KnowWho apart is its native integration into Salesforce, where the data appears as if the user had entered it via the keyboard. This integration is important because it allows the user to fully leverage the power of the Salesforce platform. KnowWho can thus deliver tremendous power and flexibility with substantially reduced development costs.

KnowWho also goes far beyond simply providing contact information via the Salesforce platform by mapping all of a clients’ customers or contacts to Congressional districts, allowing users to easily leverage these relationships for lobbying or advocacy purposes, such as a letter writing campaign. It also provides a powerful list building functionality. Applications include Map Wizard, Zip-to-District Matcher, and an innovative Lobbying Activity Tracker that helps lobbyists easily prepare government mandated disclosure reports.

And of course all the standard Salesforce capabilities come into play as well. Lobbyists can keep contact notes on individual Congressional staffers, all of which roll up to the appropriate Congressperson. And when staffers move, KnowWho cleverly maintains these records so these relationships can be leveraged in the future. KnowWho’s Salesforce Directory Solutions is a strong data product in and of itself, but by fully leveraging the Salesforce platform, it moves the product suite to a whole new level.

To view the InfoCommerce Group Business Information Framework for KnowWho, click here.


 

Nutritionix

Location: Washington, DC

Website: www.nutronix.com

Business Model: Subscription

Subscription Model: Services are available on a subscription basis.

About: Nutronix has developed the world’s largest database of nutritional information, with a primary focus on over 240,000 grocery items and 130,000 chain restaurant menu items.

Product/Services: Nutritionix fills a vital role in the vast food industry by helping to streamline maintenance of, and access to, food nutrition information. Food manufacturers and restaurant chains enter nutritional data into a central database and Nutritionix’s field team collects the remaining information manually via the Nutritionix app. This database is used by manufacturers and restaurants not only to maintain their own data for internal uses, but to publish it both to their own websites (Nutritionix provides a series of integrated widgets for this), and to make it available via API to a broad number of developers working on food-related apps.

API access is controlled but free to developers up to a certain call volume. Developers can pay for increased API usage and it even allows them to add items to the database by uploading three images of the packaging (including nutrition information).

It’s a powerful model: subscribers (who are effectively advertisers as well) get tools to organize their own data, display and merchandise their own data online, and a distribution channel that will make their data easily accessible to consumers in a variety of applications. And as a central catalog of useful product data, all sorts of subsidiary applications invariably arise as well. Through development of its own API, Nutritionix has all the power and appeal of a traditional publisher, with none of the costs.

To view the InfoCommerce Group Business Information Framework for Nutritionix, click here.


 

SpinGo

Location: Draper, UT

Website: www.spingo.com

Business Model: Subscription, Advertising, Sponsorship

Subscription Model: Database access is sold to large media outfits and those interested in events listings.

About: SpinGo, which styles itself an “events engine,” offers a database of events of all shapes and sizes, from big national events to the smallest local events.

Product/Services:SpinGo develops its database from manual research as well as user-submitted listings. The company generates both advertising and subscription revenue. Advertising revenue comes from listing upgrades sold to users who enter free, base listings. Subscription revenue comes from selling access to the database (generally via API) to large media outfits and others that see the value of offering events listings, but don’t want to gather and manage the data themselves. The company also offers a free embeddable widget to any site interested in displaying local event content.

The company also has a revenue sharing feature that shares listing upgrade revenues with its distribution partners. Currently, it has over 900 partner sites and apps showcasing its data and at any given time the company offers approximately 100,000 event listings. The company also offers tight social media integration to augment its distribution.

Notably, the company gets a lot of leverage out of its primary research and vetted user content, since it is selling against competing services that merely scrape most of their content. SpinGo sells to those who want not only a big database, but a high quality one as well.

In addition to actively marketing to the app developer market, the company counts among its clients such major media outlets as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News. The company has substantial geographic coverage, but continues to build to 100% coverage.

To view the InfoCommerce Group Business Information Framework for SpinGo, click here.

________________________________________________________________________

Russell Perkins, our INSIDER Guide to Data Publishing Strategy, is the Founder and Managing Director of InfoCommerce Group (ICG). InfoCommerce Group is a boutique consultancy serving the global business information industry, with expertise in commercial data products focused on corporate and product data strategy, new data product development, assessment of existing products to help accelerate growth (or stem declines), and acquisition due diligence. (Read Russell’s full Bio)

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