With 40 million companies on Bureau van Dijk’s Orbis database and 30 million on OneSource, the size of the company, business and financial information field is clearly enormous. There are plenty of providers, too, with more than 90 official company registers online, plus scores of sources on financials and annual reports, mergers and acquisitions, stock market and share prices, and more.

“Business information vendors have seen a great deal of consolidation over the past 10 years,” says Neil Infield of the British Library’s Business and Intellectual Property Centre.

“Thomson Financial appeared to be about to swallow up most of the players at one point. However, some of the older suppliers such as BvD, D&B and Perfect Information survived the shake-up and are still going strong.”

Top seeds
The big players in the sector are Thomson Financial, LexisNexis and Factiva, with BvD, D&B and OneSource some way behind, according to the latest Business Information Resources Survey, which polls a panel of experienced business information users. The latest survey shows they put the available services to a wide range of uses.

The survey’s compiler, Allan Foster, says: “While none of our respondents describe themselves as C1 professionals, 55% say they provide competitor information as part of their wider function. A clear majority ­ 75% ­ of our respondents are involved with the provision of information or research services to support compliance work of one kind or another.”

Louise Green, marketing manager at Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing, explains: “Decisions on strategy, regulatory compliance and money will always require confidence in the source of information referenced. The increasing significance of products’ ease of use is indicative of organisations making information available company-wide. But paring down functionality for specific user profiles does not compromise our primary focus: sourcing and providing high-quality data.”

Phil Garlick, president of OneSource Information Services, agrees: “Content remains king. The right product interface, content coverage and quality continue to be the main points of value for users. Those who provide the proper blend of best-of-breed vendor aggregation along with editorial oversight will deliver on this value.”

But Perfect Information’s Greg Simidian strikes a note of caution: “When we speak to our customers, it is clear that while content is important, it is no longer king.

“Both workflow and content integration are the key concerns for our clients. They are striving to buy best-of-breed content but are continually faced with highly integrated, multiple content-set products, incorporating data that is either not needed or simply not as competitive as other products.”

Bob De Laney, director of news and business at LexisNexis UK and Ireland, agrees: “It’s no longer good enough to provide part of the content that users need. The challenge of packaging all that content into the customer’s workflow or chosen technology changes the role of the traditional content company immensely.”

Niche prospects
It also means there is still scope for niche players and newer entrants. Infield cites Creditsafe, highlighting its “radical approach to volume pricing which has resulted in rapid expansion for them”, and the information head at one global investment bank points to real-estate information provider Reidin as another recent player, leveraging existing technology to fill a gap in emerging market information.

Data on emerging markets ­ and not just the obvious BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) candidates ­ is a key growth area. The head of information at one research firm says: “ISI Emerging Markets covers many obscure companies, with financials, company profiles, brokers’ notes.”

Infield says: “When content ceases to be a significant differentiator, price and, more significantly, ease of use come to the forefront.”

City Business Library head Goretti Considine agrees with Infield’s analysis: “Cost is always an issue, so we can’t afford as many titles as we would like.”

Subscription products would probably give better functionality and output choices than free products, but Considine believes that even this may change.

Price is equally important for the better-resourced private sector. One senior financial information user says: “Where they still exist, many corporate information departments will no longer have the luxury of duplicating sources in case one has something the other doesn’t. Vendors may have to choose between low-revenue sale or none at all.”

With so many services to choose from besides the few big players, there is “a dearth of truly evaluative comparative comment on business information sources”, this information user adds.

VIP editor Pam Foster says: “Senior decision-makers in information departments invest valuable time in deciding which information products to purchase; VIP aims to help reduce this time. Attention is given to functionality but even greater detail is applied to examining and analysing content.”

As one VIP subscriber concludes: “Neither new nor old players can be complacent. They must keep reinventing themselves.”