Technographics, which were a relatively small segment five years ago, have grown rapidly and are in the midst of a consolidation phase.  Three years ago, DiscoverOrg acquired iProfile and then picked up RainKing last August.  This week, HG Data acquired London-based Pivotal iQ, Zoominfo acquired Datanyze, and DiscoverOrg rebranded.

Both acquisitions expand the scope of coverage of the acquiring firms.  Zoominfo had limited technographics prior to the Datanyze deal and now holds a deeper set of technographics along with analytics and visualization tools.  HG Data has expanded beyond product / vendor data to include contract and spend intelligence.

By my research, the IT sub-sector represents 18% of the sales intelligence space with DiscoverOrg in the pole position.  Overall, the IT sub-sector is $170 million and it is growing faster than the overall Sales Intelligence market.

“The recent acquisition activity shows the value and appetite for technology data enrichment,” said HG Data VP of Product and Marketing Kineon Walker.  “This consolidation cycle is happening as new companies continue to enter the space. As technology data continues to evolve and become more valuable to businesses of all sizes, we expect this sector to continue to grow and flourish.”

What we are seeing is the transition of technographic intelligence from a delighter five years ago to a must have content set for sales and marketing intelligence products.  Ten years ago, it was contacts and SMBs that made this transition. Eight years ago it was sales triggers.  Four years ago it was emails and direct dials.  Now it is technographics.

Next up it may be third-party intent data and the integration of first-party visitor intelligence into more sophisticated lead scoring and prioritization.

I will be covering both acquisitions over the next few days.