Category: Industry Research

RelPro – IBISWorld Partnership

Sales Intelligence vendor RelPro announced a partnership with well-regarded industry research vendor IBISWorld to deliver an integrated solution for commercial banks.  The joint offering, delivered via the RelPro platform, assists with meeting preparation, due diligence, and industry research.  Ten commercial banks have already deployed the integrated solution, including three of the top five.

RelPro serves business development and relationship management professionals in Financial Services (banking, insurance, wealth management, private equity) and Professional Services (legal, and advisory).  RelPro users are often industry generalists who serve SMBs across many industries.  IBISWorld provides broad industry research across sectors along with economic and environmental changes.

RelPro is a traditional sales intelligence service with company and executive content sourced from seventeen partners.  Data partners include ZoomInfo, Dun & Bradstreet, BoardEx, GuideStar, Crunchbase, and HG Insights.  RelPro users build prospecting lists, perform account planning, identify additional contacts at key accounts, and, with the IBISWorld partnership, research industries based upon each company’s industry codes.

IBISWorld industry intelligence is linked by industry codes to company profiles in RelPro.

“RelPro has always been a client-driven solution, focused on the needs of business development and relationship management professionals in financial services and professional services, so when our clients asked us to integrate with a new intelligence source we listened!” said RelPro CEO Martin Wise, “The value of industry insights has been so evident as our users have pivoted and navigated through the shifting economic landscape, preparing for meetings with prospects and clients.  We are thrilled to be partnering with IBISWorld and delivering our combined capabilities to mutual clients.”

RelPro said that the partnered solution is consistent with its mission “to deliver valuable insights and time-saving efficiencies to business development and relationship management professionals” across banking and professional services.

The partnership began a year ago when a top five commercial bank requested an integrated solution.  The firms polished the integration over the past year, with the announcement synced to the April launch of My IBISWorld for Banking.

My IBISWorld for Banking includes tailored industry tools, data, and analysis to support banking professionals throughout the entire credit process.  Expanded content includes enhanced financial ratios, localized statistics “to understand concentration and major market data,” role-based views, risk snapshots that highlight industry risks and trends, and targeted meeting prep questions.

“Recently, we’ve seen a shift towards banking professionals working more closely with other functions, creating cross-department synergies in this newly-remote world.  We’ve also seen a great need for hyper-local data so banks can better serve small businesses during these unprecedented times. My IBISWorld for Banking fosters this cross-departmental work and helps banks support their customers.”

Carmen McKinney, Chief Operations Officer and Head of Customer Success at IBISWorld

“Being a part of our clients’ workflows has been a continuous goal for us at IBISWorld,” said Jason Falkowitz, SVP, IBISWorld Industry Research Division.  “From the launch of our My IBISWorld for Banking platform and our robust API offering to our new partnership with RelPro, we are committed to offering world-class industry information in client-led formats. Combining IBISWorld’s industry intelligence with RelPro’s focus on targeting companies and decision-makers, mutual clients will be best positioned to win and retain commercial relationships.”

IBISWorld content is delivered within the RelPro solution, with single sign-on supported.  The partners initially focused on their set of joint customers with contracts written on separate paper.  There is no surcharge for the cross-product authorization and functionality.

RelPro company profile screen showing links to IBISWorld Research on primary NAICS / SIC Codes.

Last year, RelPro released a similar solution with Vertical IQ.  Both Vertical IQ and IBISWorld provide industry profiles and economic data, with Vertical IQs content written in plain English for cross-industry generalists, while IBISWorld offers a more formal format.

“RelPro now integrates with the two leading independent sources of industry research,” Wise told GZ Consulting.  “It is for clients to decide which of these two solutions best meets their needs, and RelPro can deliver an integrated and time-saving user experience to either / both sources. This new partnership announcement is consistent with RelPro’s mission to deliver valuable insights and time-saving efficiencies to business development and relationship management professionals in banking and other financial and professional services sectors.” RelPro revenues (bookings) grew 40% in 2020, and the company expects that growth in 2021 will be at least that much

Vertical IQ – RMA eMentor

Vertical IQ industry intelligence is now available via the Risk Management Association’s (RMA) eMentor program, a “self-service, subscription-based knowledge hub” for credit professionals.  The combined tool marries RMA’s Annual Statement studies with Vertical IQ’s plain English industry overviews, helping credit team members prepare for calls, assess credit risk, and improve their credit knowledge.  Other tools include Best Practices, eCases, interactive worksheets, and trackable exams.

RMA has long collected US private company industry norms to assist with credit and lending decisioning.  RMA multi-year financial ratios are available by NAICS code and stratified by assets and revenue.  

Vertical IQ industry overviews help bankers prepare for meetings, understand industry trends and issues, and assess potential loan risks.  Vertical IQ provides 250 reports covering over 1,000 industries.  Vertical IQ research is directly viewable within eMentor and downloadable as PDFs.

“With the addition of Vertical IQ’s industry knowledge to eMentor, RMA makes a great platform even more indispensable for the bankers who rely on eMentor to better understand the risks and opportunities financial institutions and their borrowers face,” said RMA CEO Nancy Foster.  “eMentor powered by Vertical IQ arms bankers with the market intelligence that is crucial throughout the life of the loan—from initial meetings with borrowers, to putting together a financing package that is right for them, to monitoring loan performance.”

Statzon Market Research Database

Statzon, a market research database that provides tables and charts, is available for licensing.  The service aggregates government and private industry research from over sixty sources, with plans to support over 100 sources by the end of this year.  Charts are available for over one million topics across 4,500 business topics.

Searching is performed via a simple search box with type-ahead suggestions.  Once the topic is selected, users may filter by location, trades (e.g. Output, Export, Import, Consumption, Companies), scales (units), and providers.  For example, Statzon offers global and country-specific beer industry data from five vendors.

Users may switch between line, bar, and pie charts.  A slider bar, underneath the charts, allows users to limit the scope of the data display, either to focus on sections of the graph serially or to restrict the period of a time-series chart.  Values and titles are displayed while mousing over the chart.  Licensed data may be downloaded as an image or an Excel table.  Each licensed table includes the scope, definition, methodology, data provider, publication date, and expiration date.

Statzon is priced at €5,600 per annum for five seats.  Government data is available at no additional charge, but private research tables may be subject to an additional €50 fee, which is charged via Stripe to a credit card.  Users may include chargeback codes for project assignments or client billing.

This hybrid model works fine for consultative industries with chargebacks such as management consulting, investment banks, and consulting firms, but is problematic for industries or job functions where the charge either has to be approved or paid by the end-user.  A secondary issue is one of the data structure.  If the user is looking to analyze data by region, but it is only available by time for countries, users would have to license and download multiple reports to build the desired table.  This could be both expensive and time-consuming.  Statzon should look at licensing all research from a vendor (either as a contract passthrough or directly from Statzon).  Licensing all research on a topic (e.g. Petroleum industry data for an additional fee) would also be a valuable premium pricing option.

Free content is focused on commodities, which are tracked by government agencies.  Thus, there are nearly 1,000 government tables available for rice, but the 26 IoT reports all require additional fees.  For those unwilling or unable to pay for premium tables, there is a filter that restricts the display to licensed content.  However, there is significant value in the free datasets which are gathered from national and international agencies, including the United Nations, World Bank, OECD, International Monetary Fund, US Energy Information Agency, and Eurostat.

Statzon is a pre-revenue company with funding from angel investors and a Finnish VC.  It shows a great deal of promise as a research portal for government and market research data but is still in the early stages of its development.  CEO Kimmo Kuokkanen described Statzon as “the fastest way for consultants, analysts, investors, financial industry professionals, media personnel and academic people to access the needed data and gain insights about market size, trends, future outlook, market drivers, major players, etc.”

Vertical IQ Credit Underwriting Solution

Industry Profiler Vertical IQ released a credit underwriting solution to assist lenders’ credit decisioning.  Vertical IQ has long served financial institutions with a set of plain-English industry overviews for relationship managers.  The new service expands its Industry Risks tab and renames it “Credit Underwriting and Risks.”  A new industry brief is also available.

The new Credit Underwriting and Risks content includes a proprietary Industry Risk Rating based on account financial risk, exit rates, industry performance during downturns, barriers to entry, and the industry outlook.  Other new content includes key industry and economic performance metrics, a Financial Comparison Toolkit that performs custom benchmarking against key financial metrics, and industry-specific credit decisioning considerations.  The Financial Comparison metrics are downloadable for sharing with clients and prospects.

“In today’s volatile market, loan credit underwriters are understandably cautious about their lending decisions.  The Credit Underwriting and Risks Chapter and Industry Brief are quick ways for bankers and credit professionals to get up to speed on the lending environment for a client’s or prospect’s particular industry.”

Vertical IQ CEO Bobby Martin

The new industry brief contains an industry summary, industry risk rating, key performance metrics, financial ratios, important credit underwriting-related considerations, common industry-related risks, and the Financial Comparison Toolkit.

The new Credit Underwriting content is delivered through the desktop application with an API upgrade before the end of the month.  The original content will be extended to additional apps and partners in the coming months.

“Great decisions are made by taking something that is complicated and simplifying it to its primary moving parts. When a banker can do that, he or she offers a more clear understanding and a more fluid and productive conversation. Vertical IQ has simplified the process of analyzing industry risks for the commercial banking world. It is long overdue.”

David Nicholson, Founder of Credit Training, Inc.

Industry-specific financing topics that were already available in the service include discussions of working capital, capital financing, business valuation, and financial benchmarks.

The new content is available within the core service at no additional charge.  However, by extending the value for credit underwriting at banking and commercial finance, Vertical IQ will be improving its seat penetration within those segments.

Vertical IQ has had a busy summer. Along with the credit underwriting solution, they announced integrations with RelPro for banking and Seismic for Sales Enablement.