Tag: Boardroom Insiders

CIO Concerns – July 2020

Boardroom Insiders CEO Sharon Gillenwater discussed the top of mind issues for CIOs due to the pandemic.  Initially, the CIOs’ focus was on transitioning to work from home along with tightened security.  There were also “stepped up initiatives around cloud, automation, and e-commerce in order to keep the business running.  In fact, COVID-19 did more to speed up their digital transformation plans than anything else in recent history.”

“You can’t speed up the culture of an organization. You can roll out technology maybe faster… You have to be careful about speed over perfection. Speed is one thing, but you have to make sure that you don’t introduce any security risks, so it’s sort of combining those two things together [that] I think is extremely important at this time.”

Box CIO Paul Chapman

The Boardroom Insiders research team spent two weeks reviewing recent CIO interviews and identified five positive by-products of the pandemic that are improving the resiliency and capabilities of the enterprise.  First off, tech leaders have emphasized upskilling and reskilling their teams to address skills gaps.  Tech vendors have rolled out “a whole host of free training and education programs.”  As these programs are virtual, CIOs are encouraging their staff to attend these sessions with zero travel costs and registration fees.

Likewise, CIOs are using the time at home to hone their leadership, communication, and team engagement skills.  CIOs have found their teams to be more productive, collaborative, and agile, with rising morale.

The third silver lining is the acceptance and integration of new tools into business workflows.  Many of these changes were a necessity due to operational dislocations, but these new tools are “driving new levels of productivity and employee self-service across the enterprise.”

The work from home experience has also served as a “future of work lab” which forced executives and managers to “rethink business processes.”  This rethinking has “driven a wave of innovation internally” and let management observe how a remote workforce behaves.  This forced experiment has helped CIOs “map out a vision of what the future of work should really look like at their companies.”

Finally, the pandemic has encouraged CIOs to test and revise their business continuity plans and enhance security tools and protocols, readying the firm for the next crisis.

Gillenwater described the current situation as a balance between navigating COVID and growth-focused initiatives:

  • Evolving work-from-home into a long-term roadmap for the future-of-work
  • Enabling security everywhere and agile/mobile/digital/cloud everything
  • Scenario and business continuity planning, in an attempt to plan for future changes and challenges
  • Accelerating digital initiatives, at a pace that many say they’ve never seen before 
  • Cost cuts/expense management, an inevitability in an economically trying time 
  • Reprioritization and refocusing of IT investments and projects
  • eCommerce, as part of the rush to digitize
  • Innovation, to identify and capitalize on future opportunities 

Microsoft Global Skills Initiative

Microsoft launched a global skills initiative to provide digital training to 25 million global workers.  The online courses will be delivered through Microsoft, LinkedIn, and GitHub.  

A new “System of Learning” app will be released later this year on Microsoft Teams.

“Increasingly, one of the key steps needed to foster a safe and successful economic recovery is expanded access to the digital skills needed to fill new jobs.  And one of the keys to a genuinely inclusive recovery are programs to provide easier access to digital skills for people hardest hit by job losses, including those with lower incomes, women, and underrepresented minorities.”

Microsoft President Brad Smith

The Microsoft Data Science team leveraged the LinkedIn Economic Graph to estimate global digital job growth over the next half-decade.  Microsoft estimates that by 2025, there will be 100 million new software development positions, 20 million cloud and data roles, 20 million data analysis, machine learning, and AI jobs, and 10 million cybersecurity, privacy, and trust roles.

LinkedIn has already setup digital training tracks for ten of these key positions: Software Developer, Sales Rep, Project Manager, IT Administrator, Customer Service Specialist, Digital Marketing Specialist, IT Support / Help Desk, Data Analyst, Financial Analyst, and Graphic Designer.  These roles were selected as they have “the greatest number of job openings, have had steady growth over the past four years, pay a livable wage, and require skills that can be learned online.”

Microsoft noted that investment in employee training has declined over the past few decades, leaving fewer employees with on-the-job or employer paid training benefits. Since 2008, investment has remained flat.

“Exacerbating the challenge is the fact that existing training is not reaching the populations who need it most. On-the-job training far outpaces distance learning and other alternative modes, limiting options for prospective employees. Perhaps more significantly, on-the-job training is more than two times as prevalent among workers who are already in higher-skilled roles, leaving those in more automatable positions even more vulnerable to displacement.”

Microsoft President Brad Smith

Emphasis on Virtual Training

The availability of low cost or free training tools is one of the silver linings from the pandemic. Boardroom Insiders, a profiler of C-level biographies and executive concerns, spent two weeks reviewing recent CIO interviews. They observed that technology leaders have emphasized upskilling and reskilling their teams to address skills gaps while working from home.  Tech vendors have rolled out “a whole host of free training and education programs.”  As these programs are virtual, CIOs are encouraging their staff to attend these sessions with zero travel costs and reduced or waived registration fees.

Likewise, CIOs are using the time at home to hone their leadership, communication, and team engagement skills.  CIOs have found their teams to be more productive, collaborative, and agile, with rising morale.

ABM Research Vendors

When conducting account based (ABM) research, it is necessary to develop a broad view of your customers and prospects which includes company, contact, and industry research.   Unfortunately, open web research is quite time-consuming and your sales reps are unlikely to consistently engage in general research, so consider Sales Intelligence vendors with editorial research teams. 

Executive research should go beyond the Leadership page and LinkedIn profiles.  One option is Boardroom Insiders which gathers rich executive profiles on CxOs written by business journalists.

For industry research, look at Vertical IQ, IBISWorld, or First Research.  Vertical IQ and First Research are strong offerings for sales teams that sell broadly across many segments but are not verticalized.  They are written in plain English and include Q&A sections. The content in IBISWorld is more formal but better suited for verticalized teams.

At the company level, consider Dun & Bradstreet Hoovers, InsideView, or DiscoverOrg.  All three provide company and contact profiles, list building, and sales triggers.  D&B Hoovers goes deeper on global coverage, family trees, and industry profiles, DiscoverOrg offers the deepest set of technographics and rich bios, and InsideView provides excellent sales triggers and social media intelligence.

Boardroom Insiders Adds List Building

Boardroom Insiders can now build lists of C-level Executives.
Boardroom Insiders can now build lists of C-level Executives.

Boardroom Insiders, an editorially driven executive profile company, added build a list prospecting to its subscription service. The new feature supports firmographic and biographic selections against their 15,000 executive profiles. Users can download one or multiple executives from the list as a PDF.

“After a decade of researching C-Level executives, we have built an extremely robust repository of executive insight—both personal and business-related.  Our new search tool unlocks the power of that insight in a very significant way.  Subscribers can now easily execute these very specific searches in seconds. You simply will not find this capability anywhere else—and to replicate this type of research from scratch on your own would be both cost- and time-prohibitive.”

  • Boardroom Insiders CEO Sharon Gillenwater

Boardroom Insiders provides very rich executive profiles that go beyond those found in other executive sources such as LinkedIn. “Our forte is in providing deep insight on a relatively small group of C-level executives to support very important opportunities, CXO meetings, events, and large account ABM efforts,” said Gillenwater. Profiles may run a few thousand words and include an Executive Summary, Personal Attributes and Interests, Current Focus, Biographical Highlights, Other Boards and Organizations. Users also have access to a headshot, social media links, and contact information.

All of the bios are maintained by editors with a minimum of ten years of business journalism or management consulting experience. If a bio has not been updated in the past six months, a user can request a refresh. Boardroom Insiders also maintains bios for executives in transition and then updates them when executives land at new organizations.

While LinkedIn is often seen as the go to source of biographies, a DiscoverOrg survey found that 25% of top-level executives do not maintain LinkedIn bios. “LinkedIn is an essential tool, but the profiles are unpredictable, limited in strategic insight, and biased,” said Gillenwater. “Boardroom Insiders is rich with strategic insight, unbiased, and provides the full professional story of the key decision maker you are calling on.”

Boardroom Insiders CxO Bios

Boardroom Insiders AppExchange Profiles
Boardroom Insiders AppExchange Profiles

While most sales intelligence vendors focus on broad coverage, there are several that continue to generate value the old-fashioned way through editorial research focused on high value content sets.  Firms in this category include technology vendors DiscoverOrg and RainKing and industry overview provider First Research.  Another editorially-focused vendor is Boardroom Insiders, founded by Sharon Gillenwater and Lee Demby.  Gillenwater, who was a marketing consultant, realized that several of her key accounts were struggling with CIO-level discussions.  In 2010, she partnered with Demby, the co-founder of First Research (acquired by Dun & Bradstreet / Hoover’s in 2007), to create a C-level executive information service.

“Most companies spend too much time worrying about getting customer contact info and not enough time thinking about what they are going to say to these customers once they get in touch with them,” said Gillenwater.  “While having the right contact info is important, it is useless if you don’t have a strategy for making yourself relevant to the person on the other end of the phone.”

Boardroom Insiders provides deep biographical profiles of C-level executives.  They cover the CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO, and COO of the Fortune 500 along with additional top executives requested by their customer base.  In total, Boardroom Insiders publishes 13,000 rich biographies for 3,000 US and international companies.  A team of fifteen editors (ten full-time) research and update their bios.  All of the editors have at least ten years of business journalism or management consulting experience.  While all of the material is editorially researched, executive changes and key events are monitored with just-in-time editorial updates performed.  Furthermore, if a profile has not been touched in six months, a user can request that it be immediately refreshed.  They also retain a pool of in-flux biographies for executives that may be in transition, allowing Boardroom Insiders to quickly revive and update profiles when a high-level executive resurfaces.

Included with subscriptions are credits towards the creation of additional biographies, providing users with on demand professional research.  For requests of up to ten executives, the firm turns around new bios in two business days.

Content is derived from the open web with a focus on earnings calls, executive interviews, and industry articles.  LinkedIn is also employed as a resource, but depth of content varies greatly and executives are often slow to update profiles after departing firms.  What’s more, LinkedIn lacks insights into executive biases, interests, and passions.  Finally, LinkedIn does not contain a broader view of the executive’s division and corporate environment.

“LinkedIn is an essential tool, but the profiles are unpredictable, limited in strategic insight, and biased,” said Gillenwater.  “Boardroom Insiders is rich with strategic insight, unbiased, and provides the full professional story of the key decision maker you are calling on.”

Executive biographies run two to seven pages and contain

  • Headshot
  • Last Updated Date
  • Current Company, Title, Location, Phone, and Email.  The phone may be either a switchboard or direct dial.
  • Social Media Links (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
  • An Executive Summary
  • Personal Attributes and Interests – Family status, interests and hobbies, business philosophy, awards, etc.
  • Current Focus – Job responsibilities, corporate strategy
  • Key Challenges
  • Biographical Highlights
  • Other Boards and Organizations

Executives can be looked up directly, by company name, or via prospecting.  Prospecting is not as robust as large database competitors, but includes F500, Keyword, Title, CxO Function, Industry (NAICS major and minor categories), Alma Mater, etc.  Keyword searching should be particularly effective due to the depth of their profiles.

Search results are downloadable as PDFs.

The Boardroom Insiders service offers email alerts for individuals and companies.  Users are notified when an executive profile for a tracked company or executive is updated.  Company alerts are also sent when new executive profiles are available at tracked companies.

Users may access the service via browsers or a single-sign-on integration with Salesforce.com.  Within SFDC, there is a find button on Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities.  Boardroom Insiders displays biographies or biography lists within the Salesforce frame.

Boardroom Insiders offers an API based upon the JSON protocol.  Clients can use the API to feed information into their corporate data lakes or create custom solutions.

Users span four job functions targeting the C-Suite:

  • Marketers (e.g. field marketers, ABM programs, engagement teams, executive sponsorship programs)
  • Executive recruiters
  • Management consultants
  • Strategic sales (enterprise sales reps and account teams).

The firm has many clients in the technology sector.

Pricing is subscription based with annual contracts beginning around $10,000 and enterprise contracts reaching $250,000.  An SMB account would include three seats and 25 to 50 profile requests.