New Database Service Targets Middle Managers A Modest Millennial Proposal for Apple Marketers

Orange County Business Journal, Feb 2, 1998 by Fried, Ian

Search the web for (keyword), and oh yeah, filter out all the crap.

If the search engines on the World Wide Web ever work that well, maybe Scoop Inc. will have to find a new line of business. But the Irvine-based company is betting that won't happen any time soon.

This week, Scoop debuts IntelliSearch. Billed as "advanced business intelligence," it is a service designed to offer the Dilberts of the world relief from net searches and a taste of the services like Lexis-Nexis that their bosses have been keeping to themselves.

Scoop, which went public in April, isn't offering a web search, but rather a tool that searches its own rather hearty database of major newspapers, trade journals and wire services, along with substantial financial data on public companies.

The new service is based on Scoop Direct, the company's existing offering that has about 10,000 users, most of whom have been using the service on a free trial basis. Key additions include financial data from Zacks Investment Reasearch Inc. and an increase in the depth of the library (now 90 days as opposed to two weeks). Still, the service is designed for recent announcements, not for historical archives.

Scoop must fight two battles to win space on business people's desktops: proving it is worth the time and proving it is worth the money - $30 a month for single users and $15 a month for five to 25 users.

It has a pretty good shot at the first battle, giving access to some big-name sources: Investor's Business Daily, foreign news wires like Agency France Presse, trade magazines and many regional business publications. Many of their sources aren't available for free on the web (trust me, I've looked).

And Scoop is ambitious - its engine tries to guess what you want by the way you ask the question. A search on a company by ticker symbol will yield more financial news than a keyword query or a search by company name. The search engine also pulls out other companies and people who show up in the search, figuring maybe you want to know about them, too.

But better isn't enough when it comes to web-based services.

"The best product is seldom the product that wins," said Giga Information Group senior analyst Rob Enderle. "It is the best marketed product."

As for selling itself , Scoop is going to end users - mainly folks in the marketing and communications ranks - offering free trials and relying on them to convince the higher-ups.

Enderle is not convinced that is the right approach, but he said it probably is not fatal. If users find the service compelling, they can win over their bosses, he said.

For his part, Enderle, whose company recommends information services to corporate clients, says IntelliSearch is a winner. It has a clear leg up on the freebies, he said, and is better than two pricier services aimed at a similar audience.

"You get better content and less wasted time," Enderle said. "For most of us in the research biz, time is the critical factor." * * *

Musings of a former marketing columnist:

If Apple actually had a clue, it might be plugging the fact that its computers have always recognized the year 2000.

I see a commercial with a Mac-based network humming along and the caption Jan 2, 2000. Then cut to a black and white shot of and idle office filled with the dark screens of non-functional Windows-based machines.

Macintosh. Solutions for the year 2000 and beyond. * * *

Bits:

Toshiba America Information Systems has opened an 18,000-square-foot "digital university" in Irvine to train its dealer force on the company's copier and fax products ... Mind2Media, Irvine, created an interactive kiosk for the Mann Chinese movie theater in Aurora, Colo. Producers aimed to capture the grandeur and glamour, if not the wet cement, of the Hollywood original ... Object-oriented development software maker ObjectShare Inc., is moving its corporate headquarters from Sunnyvale to Irvine ...Irvine-based Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. signed a deal allowing Arrow Electronics to sell Toshiba's complete line of semiconductors in North America ... Costa Mesa-based On the Go Software agreed to buy Quicken ExpensAble software from Intuit for an undisclosed price. Intuit, which publishes the Quicken brand of software, will continue to jointly market the product in existing channels, while On the Go will aim to market to a more corporate audience ... Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology announced a price cut of up to 32% in its line of networking hardware ...Irvine-based systems management software firm New Dimensions Software Ltd. has formed a marketing partnership with San Diego-based Anacomp Inc. ... Irvine-based StarBase Corp. signed a deal to sell an additional 150 seats of its StarTeam team productivity software to Network Associates.