June 17, 2008

D&B Competitors On the Rise Through Enhanced & Accurate "Social Networking"

Dun and Bradstreet is one of the leading sources of information on businesses of all shapes and sizes. If you want to find customers or check the credit rating of customers you might want to turn to D&B.

I recently interviewed the CEO and founder of Jigsaw, which is an online directory of business contact information.

The information entered into Jigsaw, in true Wikipedia fashion, is validated by other Jigsaw users. If the information you enter is not accurate - you lose points.

A new entrant to the market, NetProspex, based in Boston, recently announced the release of its sales contact trading system with 100% validation of user-contributed executive contacts.

“If a sales person can reach 3 out of 4 people in a contact list, then an online Rolodex of executives created by users is a useful and timesaving tool. However, if every other contact is wrong, then it’s a nuisance and a time waster,” says Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex. “We verify every traded contact, 100% of them, to ensure only verified records are added into our system. Our entire company is built towards addressing data quality. Quality in means quality out, and sales and marketing executives people depend on that.”

While D&B will be the king of business data for the foreseeable future, as more businesses rely on services such as Jigsaw, Linkedin, Facebook and now NetProspex - D&B might become less relevant for finding new customers.

tags: d&b , jigsawy , netprospex | 0 comments