Executive data with a twist
Jinfo Blog

9th February 2010

By Penny Crossland

Item

One of the companies mentioned by Nancy Davis Kho in her post on the SIIA previews (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27872) caught my attention. Boardroom Insiders (http://www.boardroominsiders.com), established in October 2008, is a relationship mapping and executive profile database, with a model that is different from the numerous similar providers out there. (For a product review of three major relationship management databases, Boardex, The Directors Database and Leadership Networks go to http://web.vivavip.com/go/shop/report/1574 ) Rather than concentrating on company affiliations, Boardroom Insiders places emphasis on the executives’ personal attributes and interests. The idea behind this is that the more you know about an executive, the easier it is to get a foot in the door. The sample profile on Boardroom Insiders site contains a lengthy paragraph of a director's musical ambitions, for example. As the start-up’s founder Sharon Gillenwater stated in a recent interview (http://digbig.com/5bbbn), senior executives these days are following less conventional career paths and the more you know about their background, the easier it will be to engage in a dialogue, and ultimately generate business. Gillenwater cites the example of CIOs (Chief Information Officers), who traditionally have come from an IT or engineering background, but have now frequently had career experience in marketing or sales. An in-depth profile will provide you with this kind of information, enabling you to prepare your approach accordingly. Each executive profile (containing biographical highlights, personal attributes & interests, board affiliations, current focus, key challenges and peers & influences) is compiled from publicly available sources, including social media sources such as Twitter. Researchers and analysts trawl the web and supplement data with primary research techniques. This makes Boardroom Insiders a very labour intensive product, and one wonders if its USP will also limit its scope. Information on the number of executive profiles currently on the database varies – I have seen references to 3,000 and 100,000. A relationship mapping service and tailored research for those who wish to obtain a profile that is not available on the database complete the offering. Those who would like to try out the product can do so for a month at no cost. Subscriptions are affordable at $49.95 per month or $250 per year, and profiles can be purchased individually – very useful for those of us who are self-employed. It will be interesting to see how Boardroom Insiders fares in the competitive world of executive data.

« Blog