Dow Jones targets management consultants
Jinfo Blog

11th October 2010

By Penny Crossland

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Like most industry sectors, management consulting has suffered in the recession, with revenues in the UK down by 6 percent in 2009. According to the UK’s Management Consultancies Association, the future for the sector is now brighter, with the first half of this year seeing growth again. However, firms advising the public sector have been hit worse and are having to re-direct their efforts towards the private sector. Here, contracts are understandably becoming more and more competitive and the need for accurate and timely information on prospects and their industries is greater than ever. So it is quite timely for Dow Jones to launch an interesting new product geared specifically towards the management consultancy sector. Dow Jones Consultant (http://www.dowjones.com/products/djconsultant/), launched last week, delivers firms “with knowledge that helps demonstrate their value to clients, build relationships, become better counsellors and ultimately build their practice”. This new tool is intended to provide consultants with information that will set them apart from their competitors and will help identify new business opportunities. It aggregates content from 28,000 news sources (including of course the Wall Street Journal) and 18 million company profiles and delivers this via a dashboard or via newsletters to end-users. Information can be filtered by industry, region, company or practice area. Interestingly, the service has taken features from social networking sites: it includes a relationship mapping device, which claims to connect consultants to more than 36 million executives. Crucially for time-strapped consultants, the service is available via mobile devices, intranets or the web, allowing access to up-to-date information in the office or on the road. Dow Jones Consultant is another example of vendors trying to provide relevant and targeted information to end-users, who are being bombarded with ‘noise’ from ever-increasing sources.

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