Posts Tagged ‘Resonata Consulting’
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Recently I read an interesting blog by one of our “friendly competitors” which was fittingly about SIC codes. I say fittingly because we all have competitors but the common controversy with SIC codes is that current day services companies might struggle to find themselves in the right company.
When reading the blog, I found a surprising statement which instantly raised an eyebrow with me: “While SIC codes are extremely valuable, they’re a level of granularity that is far too deep for my purposes. There are almost 1,000 SIC codes which is way too many”.
As analysts, researchers and ultimately consultants who research companies and use business data for a lot of our work I find this surprising, and perhaps outdated thinking.
I realise that for many organisations SIC codes are very useful but when it really comes to defining basic company and target types. However, SIC codes are only part of the research we undertake when doing larger scale bespoke work – research that enables us to build a database that is relevant, targeted with knowledge and insight that is genuinely useful from a business development perspective. We go much further than accruing a lot of names in financial services for example.
SIC codes can be a good starting tool for us and some of our clients certainly. But modern businesses are after a certain type of client and SIC codes go very little way to looking at what really makes these businesses stand out from each other.
Rather than hammering my point home here let’s look at some examples we have come across recently:
A client of ours wanted us to explore luxury brands, and looking at SIC codes would have been fruitless here. We needed to find them by researching very specific sectors, countries and work out what a luxury brand was to the client and if we could come to a common goal.
Universities – easy you think? Nope, we had to look for and research particular types of Universities across the world, add in Research institutes in specialist subjects and you are looking at a whole can of worms.
What about Financial institutions? Easy right, nope not them either since we were asked to look specifically for hedge funds, and they fall into the larger group of financial institutions such as insurance companies, banks, and similar organisations.
My point is that approaching the problem with SIC codes has little to do with the fact there are over 1,000 of them. Any company profiling, including SIC coding needs to be looked at from what makes these businesses different from others, where do they fit in the market, who are their clients, what products do they do, where they have come from and where they are going.
So the next time you think that you can say let’s target these types of firms, consider your strategy that bit further so you have an advantage over those who do not understand the problems with SIC codes.
Think about the pains that you solve, the challenges you solve and look at your existing clients work out what made them buy or what made you realise they had these issues.
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It’s been a busy time for us lately, especially with the launch of the new website, new client briefs, existing clients coming back to us, networking and lots of client meetings but unfortunately that has meant that we have neglected the blog for a while – our aim is to update the blog once a week!
This week I wanted to talk about and touch upon data cleansing as in a recession it is perhaps even more important to keep your data up to date. After-all many of us are trying to cut costs wherever we can but we also know when to make the right investments in order to continue to speak to our current clients and on the flipside of that acquire meaningful and deeply researched data that will enable you to be speaking to the right companies for the products and/or services that you deliver.
Over time, companies collect a significant amount of existing client and new client data. They can have entire databases of lapsed, current and potential client data but it is not necessarily all accurate and actionable data.
Data cleansing is something that should be done at least twice a year (business data often decays at the rate of 40% plus per year). If you want to make the most of your existing client data so you can keep running effective campaigns, it could be time to take a second look at your existing database.
Removing incorrect details can save you time and money when prospecting potential clients, speaking to existing clients or speaking to lapsed clients.
If client data is entered incorrectly, it can cause data headaches at a later date. If that same piece of data is entered differently more than once then the two opposing records can result in an inefficient process, confused and untrusting potential clients and confused sales staff.
If you store data such as physical addresses, phone numbers or email addresses you need to make sure that the rate of duplication kept to an absolute minimum – hence my recommendation to cleanse your data at least twice a year –more if it is in consistent use. Precise data is essential business incorrect data can very easily impede on your otherwise successful sales and marketing campaigns.
So is this the sort of exercise you would like to do in-house?
Outsourcing the cleansing of your data is a much more efficient, easy and less costly exercise and you can get your be sales and marketing data in great shape without the headaches of doing it in-house.
Employ a professional organisation to give you a full data audit and you’ll be left with valid, de-duplicated data on prospects that are ready to be engaged.
The data cleansing exercise will systematically go through your data and ensure that the records your teams use remain accurate. At the same time, you can unleash a two-pronged attack on your data, cleansing it one on hand and using that data to provide new sales and marketing leads for your staff to close on the other.
So, if the reason why so many sales and marketing campaigns receive low hit rates is just incorrect data, then data cleansing is a way to invest in your company. People move companies, change jobs, transfer extensions and within a year, up to 40% of your database is out of date and incorrect.
So without putting too much of a frightener on you and just by explaining that data cleansing is an investment, some of our clients are coming around to this and at the same time buying highly researched, accurate and hard to get data from us which we know is pre-cleansed!
Resonata.co.uk launches!
Posted on: September 3, 2009
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We have now launched our new website and we are very proud of it!
We have gone through a variety of processes such as design, logos, branding, technical development, tweaks, changes, re-designs and generally getting our website absolutely spot on for the business that we are!
This is our first website design and we feel that it reflects our brand, our values and our ethos very well. Our brand is all about being bespoke to client’s needs, going the extra mile, looking for great prospect opportunities and data solutions for our clients.
Resonata Consulting’s website was built by Byte Art in conjunction with huge input from Resonata Consulting. Byte Art http://www.byteart.com are an award-winning web design and development agency located in London, Bristol, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man and Dubai. We worked with their Farringdon based office and we would like to extend our particular thanks to Andrea Tamborini who has been pro-active, diligent, patient, understanding, extremely helpful and has produced great designs for us!
Resonata Consulting would also like to thank our SEO Copywriter Oliver Lewis http://www.seo-copywriter.co.uk for the great work he did in conjunction with us on the SEO Copywriting. He is diligent, focussed and has got a keen writing style!
Resonata Consulting would also like to pay homage to our branding consultant and all round branding Guru Yvonne Fuchs http://www.thebrandingworkshop.com . Yvonne has been an excellent sounding board for us and has helped us immensely with our branding (both internally and externally). Yvonne is an inspiration to all!
Resonata Consulting would also like to thank Dr. Alan Rae http://www.howtodobusiness.com our business mentor who has helped guide us from initial late night conversations in the pub to where we are now. Alan is incredibly knowledgeable, hugely bright and is a great motivator who offers us a fantastic and pro-active advice whenever there is a need.
We would also like to thank Business Link London, The Thames Innovation Centre, Charles Dawson, Lena Robinson at Neue Media, Simon Daniels at Percassity, Peter and Kathy Baker, Ruud and Jose Vermeulen, Sara Bizanti and Dawn Canonigo.
The Naming of Resonata Consulting.
Posted on: June 20, 2009
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This is from a recent branding exercise, where we explored our rationale for using the name Resonata Consulting.
So how did we get to the name?
Everybody who has gone through a similar exercise will agree it is incredibly hard to be original. Not only do you want the name to reflect your business activity, but it should also have a familiar ring to it – making it easy for people to find our company and remember you. At first we explored the straight-forward options such as for example MI-Consulting or IM Consulting. But not only were the names already registered, we felt both options reflected poor creativity and didn’t explain our services or how we wish to be perceived. To build a strong brand we would have to find a name that would:
* stand out / be unique
* be memorable
* be internationally recognizable
* explain our services or express how we wish to work with our clients
We came to the name Resonata Consulting, which reflects the essence of what we do and how we do it.
Resonata is a unique word, though it has a familiar feel to it making it memorable to clients and partners alike. It is made up from the words resonance or resonating and data, giving you an immediate impression of how our company interprets best practice: we resonate clients’ data needs – a process driven exercise with the client at heart.
Many branding experts, consultants and our advisers have consistently told us that our brand/company name had to incorporate the term data or even data acquisition – because that is what our service is all about. We struggled at first to incorporate it, but by merging the word data with resonance we did not only manage to satify the most critical of branding specialists – we also found a way to express exactly how we feel understanding client needs is as much part of data acquisition as anything else.
Because both directors have traveled extensively (Asia, Europe, North America, Central America, and South America), speak a number of different languages (English, Dutch, Spanish, French and German) and have both lived and worked abroad in various parts of the world (Europe, North-America and Asia), we knew that our services would have an international appeal. Because the word ‘Resonata’ was created by us it would have no negative cultural barriers concerning its interpretation.
Resonata Consulting had to have consulting or consultancy within the company name to emphasize we want to engage with our clients in the process. Coming from an international sales and business development background ourselves, this is the kind of company philosophy we want to be part of and are confident our clients will buy into as well.
What does Resonata Consulting mean to us:
We listen to our client’s needs and act as an extension of their organization; building on existing internal knowledge and processes, and resonating clients’ needs by understanding the clients goals and helping them to achieve the highest quality data in the most timely and financially efficient manner.
Please feel free to get in touch with either Matthew Baker at matthew.baker@resonata.co.uk or Ivo Vermeulen at ivo.vermeulen@resonata.co.uk if you would like to have a conversation with us about data acquisition or any other data related query. Our website is not yet live but please keep it in mind – http://www.resonata.co.uk
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