THE PLATINUM DATA SOLUTION

First, we identify best-of-breed niche publishers who compile business profiles nationally.

Next, we audit the data quality of each niche publisher’s business profiles. Only those niche publishers who pass the rigorous audit are accepted into the Platinum Data file.

Then each niche publishers’ database of profiles is normalized and put into a standardized format.

The final step is a number of value added enhancements to the business profiles themselves such as:

• Appending data fields from overlapping records among our niche publisher partners;
• Using industry specific data fields provided by our publishers to create informative business descriptions
• Normalizing disparate data fields to allow you to search seamlessly across our multi-sourced database by:
  • Functional responsibilities of decision makers
  • Business location size

Best-of-Breed Publisher Partners/Suppliers

Today, eight best-of-breed niche publisher partners send Platinum Data their profiles on companies and institutions.

Our best-of-breed publishers have several commonalities:

• Compile their business profiles with U.S. based editorial staff – collectively over 500 in total
• Telephone verify their listed firms annually
• Invest considerably more per profile, on average to compile than do mega compilers

Our publisher partners use a number of techniques to supplement their annual tele-verification process. These include:

• Screening news articles and press releases
• Using mailed, emailed and faxed questionnaires
• Accessing public data sources as the yellow pages and the web

Our publisher partners have cooperative relationships with their listed firms. These firms are motivated to provide profiles of their businesses as it allows them to be discovered by value-added resellers, suppliers, and/or prospective customers in the directories compiled by our publisher partners.

We plan to increase the number of our publisher partners in the foreseeable future based on industries of most interest to our customers.

Data Audit

Our niche publishers undergo a rigorous data quality audit. Experienced, skilled editors telephone interview a statistically significant number of businesses. These interviews are then used as a basis to score and assess the quality of the profiles of our niche publishers.

Platinum Data uses its audit to determine if a prospective publisher’s data will be included in the Platinum Database. Comparing the audit results between the profiles of the niche publishers and those of mega compilers is a key step in our evaluation process.

Platinum Data has rejected several prospective suppliers because their data quality did not compare favorably to that of the best mega compilers.

Value Added Platinum Data Work

A combination of the information we get from our publishers and the value-added work we do makes the Platinum Database special and unique. This includes:

• Integration of multiple suppliers’ data into one establishment profile:

  • A 15% overlap in the records among our suppliers lets us:
    • Enhance business descriptions, which are 4 times longer than mega compilers
    • Add unique, incremental decision makers to business profiles
    • Increase fill rates of data fields that may be missing data

• Enhancements that enable searching across publishers’ records:

  • Using standardized functional title codes to map tens of thousands of titles to enable searching of decision makers by function
  • Converting of nonstandard sizing metrics such as bank assets and hospital beds to standard ones such as annual revenue or sales

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