FirstRain Customer Support

• Support Overview
• |
• Resources
• |
• Frequently Asked Questions
• |
• Product Blog
• |
• Give Us Feedback

Sizing Up The Mess

In this Age of Internet we are drowning in a sea of fact and opinion with limited ability to access valuable information or knowledge. Web content has exploded as a result of the breakdown of traditional media and the extraordinary proliferation of new media sources, independent sources and writers, both professional and individual. That's the reality of the Internet today. It offers data and commentary, both accurate and inaccurate, on virtually every product, business, industry, country or issue imaginable. Valuable information exists but finding it can be painful, if not impossible. The web is an enormous, messy, duplicative and incredibly rich source of information.

Back to Top

Why Traditional Search Engines And Business Information Providers Fall Short

Search engines have been around almost as long as the World Wide Web. From Lycos to Yahoo!, Google and Bing, traditional search engines typically focus on web-based keyword and text matching. This type of searching gives great results for shopping, making travel plans or finding a specific link on the web, but results tend to be too broad for business needs, often including irrelevant, out-of-date and redundant information. Traditional search engines are unable to identify business concepts that are more complex than Boolean equations of keywords. They cannot discover patterns, relationships or anomalies. As a result, traditional search engines cannot reliably uncover meaningful business insights, which are scattered throughout the web.

Business database services and aggregators, such as Hoovers, DJ/Reuters, Factiva and LexisNexis, provide information on companies, industries and executives from licensed published data sets, news feeds, filings and wires. Sources are static and formal, taxonomies are hand-edited—and so the data on market structure and people is often out-of-date. Unlike intelligence reflected across the breadth of the web, these more formal sources are often limited in the information they can reveal.

Business intelligence software transformed the way companies manage their businesses. However, business intelligence applications are usually limited to the documents and databases related to a company's own operations, business and resources. FirstRain extends the power of business intelligence outside a company's walls, delivering intelligence, analytics and pattern detection on a company's customers, markets and business environment using data gathered from a vast array of web sources.

Back to Top

Enter FirstRain, Changing the Rules of Web-Based Research

FirstRain provides a new class of search technology that delivers business intelligence and analytics using virtually all of the messy, duplicative and rich content available online. It quickly returns relevant results that can facilitate smart, fast business decision-making. The innovative intelligent business search application is easy to use and designed to fit into each user's specific workflow and role.

Back to Top

A Virtually Infinite Data Set

FirstRain's intelligent business search accesses a vast range of web sources globally. Sources include mainstream business sources, local and world news, in-depth industry and subscription sources, blogs, company sites and even academic, governmental and regulatory sources. FirstRain automatically identifies business facts, topics, events and relationships in this virtually infinite, unstructured and largely textual data set that previously was only accessible through literal keyword searching.

Business-Smart Results

Using FirstRain's proprietary qualitative analytics technology, intelligent business search turns unstructured web data into an analyzable data set of business ideas, relationships, facts and trends—enabling the detection of patterns, connections and anomalies that are of interest to business decision-makers. FirstRain derives the implied business structures of companies, industries, management, markets and the relationships that connect them. It applies trend and anomaly detection to discern what may be emerging, unusual or material.

What You Get

FirstRain delivers intelligence to users through a series of search and analytics pages within an on-demand application, or embedded within other information platforms. The intelligence pages include:

• Company briefs – generated, efficient summaries of the business structure and ecosystem of a company, recent events, related industry trends, competitor events and people-related changes and intelligence.
• Management turnover – listing announced and unannounced management arrivals, departures and internal moves; and comparing management move patterns between companies.
• Interactive, filtered search – enabling users to rapidly filter and refine searches based on related industries, business topics and other relevant dimensions, which are dynamically generated, based on the user's intelligent search query.
• Folders of user's intelligence topics – monitoring groups of companies, industry topics and filtered searches enabling users to continuously understand their business environment—whether a customer list or an investment portfolio—through their mobile device or their email environment.

Tapping into the web allows FirstRain to integrate a variety of perspectives from news media, local and global sources, business sites, blogs, deep industry sites, and even relevant government, regulatory and academic sources. FirstRain derives implied relationships and business structures from the information extracts, and applies trend and anomaly detection to discern what may be emerging, unusual or material. The results are continually updated—highlighting patterns, changes and events that can often signal emerging opportunities.

Easy To Use

Intelligent business search is designed to deliver the specific information that you need, when and where you need it. It is hosted in the cloud so it is easy to set up, learn and use. FirstRain can be accessed through a browser, and the company partners with financial system providers to embed intelligent business search in platforms such as FactSet or Dun and Bradstreet DNBI. For corporate clients, the FirstRain's user interface can be embedded in the enterprise intranet or a CRM system like Salesforce CRM. Search results, alerts and analysis can be pushed to users over email or a mobile device.

Examples Of FirstRain In Action

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the potential of intelligent business search is to see it in action. Here are three examples.

• FirstRain can make sense of the news, trends and changes for one of the most talked-about companies online, Apple. Intelligent business search analyzes the many sources of commentary on the company, including the thousands of blogs worldwide that may discuss Apple's future products. The FirstRain application continually confirms, tunes and updates its dynamic map of Apple's business, market and competitors based on the web content. Further, intelligent business search distinguishes content that is primarily about Apple's business versus content that includes Apple as a passing or minor mention. It uses a set of proprietary software algorithms to determine which sources and blogs are likely to produce more authoritative or more original content. The search results identify emerging trends, spikes or rumors that may deserve additional research or that may trigger follow-up questions for conference calls with Apple management. For example, questions related to the iPhone 4.0 might include: will Bing be the default search engine? Will the casing be touch-sensitive? Will the new version include an OLED removable battery and video chat? Is there evidence of unannounced connections between Apple and specific component suppliers?
• Strategic marketing teams are expected to understand everything about their market and competitors and yet it can be simply impractical to do so. They need to plan new product strategies, anticipate market dislocations and respond to competitor's announcements and analyst opinions. For example, in the communications market the advent of VoIP on smart phones will create a dislocation for carriers like AT&T and Verizon, as well as for service industries such as the test and measurement suppliers and optical communications suppliers. FirstRain can help strategic marketing teams by uncovering and illuminating key market developments as they change over time and making connections to the specific sub-industries and suppliers that may be affected.
• Sales professionals can use FirstRain to detect unannounced arrivals, departures and internal moves that are mentioned on the web. Management departures and arrivals often create risk and opportunity in sales campaigns at target accounts—a champion leaving or a reorganization that indicates a change in the political landscape. For example, the unannounced departure of the head of talent development at Glaxo Smith Kline could be a risk trigger for a professional selling talent development tools to the HR executives at GSK. However, it may also be an opportunity trigger for a new campaign into Saint-Gobain, the company where the former GSK head of talent development is now employed.

First Rain delivers intelligence on demand, enabling business teams to monitor their markets and targets, identify new risks and opportunities and become customer and competitor experts. Up-to-date intelligence on emerging trends, patterns and events facilitates smart decision-making, which can improve sales, increase revenue productivity and create a sustainable competitive position.

Back to Top

Tens Of Thousands Of Users

FirstRain, a privately held company headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. with offices in New York and Gurgaon, India, is a leader in search-driven research. The company was started in 2000.and entirely revamped in 2006 under its new visionary, entrepreneurial Chief Executive Officer Penny Herscher. FirstRain is funded by lead investor Oak Investment Partners with Diamondhead Ventures and Ampersand Ventures.

Using an incremental target marketing strategy, FirstRain has steadily grown its business. It began by addressing the needs of financial professionals such as investment managers, research analysts, pension funds, endowments and institutional sales. Intelligent business search meets their demand for high-performance market research and analytical tools. Beyond financial services, FirstRain now serves sales, marketing and strategic planning teams in top-tier companies across key industries including pharmaceuticals, industrials, financial services and high technology.

FirstRain has partnered strategically to provide access to its intelligent business search capabilities within other established research platforms. For example, clients of FactSet Research Systems, a leading provider of fundamental and qualitative research and analysis to the financial services industry, can access FirstRain's intelligent business search through their established financial information platform. Corporate finance users can access FirstRain intelligence on the customers and vendors through Dun and Bradstreet's DnBI platform. Investment professionals can also access aspects of FirstRain intelligence through the Mergent Online platform, and in the Stock Research Center on Fidelity.com.

Back to Top

Putting Game-Changing Insights Within Reach

Transforming the unstructured, heterogeneous information available on the web into normalized, analyzable data opens the door to a multitude of possibilities.

Pattern identification. Trend analysis. Anomaly detection. Real-time, dynamic analysis. That's the technology at work.

Investable ideas. Sales-call triggers. Competitive shifts. People movement. Rich customer understanding. These are the game-changing insights that emerge from search-driven research.

With sophisticated analysis and proprietary technologies, FirstRain's groundbreaking intelligent business search puts game-changing insights within reach. And can help clients explore, define and claim the leading edge ahead of the competition—that's the power of FirstRain.

More information on FirstRain as well as Penny Herscher's blog "A CEO's View on Growing a Company and Mining the Web" are available online at www.firstrain.com

< Back To Resources

Back to Top