The general environment
in which you work, business information, is of key
importance in any developed country. When you look
how the flow of information was treated before 1989
in Eastern Europe, the importance of this is easily
understandable. Could you indicate how business
information is helping business development in Russia
and how business information supply is developing
in itself?
I think it is very interdependent. I remember
when I first came to Russia in 1996: it was a
rare thing to find in the companies an Internet
connection of good quality. Even well established
companies had one dial up line and were confident
they had Internet.
Now when we go to our clients we see very good technical
solutions and worldwide connections with other companies.
Internet communication has expanded dramatically
over the last five to six years and of course we
get a lot of feedback from our customers, both on
ISI system and on the services we provide.
This gives us a lot of confidence that the things
we are doing here are right and this is not just
an easy chat. I cannot think of any industry or
business here that could survive without business
intelligence. We position our company as a knowledge
management service.
ISI have customers in the banking sector, in finance,
in multinational companies doing business here,
lawyers, researchers, embassies and consultancies.
Even when speaking about the media, we have the
Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and Russian
and foreign magazines that have access to this business
information and knowledge.
Russian companies are already reaching the level
of western companies and they understand that they
have to pay for knowledge.
You have been around since 1994 that is quite a
long time. Could you indicate to our readers a little
bit about Internet Securities' background and its
development in Russia. ?
Yes, it is a rather interesting story. The company
was founded in Pittsburgh in 1994 and the founder
- Gary Miller ? was a Harvard MBA graduate. It was
a simple idea to use the internet in '93 and '94
and, actually, internet was just starting in the
USA. I was at University and we had one computer
in our library with a sign - <<NO MORE THAN
15 MINUTES ON INTERNET SEARCHES>>. Now you
can go to any university or business school and
have hundreds of computers with Internet access.
At that point, there was only one computer with
an Internet connection so the idea was to go to
emerging markets, collect information, process it,
and than put it together and offer it to the customers.
There was a question of finding investors to put
their money into the idea. Garry has found the money
and started his company. I joined ISI in 1996 in
Boston and moved to Russia in 1997 to push sales
here.
Was it also the year when the Russian operations
started?
That was in 1996. Melissa Burch came here to establish
relations with all of the data providers in 1996
and, a few months later, ISI got our first customer
here. It was Ernst and Young. The service used to
be much simpler and every year we worked hard to
improve it. Now we have more than two hundred customers
in Moscow and we also have customers in Saint Petersburg,
in Novosibirsk and in Siberia. From Moscow office
we cover Russia, Ukraine, Caucasus and Central Asia
markets.
Could you tell our readers about your sales
structure ?
The structure is pretty simple. We have identified
five topics that every business, whatever it is,
should be aware of. They are economics, macroeconomics,
financial markets, legal developments, industries
and companies. And current affairs, of course.
We decided to collect all printed media and the
most reliable wires in one place. Bloomberg or
the Reuter' wires are too expensive. We charge
500 US dollars for every single user-terminal
that is two to four times less than prominent
data integrators charge for their service. and
is very convenient and user-friendly.
When somebody starts working with ISI as a prospect
he usually like convenient and user-friendly interface
at once. But after a couple of months of day-by-day
use of ISI service this first positive impression
gets stronger and the customer usually became a
dedicated user. It is a pleasure for us, of course,
when somebody decides to remain with us. An annual
customers' retention rate of 85 - 89 percent is
the best manifestation of ISI valuation by the customers.
It is up to the customer to decide whether or not
to become an ISI user. But let me give you one example
of calculation.
Average employee generated income in the Fortune
100 companies is about $1,75 - $2,75 per minute.
An employee that surfs the Internet for an hour
without relevant results of the search strips the
company from $100 of potential income.
We have a very good IntelliFind Search Engine and
a clear structure on how to find what you need.
The customers after brief acquaintance with the
engine abilities can do the search quickly and effectively.
EMIS is an outstanding example of what
good design and intelligence can do to overcome
information overload. |
You indicated that
the problem that existed in the mid 90's in Russia
was to promote this idea of paying for information,
which was a very new commodity to the local market.
How did you handle this?
For the first year, 90% of our businesses were
non-residents. We tried, of course, to sell to
the Russian companies. But they had a different
approach: we do not need information and we will
not pay for it. But market environment was a steadily
developed and Russian banks and financial institutions
as well as major companies started hiring foreign
experts. And ISI began to sell to the Russian
companies as well. Now forty or fifty percent
of our clients are Russian companies: exporters,
oil companies and legal companies.
Now you offer a different service if to compare
with the early years of ISI.
What's the difference?
Sure it is totally different service with a verity
of options and sub-services to make customers life
easier.
The core part of ISI service is EMIS that includes
over 5,700 English and local language sources,
including daily newspapers, newswire services,
newsletters and company reports, macroeconomic
analyses, market and currency reports, business
publications, central banks, statistical bureaus,
local ministries, trade councils, business associations,
government agencies, and stock exchanges.
The specific sources that EMIS aggregates are high
quality and well known. Some examples are Economist
Intelligence Unit (EIU), Investext, Standard &
Poors, and BBC. In addition, EMIS uses a wide range
of local language sources that include local language
newspapers, wire services, and research firms.
Customer's approach to the service differs on scope,
precision and continuity model it uses to achieve
the tasks set. That is why along with full set of
tools and services you could chose just an Email
Alert service or IntelliNews Reports, or adjust
your homepage to the MyISI settings to process only
personally selected data and so on.
E-mail Alert lets the customer to identify topics
and companies that he regularly wants to know
about. He can make up a special request list for
his e-mail and identify a time when he wants to
receive the information. Anywhere there appears
some article or Excel table, it will be sent to
his e-mail box. That also means that if nothing
appears he is not bothered so people can travel,
then come back and see that a week ago something
was mentioned in Red Herring magazine. This is
this E-mail Alert service. People like it more
and more; they do basic research on the databases
about things that they want to follow up. E-mail
Alert will always find them in any point of the
world.
Another service that we produce is an editorial
service. The Intellinews Report, for example (if
you go on-line you will see it in the right corner).
There you see what countries and what kind of reports
(daily, weekly, monthly, country reports, industry
reports, etc.) are covered. Our reporters are mostly
from eastern European countries - Yugoslavia, Macedonia,
Ukraine, Russia. This is, of course, a different
division - The Intellinews Division. And customers
like it. We send these reports to money centers
in a condensed, two-page format that a customer
can subscribe to. These are the most important stories
from the emerging market.
Another very interesting development is the increasing
development of the regions in Russia and the increasing
needs for information in the regions.
I would never have believed that the Urals Mining
Plants Holding would come to us for our services
but the Marketing and PR department needed our services
for their research and they are now very happy.
They had no idea that something like this service
existed but some of the consultancies in Moscow
suggested they subscribe to ours. This is mostly
how we get our customers. REUTERS has a similar
service but consultancies find us better than them.
What has been your greatest achievement and greatest
challenge in these years?
It was quite easy job to sell ISI package in 1997,
even though the service was not so sophisticated
then. It was new and people did not understand the
difference between Internet and Internet Securities.
It was funny that a few of our first customers were
subscribing to our services for a year or so and
they actually thought they were connected to the
Internet. When I discovered that, I explained to
them that there is another thing apart from us -
the big Internet, where you can go to Yahoo. They
said they did not want that. They were happy using
us.
So, you can imagine that during the first years
it was very tough to speak to people, even to
our data providers, to magazines. Par example,
we went to The Moscow Times and said that we wanted
to have the electronic copy of the magazine on
ISI service. They said they didn't have electronic
copy - just hard copy. So our technicians went
there and solved the issue with them. The Moscow
Times had no web site at that point and being
in America the only way to read this paper was
to subscribe to ISI service. Only then they started
to think about creating their own web site. So
we were also teaching others to do these things.
Now it is easier because after us lot of small businesses
started doing the same. There are now a number of
major companies including REUTERS and Factiva that
followed the ISI model as Information Integrators.
To be a pioneer in the business and to retain
leading position as emerging markets information
provider it is an achievement and a challenge
that one could be proud of.
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