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Showing posts with label gives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gives. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Search Tool gives access to government procurement database. - ThomasNet Industrial News Room
Seattle-based Company Launches New Database Search Tool 'Onvia Navigator' and Shows Solid First-Quarter Results
SEATTLE, May 4 / -- In groundbreaking news for companies nationwide wishing to bolster their sales to government, clients of Onvia (NASDAQ:ONVI) can now direct their own research using Onvia Dominion(TM), Onvia's unparalleled government business sales intelligence database, in tandem with Onvia Navigator, the Seattle-based company's new, state-of-the art search tool. The move by Onvia to make its entire proprietary database -- consisting of millions of government procurement records gathered over five years -- directly searchable, customizable, and readily accessible with a cutting-edge search tool comes as welcome news to the company's 16,400 clients.
Onvia Dominion, a "gold mine" of qualified government contracting intelligence and hard-to-find historical data, is recognized by companies throughout the U.S. as the industry's leading government procurement database. The proprietary, ever-expanding database currently contains over 2.7 million categorized and linked procurement records, across 71,000 purchasing offices, representing 292,000 buyers, and connecting more than 181,000 companies. The breadth and depth of government contracting opportunities and intelligence, contact information, and logistical details for current and historical purchases within the Onvia Dominion database is unequalled - even within government itself. Onvia's reputation for providing cohesive, critical government business intelligence continues to grow, as companies see bottom- line success through researching competitors, exploring new or emerging markets, working to identify potential partners, or building sales pipelines for renewing annual contracts.
The millions of records within the Onvia Dominion database now are directly searchable online through Onvia Navigator, Onvia's new search tool which went live on April 3rd of this year. Onvia Navigator allows user-driven access to Onvia Dominion; it enables users to focus their research by rapidly drilling down into search results, and narrowing their research by groups such as industry, procurement type, contract location, agency, and contract value. Unlimited access to the database allows clients to find information critical to making business decisions that would otherwise be difficult-to-impossible to access without an extensive network of business contacts, a historical archive of government purchasing transactions, and a substantial investment of time and resources.
Prior to Onvia Dominion, companies often were simply unable to find the difficult-to-locate opportunities and necessary strategic intelligence they were seeking. When they were able to locate these opportunities, companies had to meticulously build, archive and sift through government contract information themselves -- missing out on countless opportunities, limiting their scope, and often locating opportunities too late and wasting precious hours of research time in the process.
Businesses nationwide have been quick to reap the rewards offered by Onvia Dominion and Onvia Navigator, such as Dunn Lumber, a Seattle-based, family- owned building materials chain founded in 1907.
"In under one year since subscribing to Onvia, we've increased our government contracts-related business using intelligence from the Dominion Database from $100,000 annually to nearly $3 million," according to Kelly Fox, Dunn Lumber's Store Manager. "In such a short timeframe we've won sizable government contracts and dozens of smaller contracts, as well.
"The Dominion Database and Onvia Navigator have added up to the solution we needed to proactively find the important intelligence we needed and secure contracts," Fox added. "In particular, Onvia Navigator is user-friendly, and it easily lets us customize and tailor our searches of Onvia's database for the many pieces of information we need, such as really solid leads, contact information, and contracts awarded annually. It's also definitely trimmed down on the amount of hours we spend researching; what used to take us 20 hours now takes us only three. We have so much more time now for other areas of our business, such as store management and personnel issues."
The Onvia Navigator search solution is the most recent in a host of user solutions that optimize the valuable intelligence that makes up the Dominion Database. In addition to Onvia Navigator, for example, clients also may easily research owners, buyers, vendors, and project histories for specific government procurement opportunities through Onvia Business Builder. Additionally, the popular Onvia Guide delivers leads and other important procurement data from thousands of federal, state, local and education agencies daily.
"There are literally millions of pieces of valuable data in the Onvia Dominion database that can translate into concrete government contracts for U.S. businesses," noted Onvia CEO Mike Pickett. "There's a reason so many businesses today are teaming with Onvia. What we're doing is different from any other company in the industry. We're offering a way for companies to 'mine' this incredibly large database of government procurement opportunities, which gives them an enormous advantage. They can now very easily tailor their searches for qualified leads, contract information, valuable business-to- business opportunities, even research their competitors -- and save an impressive amount of time in the process. All told, we're offering hundreds of millions of dollars in government contract opportunities for businesses today through our Onvia Dominion database. And that number is just waiting to be capitalized on by our clients."
On the financial front, Onvia has reported first-quarter results and metrics, showing 12 percent growth in annual contract value growth and 7 percent in revenue over the prior year. "Our results clearly reflect that Onvia recognized an unserved market need, and we are strategically tackling that opportunity," according to Pickett. "Companies nationwide were demanding more organized access to all of the government procurement intelligence and opportunities that exist today, and Onvia has been able to provide the solutions they've needed, plain and simple. Our results this quarter are a solid reflection of this dynamic."
About Onvia
Onvia (NASDAQ:ONVI) helps companies identify and win government business across such diverse markets as architecture, engineering, construction, IT/telecom, consulting services, operations and maintenance, office equipment, transportation and medical equipment. More than 16,600 Onvia clients across the United States enjoy significant competitive advantage through access to Onvia's Dominion(TM) database, the most comprehensive source of actionable government procurement intelligence available. With ever-expanding coverage of more than 71,000 federal, state and local purchasing entities, Onvia delivers timely, in-depth information and insight on requests for proposals and quotes, agencies, decision-makers, vendors and project histories to help companies focus their sales resources on the best opportunities and convert them into awards. Onvia was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
CONTACT: Jen Beltz of Infotech Strategies, +1-207-899-2750, jbeltz@itstrategies.com
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Twitter Startup Seppuku Gives Way to a Less-Ironic Actual Business: Tech - Businessweek
Ted Tobiason, Deutsche Bank AG (DBK)’s head of equity capital markets for the technology industry, is doing something that would get most investment bankers fired: tweeting about work.
Tobiason is the only investment banker authorized by the German firm to have a business-related account on Twitter Inc.’s website, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its March 5 issue. While he’s no Ashton Kutcher, who has 9.6 million followers, Tobiason has attracted more than 100, including executives at Silicon Valley startups. His first tweet, in January, predicted that there would be more than 40 initial public offerings by technology companies this year.
“I want venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to know that our bankers love technology, that we are evangelists and not mercenaries,” said Tobiason, 43, who is based in San Francisco. “Tweeting is a way to show that we are part of the game and that we understand the changes in technology and we are using them.”
With his @TedTobiasonDB account, he’s trying to reach more potential clients after Deutsche Bank climbed to second place behind Morgan Stanley last year in Bloomberg’s global ranking of underwriters for technology IPOs, from the fourth spot in 2010. He is a rare bird on Wall Street. Investment banks tend to use social media for marketing and recruiting purposes only.
Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Barclays Plc (BARC), and Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the banks Facebook Inc. (FB) chose to underwrite its $5 billion IPO, ban investment bankers from using Facebook, Twitter and other social media on their work computers. One reason: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires banks to monitor and archive employee communications, and doing so on third-party platforms such as Twitter and Facebook is much harder than on corporate e- mail programs.
Banks sometimes permit financial advisers to have business accounts, and investment bankers can have personal social-media accounts. Those advising technology companies have found ways to use clients’ products to build professional relationships without violating their firms’ policies. Michael Grimes, global co-head of technology investment banking at Morgan Stanley (MS), plays Zynga Inc.’s “CityVille” and “Empires & Allies” games on Facebook with company founder Mark Pincus. Zynga chose Morgan Stanley to lead its IPO last year.
Deutsche Bank started using Twitter in 2008 to promote a golf tournament it sponsored in Boston. Tobiason raised the idea of having a professional account in the fall of 2011 and eventually won approval from the communications and legal and compliance departments.
“He happened to be at the right place at the right time,” said John Tracey, head of the bank’s brand communications for the Americas. The bank expects to say yes to other executives who have asked for permission to tweet, he said.
Tobiason’s tweeting is not off-the-cuff: He can’t write about share offerings Deutsche Bank underwrites, he must clear his tweets through the firm’s communications department and the bank has software that records his posts.
“For Deutsche Bank, it is a great PR and marketing opportunity,” said Joe Ciarallo, vice president of communications at Buddy Media Inc., a New York firm that develops social-media advertising software. The bank should let Tobiason tweet on his own, without prescreening, he said, which slows down his posts and keeps him from being part of the Twitter “conversation.” For companies, Ciarallo said, making full use of Twitter is “all about training and trusting employees.”
Tobiason’s sporadic tweets -- fewer than 40 so far -- focus on the IPO market, commenting on whether the latest offerings are pricing above or below what’s expected. On Feb. 17, when Brightcove Inc., the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based provider of cloud-based services, rose 30 percent on its first day of trading, he wrote “Congrats Brightcove #IPO.”
He also maintains a personal account with fewer followers and only four tweets to date, compared with 38 for his work account. That barrier between personal and professional will eventually go away, and financial services firms will come to fully embrace social media, said Jules Maltz, a general partner at Institutional Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, California- based venture capital fund and a Twitter investor.
“Tobiason is an expert on tech IPOs and the fact that he embraced Twitter to share his notes with the market shows that Deutsche Bank is forward-thinking,” said Maltz, who follows him on Twitter.
That’s exactly the message the firm wants to send after its technology team capitalized on relationships it started in 2008 and 2009, when business in the U.S. was slow and China’s growth presented better opportunities, said Emmanuel Desousa, Deutsche Bank’s global head of Internet and new media banking, based in San Francisco.
Four of the fifteen technology IPOs Deutsche Bank helped manage in 2011 were Internet Chinese companies, such as Tudou Holdings Ltd. and Renren Inc., according to the bank. Deutsche Bank was among advisers of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest e-commerce company, in its $2.3 billion offer to take its Alibaba.com unit private, the biggest announced technology deal so far this year.
“Our social media and e-commerce clients are changing the way the world communicates,” said Desousa. “We have to change the way we communicate to stay relevant as Internet and tech bankers.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Serena Saitto in New York at ssaitto@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Eric Gelman at egelman3@bloomberg.net
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Ten-week program gives entrepreneurs a business crash course - Courier-Journal
Alex Frommeyer and his two partners in Beam Technologies have developed several dental-health products, including a toothbrush paired with a smartphone app that monitors daily brushing and, if you want, sends reports to your dentist.
But besides bright ideas, young high-tech entrepreneurs like Frommeyer, 24, need business training to get their inventions to market quickly.
Frommeyer got a crash course in entrepreneurship through the Kauffman FastTrac TechVenture program, offered by two Louisville business-development organizations ? Nucleus, an initiative of the University of Louisville Foundation, and InnovateLTC, a Louisville center for long-term-care innovation.
Over a 10-week period last spring, he and about 15 other entrepreneurs with startup companies met downtown one night a week to learn from experienced business operators, venture capitalists, business lawyers and others.
They received individual coaching and mentoring, refined their companies? business plans, made valuable contacts, compared notes with their peers, and honed their ?elevator speech? ? a two-minute pitch aimed at possible investors.
Besides education, they met professionals whom in some cases they later hired to provide valuable patenting help or accounting services, or even found angel investors to put money into their companies.
?The connections that you have an opportunity to make are incredible,? said Frommeyer, CEO of Beam.
So was the advice, he said. For example, his FastTrac coach suggested that instead of contracting with a manufacturer to produce one of Beam?s products ? then trying to sell it themselves ? Frommeyer and his partners should consider a licensing deal in which the manufacturer would pay for rights to make and sell the product. Beam would avoid risk and wouldn?t need a sales force.
That ?really redirected the entire business plan, because we decided we should commercialize the product in a completely different way,? Frommeyer said.
Nucleus and InnovateLTC are about to hold their third session of Kauffman FastTrac classes, a program of the entrepreneurship-focused Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City.
Entrepreneurs from 25 startups have graduated from the program, said Vickie Yates Brown, CEO of Nucleus. She said the next two series of classes will include 10 military veterans whose tuition will be paid by a grant from the Obama administration to help veterans start businesses.
Alicia Heazlitt, market research manager for InnovateLTC, said her organization and Nucleus began talking about establishing a new local program for entrepreneurs not long after InnovateLTC was created in 2010. She said they set out to find an offering that would ?really help them go to market quicker, and really arm them with the right information.?
They settled on the Kauffman program, and Nucleus and Innovate LTC employees underwent training to become FastTrac facilitators.
In return for tuition ? $895 per person, or $400 for the second and third person from the same startup ? FastTrac attendees meet and learn from a roster of volunteer speakers and business coaches from fields such as finance, law and marketing.
They include well-known Louisville business names such as venture capitalist Bob Saunders; serial entrepreneur Kent Oyler, who has co-founded 18 business ventures; and Mayor Greg Fischer, a former businessman who co-invented the SerVend ice and beverage dispenser.
?Every week, it?s just sort of a Who?s Who of our community that comes in to say, ?I?m willing to work with you, help you, and try to mentor you,?? Brown said.
She said graduates have later said they couldn?t have become involved with such people on their own, and that such introductions ?made a real difference in helping them to become more successful.?
?It connects you to the people who are really plugged in to the business scene in Louisville. You?re really connected with the movers and shakers,? said Todd Deetsch, who attended the course last fall. ?It?s a great resource.?
Deetsch, president of Psyche Comfort Products, has developed a memory-foam pillow shaped to let mask-wearing sleep apnea patients sleep on their side.
He was trying to build his company based on what he had learned through trial and error in other ventures until he heard of the FastTrac program and enrolled to get more systematic training.
The course took him through the process of launching a business, from developing a concept to satisfying investors? expectations, he said.
He also developed relationships with professionals who have continued to work with his company after the fall sessions ended.
?I think the Kauffman (program) is good because we each speak our own language. There?s the scientists speaking the language of science, and then there?s the businessmen speaking the language of business,? Deetsch said.
?I think Kauffman is kind of a bridge to connect us, so that we can understand each other. That?s what I thought was useful about the program.?
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