Business Research: Company & Industry Research

MarketLine Advantage is a database that provides extensive industry and company information. This resource is an excellent option when viewing SWOT Analyses, finding company financial information, and evaluating industry statistics and data.

To view company information, choose the "Companies" tab at the top of the screen.

Then, use the search menu on the left-hand side of the screen to enter the name of the company you are interested in evaluating and click the search button. You can also refine results by Industry & Geography, Company Attributes, and Financial information.

Here, a list of companies matching your search term will be displayed. Choose which company you would like view. Here, a company overview page will be displayed. This page contains a Company Summary, Key Stats, Company Revenue, and Company News.

To export the company profile into a PDF or Word Document, choose the "Export Section" option in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. To view more detailed information, look for the menu on the left-hand side of the screen. 

From this menu on the left-hand side of the screen, you can view:

• Detailed company Financials, including revenue, profit, and assets
• Current company News, indexed from newspapers, magazines, and trade publications
• Information about company Peers and competitors
• Research Reports, including industry profiles, case studies, value & supply chain analysis, and analyst insights.
• Information on Deals, including M&A, corporate venturing, and partnerships.
• Detailed company SWOT Analysis

In order to view Industry information in MarketLine, go to the "Analysis" tab at the top of the screen and choose "Industry Analysis."

Here, you can choose to view Industry Profiles and Archived Industry Profiles, Industry Chartbooks, Industry Case Studies, and Value & Supply Chain Analysis.

Passport Express provides both statistics and analysis of industries, economies, and consumers. This database is especially helpful if you are interested in viewing market shares and industry growth.

To evaluate an industry, choose the "Industries" tab towards the top of the screen. After you choose an industry, you will be given more options to choose on which sector of the industry to evaluate.

After choosing an industry sector, an industry overview screen will appear. This screen has analyses of the industry and data dashboards, statistics, and reports.

To view an analysis of the industry and future opportunities in the market, use the drop down menus beneath "Explore Analysis" to view Briefings, Country Reports, Datagraphics, Global Company Profiles, Local Company Profiles, and more. Limit categories by industry sector, or use geography to limit information to a specific region.

Once the limits of the analysis have been selected, an executive summary of the industry will appear here, as well as a summary of key trends and sales information. To view industry data, choose the "Datagraphics" tab.

View the data as a table, or export the data visualizations by clicking the export options in the upper right-hand corner. You can also choose the "Download" tab to download all of the information in the industry analysis as a report.

From the industry overview page, you can also choose to look at industry Statistics, or view interactive data Dashboards.

In Statistics, you can view Market Sizes, Company Shares, Brand Shares, and Retail Channels. In Dashboards, you can view Consumers, Forecast Models, Industry Overviews, and more.

For statistics on Brand Shares, choose this option in the dropdown menu in "Explore Statistics." 

Here, you can view the market share of different brands by retail volume within your chosen sector. Filter by Geography, Year, Category, or GBO by clicking the filter icons for each category. 

If the company you would like to evaluate is privately owned or traded, you will need to use the PrivCo database to locate company information.

When accessing the database, if you are prompted to sign in, select "Direct Access."

You'll find the search tool for PrivCo at the top of the page:

After searching for a company, the main company web page will appear. At the top of the company's web page, there are several options on what information to view:

• The Overview will tell you basic information, included when the company was founded, a company description, and the primary company contacts.
• The Financials section provides key information about the valuation of the company, its income, balance sheet, and cash flow.
• The Funding section details information about investors and investor type.
• Deals lists the company's deals by date, buyer, target, type, and price.
• The Signals tab assigns a database-specific growth score to the company and information about the Employee & Revenue Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

Reference USA is a database that can be especially useful if you are interested in evaluating small business and local businesses.

To search Businesses in the United States, choose "U.S. Businesses." If you are interested in evaluating a business in the healthcare sector, choose "U.S. Healthcare" instead.

Search by company name using the Quick Search option. Narrow your results by entering the city and state where the business is located.

Alternatively, you can use the Custom Search feature to view all of the businesses within a geographical region by county, zip code, neighborhood, or address. You can also limit your search by business size or ownership.

If you search by company name, a list of the company's locations will appear. Choose which company you would like to evaluate.

Inside of the report, you'll find useful information such as:

• Industry Profiles that will list the company's SIC and NAICS codes
• Business Demographics that will provide information on the number of employees, sales, etc.
• A Management Directory that provides information on company officials
• A Nearby Businesses tab to find other businesses located close by
• A Competitors Report that will list competitors within close geographical range