Entrepreneurship. Rhonda Abrams
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Gather background information about prospective customers and suppliers.
Investigate potential strategic alliances by finding companies whose services or products complement yours.
ENTREPRENEUR’S WORKSHEET
Types of Company Information to Research
From this list of suggested company topics, select which issues you will focus on.
☐ Names of the company:
— Official corporate name
— Parent/subsidiary companies
— Product names
— Trademarks
☐ Company information:
— Headquarters and locations
— Names of officers, executives, and staff
— Press releases
— Product announcements
☐ Products/services of a company:
— Leading product lines
— Pricing
— Features
— Distribution methods
— Patents/copyrights and other intellectual property
☐ Financial condition of the company, including:
— Current revenues and profit figures
— Historical sales, financial performance, and growth rate
— Stock performance/market value
— Sales by product lines
☐ Other key issues:
— Is the company publicly traded?
— Customers/client list/testimonials
— Legal/regulatory compliance issues
TIPS FOR FINDING COMPANY INFORMATION
1. Determine the correct name or names of the company, including:
Its official corporate name. A company’s corporate name may differ from the one you’re familiar with. For instance, the corporate name for United Airlines is UAL Corporation.
The name of its parent or its subsidiary company or companies. Some corporations own many subsidiary companies. Bloomingdale’s department store, for instance, is a subsidiary of Macy’s—its parent company.
Its brand/product names. Often you will know a product’s name but not the name of the company that makes it. For example, Proctor & Gamble makes Crest toothpaste, Tide detergent, and Iams pet food.
See pages 66 and 70
2. Make sure you spell any names correctly when entering them into keyword searches.
3. Check the company’s website. Look for an About Us section and a Press/Media section, which usually feature background information about the company and its officers, press releases, and recent news articles. Also look for product information and lists of clients and customers or testimonials.
4. Learn whether the company you research is public or private.
5. Identify the U.S. state in which the company is legally incorporated (if applicable). You can typically find the names of corporate officers and company contact information through the Secretary of State’s office in the state where the company you’re researching is incorporated.
5 tips for organizing your data
1. Use the most recent data you can find; printed information is often at least two years old, and a lot can change in that time.
2. Translate data into units rather than dollars or other currency whenever possible. Due to inflation, financial information may not give you consistent information from year to year.
3. Give the most reliable source the most credence. Generally, the larger the group sampled for information, or the more respected the organization that conducted the research, the more trustworthy the numbers you collect.
4. Integrate data from one source to another in order to draw conclusions. But make sure the information comes from the same time period and is consistent; small variations can lead to vastly inaccurate results.
5. Use the most conservative figures. Naturally, you’ll be tempted to paint the brightest picture possible, but such information often leads to bad business decisions.
Evaluate Your Data
You now have a lot of data—perhaps more than you can actually use. How do you select the information that’s most relevant and most accurate and that will best help you meet your goals?
For instance, you may find one source that says an industry is growing at 5 percent each year, another that says it’s growing at 2 percent, and another claiming the industry is actually shrinking. How do you know which piece of data to trust—and to use?
Don’t imagine that you can choose to present only the data that supports your conclusions. That’s not only a terrible way to make business decisions; it’s also likely that an investor will have access to the same data as you and will be quick to point out that things may not be as rosy as you make them seem. Prove that you’ve done your homework by showing the range of data available, even if it’s not always as favorable as you might like. Your thoroughness and honesty will add credibility to your plan.
You must apply some critical analytical skills when you evaluate the data you’ve collected. For every piece of information you collect, you must consider: 1) the source and 2) the time period.
ENTREPRENEUR’S WORKSHEET
Research Questions
Formulate a general research question about the type of business you plan to start. As guidelines, look at the two examples of the environmentally friendly dry cleaners and the medical records management applications (see pages 57–58). Now, make a list of questions for each of the following areas that logically follow or challenge that statement. Use the questions below as a guide.
Consider the source
Contrary to popular belief, sometimes numbers do lie. That’s why, when evaluating data, you must always consider its source. Remember, the source is not necessarily the website or database where you found your information but rather the entity that did the primary research and compiled the data you found.
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