InfoUSA: Converting Data into Actionable Intelligence

Amit Khanna, President

"What gets measured gets managed.” These words appropriately describe the importance of data for a business. Every organization, irrespective of its size or nature of operations, needs data and the ability to analyze it to make business decisions and devise strategies. InfoUSA’s President Amit Khanna firmly agrees to this and adds, “Decisions are only as good as the data you relied on to make them.” Headquartered in Nebraska, InfoUSA, a division of Infogroup, helps companies make smart decisions by making sure their data is accurate, complete, and up to date. Fundamentally a data company, InfoUSA utilizes their data and data hygiene capabilities to empower the clients’ applications including top technology and search engines providers to power their solutions.

The company offers data and analytics capabilities to help businesses in a number of areas including sales, marketing, credit, procurement, site selection, etc. Powered by a database of all businesses and households in the country, InfoUSA can profile existing customers, identify best prospects to target, track responders and a lot more. InfoUSA can also help its clients design and execute multi-channel marketing campaigns using email marketing, direct marketing, and online marketing campaigns. These solutions are widely availed by businesses to streamline and improve their business strategies and marketing & sales operations.

One of the key technologies employed by the company is Data Axel— an engine that keeps the information up to date. For instance, in the U.S., about two million businesses come into existence every year, and the same number of businesses goes out of business the same year. Similarly, about fifteen million household’s move every year.

InfoUSA helps companies make smart decisions by making sure their data is accurate, complete, andup to date

The company’s 350 full-time compilation team along with their proprietary Data Axel technology keeps track of all these changes and provides complete and updated information about them. Furthermore, InfoUSA also licenses their data and allows customers to build their own solutions and capabilities based on their business requirements.

Because businesses need to have accessibility to data to make intelligent and productive decisions InfoUSA ensures that its clients get access to the desired data through whichever format they prefer, including excel and CSV. They also have a real-time API which enables its clients to pull the information in real time. InfoUSA also provides a platform for its customers to perform data analytics and offers hygiene and enhancement solutions to ensure their customer’s data is kept clean, complete and up to date.

InfoUSA helps a multitude of businesses to boost sales, clean and update databases, and devise business strategies. One of these clients, which reaped great benefits out of their association with InfoUSA, is a large national retail company which needed support to grow their business and figure out their best prospects to target. InfoUSA analyzed their profile of customers, identified their best prospects for marketing across different channels, and provided a platform to execute and analyze their marketing campaigns. The prospects were also made available within their CRM, so sales people in the field could proactively contact them. The solution enabled the client to focus on the best opportunities and coordinate their efforts across marketing and field sales, while enabling real-time visibility to management.

The ability to analyze and act on data is imperative to businesses. Thus, a large segment of companies are currently standardizing their business information on CRM platforms and even adopting MDM (Master Data Management) to link all of their critical data together. InfoUSA believes their solutions are a perfect fit for these environments and will make BI and analytics easier to execute. They are also looking forward to extending capabilities to help with machine learning and artificial intelligence. The company also continues to expand its offerings in programmatic marketing to ensure that the right message reaches the right individual and is synchronized across multiple channels.