The gClick toolbar, which Generate launched last year with content partners including Hearst, Bizjournals, Media News Group, and Philly.com, is now available to users of Dow Jones SalesWorks and Dow Jones Companies & Executives.

gClick "is about leveraging the power of the web and tying that back to an investment someone has made in premium content," says Frank Filippo, executive director, product, of Dow Jones Business & Relationship Intelligence. The gClick button, which is a free download for clients, allows users to click to view a landing page with basic information about the companies mentioned on the previous site and from which they can link out to more detailed content.

"We hang off of that landing page a great deal of additional information—regulatory filings, corporate hierarchies—which is mostly information not available on the free web. We’ve taken something available on the free web and taken it to something not available on the free web," explains Filippo. "We’re linking them back to a product that they’ve already paid for."

gClick can be used in conjunction with virtually any webpage, including content from press releases, blogs, SEC filings, corporate sites, or news sources, and the button can be customized for clients, although Filippo says there has not been much demand for branding. The idea is to give easy access to a wealth of premium content that would otherwise be time-consuming to traipse around the web and collect. Generate’s relationship mapping expertise, combined with Dow Jones’ access to content, makes it a powerful solution that shows not just facts and figures but affiliations among entities and individuals.

"The trend in information [gathering] is around making the voluminous amount of content manageable, searchable, easier to find," says Filippo. "It’s not about entering a term into a box and getting back a hundred thousand responses."

"I think it’s a pretty big step forward," Jim Dickie, analyst and managing partner with CSO Insights, says of the enhanced offerings, which he likens to giving users a digital research assistant. Although the internet is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to available information, the smart search technology behind this particular product makes it appealing to Dickie. "I don’t want to know everything; I want to know what’s important," he says.

"When salespeople are trying to call prospects for the first time, they need to be far more educated than ever before, because the prospect is," Dickie continues. "There is a ton of information available now. What they want to know is: How can you help me? Not just about pricing or names of products."

According to a study by CSO Insights, the number one problem for sales professionals is converting a lead into a first call, but coming in just behind that is an increase in "no decisions." The enhanced gClick can be of quantifiable value then if it helps salespeople build a business case for closing the deal or, just as important, for why a particular lead should be dropped. "If I can go in and do a better job of initial investigation and say, ‘see, this really isn’t a great fit,’ it gives me information to qualify people in and also qualify people out," explains Dickie, who adds that the products would be an asset for recruiters, venture capitalists, and anyone whose job requires them to make well-researched, educated decisions.

The gDaily industry newsletter, also initially launched in 2007 by Generate, is a targeted digital offering that provides an overview of the latest news by market segment. As part of the enhancement, gDaily has now been extended to the Dow Jones SalesWorks and Dow Jones Companies & Executives products. The newsletters include content culled from more than 25,000 media outlets and 3 million blogs; and they enable readers to stay on top of not only general industry news but also the movements of competitors and new market opportunities.

Newsletters cover any of roughly 30 industries including Banking & Securities, Commercial Real Estate, Life Sciences, Media & Entertainment, Oil & Gas, State Government, Technology, and Telecommunications.

Filippo declined to give specific numbers, but he says that it’s "a very, very reasonably priced offering" with a flexible pricing model based on the types of industries selected for inclusion, tiers of users, and how often a client would like the newsletters delivered—most opt for once daily, morning delivery, which is the default delivery schedule.

In the launch announcement, Tom Aley, senior vice president and managing director of the Dow Jones Business & Relationship Intelligence unit and Generate co-founder, acknowledged that today’s business professionals spend the bulk of their time traveling or with clients, leaving them "little time to conduct in-depth research—yet they’re under constant pressure to stay on top of the industries they are targeting. With this novel combination of extraction technology and business intelligence, we’re empowering users to stay on top of the latest market knowledge without slowing them down."

The enhancements to the gClick and gDaily products were first out of the gate for the Business & Relationship Intelligence group "primarily because of their value to the existing Dow Jones customer base," explains Filippo, adding that this is "Phase 1a" and there is more to come from the Business & Relationship Intelligence unit.