Intelligence Data, a Thomson Financial company, has expanded its intranet distribution capabilities with the launch of Intrascope, a customizable intranet delivery service. The new product provides intranet access to the collections of in-depth research reports available on the company's Intelliscope service. Users are able to customize their search criteria to receive just the needed reports, and have a choice of delivery."Intelligence Data is committed to making our information available to our customers over the platforms of their choice," said Gary Halliwell, president of Intelligence Data. "An increasing number of our customers had requested access to the information available on Intelliscope via their intranet. With Intrascope, they not only can access the research reports on their intranet, but they also can customize their criteria to only receive the reports that meet their needs."
Customers may set up and revise their search criteria by contacting their account representative. Intrascope delivers research reports in Adobe PDF format directly to users' desktops or intranets. This requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. Reports can be delivered by e-mail, as HTML posted on the Intrascope ftp site for client retrieval, or by using Lotus Notes high-level security. The HTML files are supplied with metatags for the citations to help with local indexing.
Intelliscope, first launched in 1998, provides Web access to the Investext database of investment research, the MarkIntel database of market research, and the Industry Insider database with research from trade associations. Intelligence Data also provides Web-based access to the InSite 2 collection of business information, which includes content from more than 2,500 publications and 20 newswire services, as well as profiles on 170,000 companies worldwide. Intelligence Data assumed responsibility for the InSite product line (developed originally by IAC) from the Gale Group in July 1999. The company claims that nearly 70 percent of the business intelligence found on its research services is not available on any other commercial service.
Intelligence Data plans to integrate InSite and Intelliscope by the end of 2000, which would then allow access to the InSite information by Intrascope users. A company representative said they are currently evaluating customer feedback and assessing what is needed. As a first step in standardizing the functionality of the two products, they recently added new save search and alert functions within Intelliscope to streamline the users' search process. These features had already been available within InSite.
According to the company, more than 1,000 corporations worldwide, representing more than 3,000 individual users, currently access Intelligence Data's products via the Web at http://www.intelligencedata.com, or through a customized data feed for inclusion into corporate intranets. At the time of the announcement, the company reported that 15 corporate sites were already using Intrascope for about 1,500 users.
