Jan. 15, 2008 – The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) has established a strategic presence in the emerging business-to-business social networking space, announcing today the addition of Boston-based Contact Networks, and its enterprise relationship management (ERM) product, ContactNet, to its portfolio of business intelligence and relationship management services for legal and other professional markets.
ContactNet, the first and most powerful social networking application built specifically for corporate environments, automatically uncovers, aggregates and prioritizes a firm's internal relationships with external business contacts. Now, determining "who knows whom" is as simple as doing a Google-like search, with no data entry or ongoing database maintenance.
"Contact Networks positioned itself as the leader in this space by virtue of its unique product attributes, its strong team and its proven ability to add value for its customers. With the backing of a trusted brand name like Thomson, this already-thriving product is poised for explosive growth," noted Thomson Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Mike Wilens. "Thomson recognizes the emerging trend of ERM/B2B social networking, and with the addition of this offering to our services we are setting out to help organizations make better use of their relationship assets."
To deliver quick, accurate and comprehensive search results, ContactNet casts a wide net, pulling data from address books, e-mail logs, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications and other enterprise systems. ContactNet then pinpoints search matches with multiple layers of filtering and de-duplication technology, coupled with proprietary algorithms that analyze more than 37 unique variables. The result is a searchable database where the deepest connections always appear first, which is ideal for:
• New-business prospecting
• Referrals
• Talent recruitment
• Cross-selling
• Event invitations
• Competitive intelligence
"Relationships are the lifeblood of every law firm and professional service organization. Based on customer research, we know that up to 85 percent of outside contacts communicating with these firms are never entered into the company address book," said Geoffrey Hyatt, founder and CEO of Contact Networks.
"ContactNet makes it easy to understand firm-wide relationships, without additional manual data entry or maintenance. It's a simple yet powerful application that changes the way these firms develop business and market. The social networking wave is just reaching the corporate market and joining forces with Thomson will allow us to bring our extended vision to market very quickly."
More than 50 organizations, including several Am Law 100 firms as well as financial institutions and consulting firms are already using ContactNet. It can be used as a stand-alone application or as part of an integrated West Monitor Suite, which provides critical market and business development intelligence to support law firm operations. It also can be embedded into a variety of platforms including intranets, extranets and CRM systems.
"Professional services firms know that client relationships are an enormous business asset," said Mark Messing, marketing head for Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the leading global law firm. "But it's often underappreciated that failing to leverage all the relationships within an organization can also be an enormous liability. ContactNet makes customer information more visible to the business development process - and increases its value - which is critical when you consider the millions of dollars in potential business that never materialize because of relationships that are unknown."
Contact Networks, www.contactnetworks.com, will retain its headquarte