Mining company networks for marketing insights and sales leads

Traditional sales support systems offer an insular view of companies, providing information on a target company and that company alone. This view presents each company as if it operates independently from its surroundings. However, a company can be more effectively evaluated when it is viewed not in isolation, but in the context of its network of customers and suppliers. Here we describe a system developed for GE Capital that enables sales representatives to analyze a target company's network of business relationships to gain deeper insights into its status. Mining company networks enables novel approaches to generating sales leads by taking advantage of information about the health and status of the suppliers and customers to which the company is linked. The system allows sales reps to visualize company networks and provides a variety of filters and views to mine the network information. This gives the sales reps deeper insights into their prospect pool, enabling them to be more knowledgeable and generate more actionable sales leads.