EXERPTED FROM THE FORDYCE LETTER February 2005 review of Profiler.

by Mark E. Berger

I realize this product probably sounds familiar as we reviewed Profiler last year when it was know by its original name, Broadlook Engine. The Profiler is now part of the Broadlook suite, still, in my opinion, the Cadillac of Internet research software products. Still in many ways in a class by themselves. I wanted to write again as they have integrated many new features in the latest release of this product. The Profiler starts with a single company or a list of companies and delivers real-time contact information such as, titles, phone numbers, company affiliations, email addresses, and business events such as.

One big improvement in the new version in more accurate data parsing. This is the process where the software extracts information from a website. Another new feature is the ability to automatically pull biographies for search results. I need to mention the scoring systems as well, not a new feature but also much improved. The software ranks your results according to 750+ criteria points. The scoring makes it so that the good contacts rise to the top of the results and the incomplete or incorrect results are separated to the bottom.

For the purposes of this review I chose the ATS industry for research. Last month I wrote a review on another Broadlook product, Ballista, which was used to create a list of about 270 or so companies that market some type of ATS software. I started by importing this huge list into Profiler. I loaded the new plan and started the process. This took literally hours. Keep in mind it is searching each of the 270 sites individually and culling vast amounts of information from each one. Believe it or not, Profiler returned over 4700 potential contacts from these websites but there was no filtering at this point. To make the list more usable I ran the export again, this time requiring at least a name and email address, a good starting point for any contact, and was returned over 560 names and email addresses. Keep in mind this is not some out-of-date, purchased list. This is a real-time list of up to date contacts for you to dive into. All I would have to do now is use the newly created Excel spreadsheet to create a big email list, author a message and hit the send button.

Excel is great but Profiler also exports to over 50 ATS’s and CRM's including PC Recruiter, RESUMATE, BullHorn, Goldmine, ACT!, cBizOne, Gopher, COATS and many others.

When you want some quick information on a specific company…use the Quick Search feature. Type in the company name and website address and get back a list of names, phone numbers and email addresses for many of the company employees.

Anyone with a need to perform this type of research and analysis for their industry specialty or client or client competitors should take one of their demos. They provided an excellent training session prior to using the product, which was a group, Internet-based meeting. Although the product searches the Internet it is installed locally.

Profiler is available on an annual subscription basis for $1,995 per user and is available in a five-user pack for $4,995. Mention you heard about Profiler from the Fordyce Letter for a special pricing offer.