Business360
Business360, Inc. is a Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) firm that provides custom research, analytics and writing services. The company was incorporated in New York in 1999. Business360 is notable for being one of the first entirely virtual organizations delivering business services using teams of people working remotely, typically from home.
Business360 Competencies
The company operates in the following service verticals:
Secondary Research and Desk Research
Market Research
Business Analysis
Competitor Intelligence
Financial Analysis
Newsletter Preparation
Trend Analysis and Trend Spotting
Manhattan Real Estate Research
Most of Business360’s work is conducted for clients but it has made publicly available a series of reports analyzing the economic valuation of residential real estate in Manhattan that have gained some press attention. Some of the earlier reports can be downloaded from the website of Miller Samuel, New York’s largest real estate appraiser that provided the data used in the Business360 studies.
Outsourcing Research Surveys
Business360 has worked with UK consulting firm, TFPL, in surveys to assess the extent and value of outsourced research. According to a Business Information Review article called ‘Outsourcing research’:
"These results indicated that organizations are increasingly using outsourcing as part of their service provision strategy and, while very few have outsourced substantial proportions of their research services, about 25 per cent have used outsourcing firms to deal with capacity overload and with research in specialist areas."
Further comment along with possible strategies US-based librarians can take in the face of outsourced research are given in an article in The Library Journal, ‘Focus on Special Libraries: Offshoring Hits Home’, 4/1/2004 by Susan S. DiMattia.
A copy of Business360’s report can be accessed here (information required).
Operations and Financial Performance
The company is private and does not disclose operating or financial details but Jigsaw claims it has 25-100 employees and $1–10 million in sales.