MBA Ignite Library Resources and Research Using Business Source Complete for business research – Part 2 Module 2 – Researching companies Olivia Olivares, Associate Professor University Library, SCSU Spring 2018

Now let’s look at the other option for searching for company information: “Company Profiles.” These can be found under the “More” option in the blue menu bar at the top of the page.

The “Company Profiles” link takes you to a searchable database of in-depth profiles from business intelligence companies. Most of these will be from MarketLine; however, some medical companies show short profiles from Medtrack, a business intelligence firm specializing in health/medical companies.

A search for pepsi takes us to the MarketLine report for PepsiCo, Inc A search for pepsi takes us to the MarketLine report for PepsiCo, Inc. Click “MarketLine Report” for the full company profile.

Most MarketLine profiles are fairly short – between 10 and 60 pages, so they’re easy to read. If you’re pressed for time, you can print or e-mail them to yourself using the icons on the right side of the page.

The table of contents will tell you what each profile offers The table of contents will tell you what each profile offers. MarketLine company profiles are a great way to find and save all the information you need. While MarketLine does a great job of covering publicly held companies, there’s less information on privately held companies, unless they’re very large. In such cases, the best way to find information about the company is through an article search.

Articles about companies can get you information about companies that might not have been included in the company profile. Let’s say we’re interested in PepsiCo’s sustainability initiatives. Search first for “pepsi.” Note that the database will suggest company names, like “pepsico inc.” It’s always best to do a search for company by exact name, so we’ll select it.

To ensure that you find articles about the company and not articles about the soft drink, specify “CO Company Entity” in the pulldown menu headed “Select a Field. Note that you can also search by geographic term, so that you could look for articles about PepsiCo’s operations by country, or by NAICS code, so you could find industry profiles.

A company entity search retrieves 7,423 articles, industry profiles, market research reports, and more.

Adding “sustainability” to the search brings the results down to 64 – a nice, close search. You can retrieve the articles by clicking “HTML Full Text” (1) or “PDF Full Text” (2) where available. When neither of those options are available, click the “FindIt!” icon (3) to see if the article is available in a different database or must be requested via interlibrary loan. 3 1 2

QUESTIONS? Olivia Olivares, Associate Professor University Library, Miller Center 140E Saint Cloud State University oolivares@stcloudstate.edu 320-308-4822 Office Hours, Fall 2018 Monday, 2:30 – 4:00 pm Thursday, 2:00 – 4:00 pm At the Reference Desk, Fall 2017 Tuesday, 10:00 am – noon Wednesday, 4:00 – 6:00 pm 320-308-4772