Hart of the Matter

One of the big changes is access to capital. We acquired two companies in the first five months of new ownership. In February, we acquired Betten, a Dutch news service, and in May we bought Generate Inc. These two acquisitions are examples of access to capital that may not have been possible under a standalone Dow Jones.

Betten is now integrated with the EMEA Dow Jones Newswire, but Generate has really changed things a lot in the organization. With Generate, we were buying content-millions of private and public company records and executive biographies-patented Web-crawling technology that enables us to harvest information about companies and executives and map that information, and triggering technology that notifies you of an event... all focused on lead generation and driving revenues. This notion of trigger and mapping capabilities is central to enhancements we can make to provide wealth managers with unique content and capabilities.

We used the Generate acquisition to add another business unit within the Enterprise Media Group. So now we are Content Technology Solutions, Indexes, Financial Information Services, and BRI-Business and relationship intelligence, a group focused on sales and business development from a role-specific perspective.

Dow Jones also owns the WSJ, Barron's, and MarketWatch, as well as the VentureSource and Private Equity Source databases and newsletters, and we take advantage of that rich content collection across Dow Jones, so... while we serve different audiences, there is a common understanding that our news organization is in a place to deliver the best global business news available. So we will compete in that area.

The second thing, even more interesting, is changing client demands. One size doesn't fit all. A market data terminal isn't right for everyone. Many companies don't want to pay for market data terminals for every person, especially because they are trying to differentiate themselves. So if you're looking at the investment banking, investment management, sales and trading or wealth management groups within an organization, you don't want to buy the same platform as your competitor.

In the case of wealth, you might want information about a client on the phone to pop up on screen, with information about their portfolio, complemented with news, information about their areas of interest, also complemented with news, because all this information makes it easy for the financial advisor to sound prepared when they talk with the client. But in addition to that basic information, there's also the need for information about what the firm recommends they should talk about with this particular client, based on their profile, their age, whether they have kids-maybe going to college-their demographic and location. To really be able to get the banker or financial adviser, we need to customize the information in front of them, based on their job function.

So will we have to work harder? We'll just have to work differently.

So for an investment banker looking at a story about a loss at GM... that triggers a page of who is involved in automotive, and which bankers internally cover the automotive sector, so who should get this information.... And if you click on GM, you get a link to information on the company and fundamentals on GM.

Or that same news story could trigger a dashboard for a wealth manager who will be looking at clients with holdings in GM. They look at their client radar, and can see which clients are heavily into GM, and can call those clients to talk to them about options for their investment strategy.

Then they get internal information from your CRM system about the client-his portfolio, investment strategy, asset allocation, estate planning, and then personal interests. So they don't need to know everything about each client, but they do know that news about GM affects the portfolio of some clients, and they need to reach out to them.

As for the news sites, lots of people say to me "Why would people pay for content? Isn't it all available for free on the Web?" Well, free Web sites have been out there for 10 years now, and yes, Google is a part of our culture and a great resource. But it's not going to replace the reputable news content that qualified journalists create and that people are willing to pay for-especially in financial services and the global business environment, where people are paid to make informed decisions. Dow Jones' revenue has grown while Google has been around, and Google's revenue has grown-it's two different worlds that can sit side by side and complement each other. The key is that we think about workflow... and in future presenting information that an individual needs, based on their job function and events in the marketplace that are going to effect their ability to be productive. And that includes free Web content, as well as high-value, commercial-based content like Dow Jones news and research reports.

Sure, there's a lot of content freely available, but you're going to pay for the quality content. You can't be the last person to know about something. If you're a wealth manager, your clients depend on you to be in front. If you're a banker, the future of your business depends on you being in front and being able to make contact with people and impress them with your knowledge of what's happening in the marketplace. That's how you gain their trust.