Start Your (Search) Engines!

Fifteen minutes of searching the Web saved Paul Kaminski $20,000. This past February Kaminski, 50, the purchasing manager of Millipore Corp., a filter manufacturer in Bedford, Massachusetts, placed an order for work-flow software to help 800 employees share information. The supplier promised to cut him a promotional price if he bought right away. But before he signed a contract, Kaminski logged onto the supplier's Web site. And there, among the staff pages and the company overview, he discovered an announcement that caused him to put the deal on hold: the supplier was about to release a new version of the software for 41% less than the so-called promotional price.

"All you need is one successful hit," says Kaminski. "A savings of $20,000 is well worth a few minutes spent digging through the Internet."

Let's get real: You're not going to save thousands of dollars for every hour spent searching the Web. The Web might be a vast reservoir of facts and figures, but who in business has the time to find that vital piece of information that can make a real difference? Who has the time to learn Boolean logic or analyze the finer points of searching on AltaVista? We don't. That's why we've assembled tools and strategies from three savvy businesspeople who've learned to search smart. On your next lunch break, hop on the Web and follow their advice. Their tips might not save you $20,000, but they'll certainly spare you a repeat episode of "lost in cyberspace."

Researching Emerging Markets

WebHead: Rita Gildea, 41, international marketing manager for EMC2 in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. EMC2 is a $2.3 billion data-storage-device manufacturer whose Symmetrix enterprise storage systems are sold out of 50 offices in 26 countries. "I don't find many worthwhile statistics on the Internet," says Gildea, "but I do find research that helps me make educated assumptions about breaking into a new market."

Research Challenge: Preparing to crack Argentina's emerging market for data storage devices. That means searching out easily accessible numbers such as the country's population, GDP, and inflation rate -- plus hard-to-find figures such as the number of mainframe computers that are up and running in Argentina.

Strategy #1 The shortest route is not necessarily a straight line.

Gildea began by keying in an obvious search phrase, "Argentina and mainframes," and launched AltaVista http://www.altavista.digital.com . Not surprisingly, the search engine bounced back 30,000 useless hits. So she abandoned the direct route and looked along a few back roads.

Gildea cruised to the Web site of the Argentine embassy in Washington, and the embassy linked her to an IT society in Argentina. In 15 minutes she found exactly what she needed: the number of mainframe, mid-range, and open systems installed in the country. She also searched the pages of computer companies such as IBM. These pages helped her to estimate the number of mainframes sold in Argentina and to flesh out the market's size. With both searches, she didn't seek out the data directly -- she thought about sites that might have what she needed and browsed through them. Thirty minutes of searching for the right source is worth hours of sifting through convoluted search-engine results.

"It's pretty daunting when AltaVista delivers 30,000 hits that mention Argentina," says Gildea. "Scrolling through them would be a real waste of my time."

Strategy #2 Let someone else do the searching for you.

Fed up with traditional search engines, Gildea turned to Info Wizard http://www.infowizard.com . For $7, InfoWizard sent out its intelligent agents to glean articles about information technology in Argentina.

InfoWizard scoured the Web and hundreds of databases that are off-limits to most search engines. Ten minutes later, Gildea received an email telling her where to find her articles on InfoWizard's Web site. In another minute, she was rewarded with the twin blessings of low quantity and high quality. She pulled out some useful bits of news -- such as the extent to which Argentina's health-care industry relies on information technology -- with almost no investment of her own time. "It eliminated a lot of junk," says Gildea, "which made my research move a lot more quickly."

Coordinates: Rita Gildea, gildea_rita@isus.emc.com