GMB Research

As an information service provider, GMB Publishing focuses its particular brand of business information on the world’s emerging markets, such as the former Soviet bloc or North African nations. These researched reports, commissioned by the company’s London offices, comprise on average 2,000 words with accompanying graphical aids and statistical data. The organisation’s new online offering, GMB Research, will offer much the same as the print publishing arm.

Sourcing their information from a wide range of organisations, the report contributors can be found working at the regional offices of a consultancy such as Deloitte, the American Chamber of Commerce or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Government bodies are another well-tapped source.

GMB says its embedded authors are knowledgeable about whatever region they are writing about. Each report also supplies the authors’ contact details, which is a useful aid for any researcher trying to network in an unfamiliar environment. GMB claims these elements give the information a certain distinction and extra value.

Specialist service
Core users of GMB Research typically come from the financial and legal sectors, including some business schools. GMB knows that at present it is not a serious competitor to the bigger players such as ISI Emerging Markets or Euromonitor. The company is positioning itself as a complementary service rather than a rival to the main players. If its information stays specialised enough, it may well meet strong demand from researchers.

The site is still very much under development, but is nevertheless a useable service. IWR has checked regularly and GMB continues to make steady progress, adding content and tweaking the interface each week. However, it does confirm that engines won’t be at full capacity until the end of the year. Why bother until then? Well, GMB is offering a sliding scale of discounted pricing. This should reflect the amount of content that is available for the subscription fee. There may be bargains to be had and enough content in any particular area of interest to be useful to the right researcher.

So despite the obligatory beta logo tucked away in a corner, on the whole the interface, if not perfect, is a passable effort. It is unassuming and plain, and doesn’t ape a 2.0 jellied look on every button. Whether this is a good idea is a matter of individual taste.

There are still some occasional information dead-ends, in part because of the ongoing digitisation process. For a small organisation, expenditure of time as well as money is especially significant, which explains why the company has adopted the slightly risky strategy with so much content still to be added. IWR assumes that the empty fields and polite requests to return later are there to show users that will be much more content in future.

This reveals more of what is not available and less of what actually is, but to GMB’s credit, that seems to be swinging further in the right direction quickly.

The process of finding information starts with a choice of menu options. A search can proceed through a simple Boolean keyword field, and there are also a series of drop-down menus arranged by background, legal and regulatory, finance and sector profiles. Searching via region is another option.

However, at this point the site wavers a little. For example, after I chose the search options Serbia/ Risk/Energy/Oil and Gas, the site presented no results. While it is understandable that this particular search combination may not yield a specific article, it is frustrating to see that individually there actually was material on these subjects, such as articles on Serbia, Risk in Serbia and Serbian Oil and Gas.

To find them you must conduct a basic search on one criterion rather than combining several to get a specific result. That is something it would be good to see the company find its way around. It will make the resource far more powerful when it eventually emerges out of beta.

Once you do find the actual articles you want there is the perplexing issue of why they are ranked in such a way. At the time of writing the hierarchies are based on a random listing. GMB says that it is still deciding on how and why articles appear in the order they do after a search. It is likely that by the end of beta the articles will be ranked based on percentage relevance. This is a basic necessity that will be vital for searchers to really appreciate they are getting the right results.

These bugs and quirks are frustrating, but the site is constantly being updated. GMB says it is eager to hear feedback and build a genuine relationship with its community of users, and using the site is not so painful that it becomes problematic. As long as users accept that the resource is still a work in progress, and that it may not be highly polished ­ yet, anyway ­ they are likely to find something worth their time here.

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