A company profile is a summary of a company’s lines of business, company history, executives, financials, and other business information you can use to prep for a job interview or sales call or to gather business development opportunities or competitive intelligence.

Business information publishers sell company profiles as part of extensive corporate info databases or as single company research reports but there’s also plenty of free corporate information profiles out on the Web.

A company profile should deliver an easily digestible dose of business info including:

1. Company information such as subsidiaries and office locations to give an idea of how the business is organized.
2. Important products, lines of business, info on markets served and other facts that show how the company competes.
3. Lists of senior staff in the company, profiles of major executives, and possibly contact information.
4. Recent company history.
5. Recent reported financial performance, but typically not stock performance or Wall Street-style company research.

Action Steps for Gaining Competitive Intelligence
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Company profiles from D&B

D&B is a vast storehouse of business information - just about every U.S. company gets a DUNS number from D&B to establish a credit rating.

I recommend: D&B’s two main company profile research products are Selectory, aimed at sales people, and Hoovers, a more robust database for general corporate use.

Company profiles from infoUSA

infoUSA is a powerhouse in sales of marketing information on consumers, but its researchers also compile tons of corporate information.

I recommend: infoUSA offers general corporate profile research via its OneSource arm, and corporate info on high-firm firms via CorpTech.

Company profile research from LexisNexis

LexisNexis is a major information provider to libraries and law firms.

I recommend: The LexisNexis Company Dossier blends company profiles with news, financial data and legal information.

Research companies with Gale

The Gale Group is another big provider of general and company research to the library market.

I recommend: Gale’s Goliath service sells company profiles as a complete database or as single documents.

Corporate info profiles from Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's rates the credit of major corporations and is the keeper of the S&P 500 stock index among other financial information services.

I recommend: Standard & Poor’s sells company profiles with a financial bent under the Capital IQ brand.

Free company profile research

Buy a subscription to a company profile research database to get the deepest information and the most ability to sort the data. But first, take advantage of the many free company profiles available on the Web.

I recommend: Find free company profiles written from the employee point of view on job-hunting sites Monster and Vault. Search 9,000 profiles of big companies from financial news service Reuters and more than 360,000 profiles at BusinessWeek magazine’s Company Insight Center. The investment-oriented Yahoo! Finance integrates Capital IQ data into its company profiles; search using the company’s stock ticker symbol. And, although it’s a subscription service, Hoovers offers much of its company research database for free.

A company profile you control

Manta.com is a company profile database with a twist: You can edit the listing for your company. It's also a handy way to research small and mid-sized companies by searching the company profiles, provided by D&B and others.

I recommend: See how you can update your Manta.com company profile.

Tips & Tactics for Best Use of Business Intelligence

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Company profile vendors offer free trials, so you can comparison shop easily.
• •  A good source of company profiles are the annual company rankings published by magazines, like the Fortune 500, the Inc. 500 and many more industry-specific rankings from trade magazines.
• •  If you're looking for credit reports or sales lead generation tools, you're better off going with services more targeted to those needs than using company profiles.