Blog | Inex One

How we counted the number of CDDs

Max Friberg — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:52:00 GMT

Inex One estimates there are about 36,000 CDDs run globally each year. We can attribute ~14,500 of those to the leading CDD-focused consulting firms. Here's how we got there.

Let's start with the behemoth Bain & Company. Their website has an all-time count (as per FY2025) of 22,000+ CDDs. Using waybackmachine, we saw that number update since March 2022 - letting us back out a CDD count over the years. Averaging the CDDs they added in 2024 and 2025 gets us to 2,312 CDDs/year.

Bain shares their cumulative number of CDD projects

BCG's PE leaders wrote in a Sep-2021 report that they do 800+ CDDs each year. Lacking more recent data, we scale it with BCG's overall revenues (which grew from $11 Bn to $14.4 Bn since 2021), for a current estimate of 1,050 CDDs/year.

BCG says they do 800 CDDs per year in 2021

McKinsey publishes no clues to their CDD count, but asking around got us to an estimate of 870 CDDs/year. It might feel surprising to see big ol' blue at the bottom of a MBB league table, but that's the data we've got! And McKinsey probably has an outsized share of PE work downstream of the CDD.

For the other firms, we use a combination of methods. Some firms like OW, LEK and CIL share the number outright (thank you!):

OW, LEK and CIL each share their CDD numbers (CIL we scaled with time)

Firms like Roland Berger and OC&C publish the number of completed transactions each year. We scale that by 4x, to account for deals where their client didn't end up transacting.

Roland Berger and OC&C share their number of completed deals

For firms that don't share data as the above, we used we used a combination of 1-1 chats and LinkedIn benchmarks.

It's common to add a blurb on LinkedIn about what you do at work (I did it, too!). Some blurbs include the words "commercial due diligence". We assume that consultants doing CDDs are equally likely to add it to their blurb, regardless of where the work. This lets us infer a company's CDD count by benchmarking the number of CDD-blurbed consultants with comparable firms, where we know the CDD count.

The number of CDDs reported or estimated by CDD-heavy firms

And as always, there's some team analysis to untangle FDDs/ODDs from CDDs. Our estimates are our best effort - and we'd love your feedback.

Inex One is the marketplace for expert networks, aggregating more than 40 leading firms. Inex One is trusted by more than 700 client firms globally across private equity, strategy consulting and corporate strategy.

How many Commercial Due Diligences (CDDs) are run each year?

Max Friberg — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:08:00 GMT

TL;DR

We estimate private equity firms commission about ~36,000 commercial due diligences (CDDs) each year. (We don't count CDDs for corporates, lenders and others in this report).
We can trace ~14,500 CDDs to 75 CDD-heavy strategy consulting firms. The remaining 21.5k CDDs are run in-house by the PE firms, by other advisory firms, or tagged as other work by our named firms.
Consultants do almost one million expert calls for those CDDs. Leading consulting firms use Inex One to run expert interviews faster, and build internal transcript libraries.
Also - this is fan fiction. We apply judgement to public data and there are most certainly errors. Let us know what we missed.

Strategy consulting is a big deal. More than 100,000 people work in the largest strategy shops alone. Over the past two decades, private equity has become a top customer segment. Those PE firms are in business to buy companies, tinker with them so they become (or at least look) better, and sell them onwards at a profit.

It has been a great ride:

Source: KKR. The graph includes all private equity AUM (excl. co-investment, direct secondaries, FoF), mezzanine, and special situations.

Most PE firms have lean teams, so they engage external consultants for lots of work that they can’t do in-house. It all starts with the coveted commercial due diligence (CDD) - understanding a company inside out, prior to potentially buying them.

For PE firms, understanding what you're looking at is central to making good deals (i.e. buying stuff you can sell onwards later at a higher price). And for strategy consultants, the CDD is the “gateway drug” to all kinds of lucrative downstream work (e.g. 100-day plans, PMIs, pricing, tech transformations, market entry work, and exit preps).

Expert interviews are important to both PE firms and consultants. But strategy consultants are the heaviest users of expert interviews by far. We estimate there are 36,000 CDDs each year for PE firms (and many more serving Corporates, lenders etc.), and we can attribute almost half of them to CDD-heavy consulting firms.

This article covers:

What I think of when I think of CDDs.
Top-down estimate, based on #PE deals.
Bottom-up estimate, based on what the consultants say (this is the juicy part!).
Bridging the two estimates.

Here we go:

What I think of when I think of CDDs

A commercial due diligence (CDD) is high-stakes fact finding: to understand the commercial prospects, opportunities and risks for a “target” company in the years ahead. In practice, that means understanding the industry value chain and players inside out - and it’s great if you could get us an answer by Friday.

There are two types of CDDs: buy-side (the “true CDD”) and vendor-side due diligence (“VDD”). The two jobs are similar, but differ in what access you have to the target company (a lot if you do their VDD; restricted in a CDD), and the outputs:

For every company selling, there are multiple firms analyzing it - which makes CDDs far more common than VDDs. Going forward, I'll use "CDD" as the term for both.

How VDDs and CDDs fit into the deal funnel. For this report, we use "CDD" to describe both.

1. Who wants CDDs and why?

Anyone about to put serious money behind a deal, who wants to understand the commercial risks and upsides (CDD). And conversely, sellers who want to maximize the value from their asset (VDD).

Private Equity firms are the biggest buyers of CDDs. But even within PE, the need varies by stage (e.g. Platform deal vs. add-on), and type (buyout firms do more serious CDDs than VC, secondary or growth firms do).

Corporates use CDDs too, typically when acquiring their way into an adjacent market, or a new product/service category.

Lenders and credit funds sometimes run CDDs with external consultants, especially on larger deals.

For this study, we focus solely on Private Equity commercial due diligences. We exclude things like financial, tax, legal, or tech diligence, post-deal strategy, etc., because we’re ultimately interested in the market for expert networks - where CDDs are the main driver. If you’re more interested in the market for tax diligence - please call your doctor.

PE firms follow standardized, repeatable processes, and are most likely to hire external consultants for CDDs. Conveniently, their deal activity is also public and easy to track.

2. Sizing the PE CDD market: Top-down

Firms like Mergermarket and S&P track all PE deals globally:

A decade-long march upwards weathered the Covid crunch in 2020, and surged with low interest rates in 2021-22, before cooling down with macro uncertainty.

For simplicity, we assume all Exits (~2,200 last year) have a VDD attached, that no one does CDDs on Secondaries, while there are 4 CDDs for every Buyout deal that closes (~8,600 last year). The latter estimate is supported by a HBS survey and working paper (‘What do Private Equity firms say they do?’), showing about 1/4 CDDs proceed to closing.

That sums up to ~36,000 CDDs (of which 2k were VDDs) for PE firms in 2025, for our top-down estimate. That's the amount of CDDs that should be done, given PE transaction volumes and habits. Applying the same estimates over time, CDD volumes would look like this:

Estimate of historical number of CDDs

3. The bottom-up estimate (aka checking LinkedIn)

We checked what CDDs the ~75 main PE-focused strategy consulting firms say they do, and scaled that number to account for other vendors, independents etc.

While the CDD output from different firms might look similar, they serve different client segments, and in different situations. I'll be stepping on toes here for sure - it's inevitable when you simplify - but here's my attempt at mapping the CDD industry, tracking consulting firms with 20+ folks dedicated to PE and CDD work. Many firms would fit in multiple categories, but we've had to make this 2D. We kept both logos for recently merged firms. Check out their respective websites for more info on each firm. (And do let me know if we made any omissions or errors here, as we will update this chart over time).

Map of the major CDD providers

Did we miss your firm, or are you in the wrong bucket? Please let us know.

Strategy majors

These firms run the bulk of large-cap CDDs, and smaller deals too. They have teams specialized in multiple sectors. CDDs are a part of their overall strategy consulting operation, while also doing much downstream value creation work for PE, and non-PE work. We've got:

The MBB trio: Bain, BCG, and McKinsey.
Strategy Specialists: EY-Parthenon, PwC Strategy&, Kearney, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K. Consulting, Roland Berger, Monitor Deloitte, and Arthur D. Little.

Diligence specialists

These firms are the workhorses of mid-market deals. They offer CDDs as either the main service, or a large part of the business - alongside other strategy work. Many of them have a distinct spike in one or more sectors, regions or functional areas, while often serving multiple.

CDD Specialists (covering many industries & geos): OC&C Strategy Consultants, CIL Strategy Consultants, IGS, Advancy, Kaiser Associates (now with Sia Partners), and Stax (now with GrantThornton US).
Sector and Regional specialists:
- Healthcare & Life Sciences: Simon-Kucher, ZS, Marwood, Inizio Ignite (fka Putnam), Trinity, Kx Advisors (now with BGBx), Candesic, Health Advances, Clearview, Mansfield Advisors, ISP Healthcare and others.
- TMT: Zinnov, Altman Solon, Plural Strategy, Analysys Mason (incl. Telescope), Activate Consulting, PMP, and others.
- Aerospace, Defense, Industrials: Renaissance, Archery, CSP Associates, Fairmont, Emerton, and others.
- Other industries, and/or specific geographies: Alpha FMC, FMI, Cairneagle, Nomura Research Institute (NRI), Actionist, YCP Solidiance, CVA, Kéa & Partners, CA Strategy, Cicero, Arkwright, IGS, CMI Stratègies, Singular, Advention, Codex Partners, Satov, Cognosis, Sterling Associates, Fairgrove (now with GT UK), Fortlane, Pointe Advisory (now with Stout) and others.

Many of these firms were founded by alumni from larger firms. They could have built stellar careers within e.g. an MBB, but chose to set out on their own to run an independent and/or specialized high-end consulting firm.

Multi-disciplinary advisory firms

Certain firms run high-end CDDs alongside wider consulting practices (e.g. operations consulting, auditing, banking, market research or tech advisory). The respective CDD/strategy teams of these firms would independently fit in other buckets.

Value creation/restructuring specialists: Alvarez & Marsal, FTI Consulting, AlixPartners, and others.
Audit or finance specialists: KPMG, BDO, Accuracy, Grant Thornton (with Stax), Stout (with Pointe Advisory), and others.
Tech-led strategists: Accenture, Gartner Consulting, OMMAX, valantic, Ipsos, Sia (with Kaiser), North Highland, and others.

Smaller high-end firms, and independent ex-consultant pods also run CDDs, but their CDD volumes are difficult to track.

What the consultants tell us

Some firms announce all their CDDs, or the number of closed deals they supported (letting us infer the CDD count, incl. failed deals). Some post stuff on LinkedIn, in posts or bios. For others, we could infer the #CDDs from CDD consultants self-reporting on LinkedIn. We applied detective work + human judgment, like any consultant would.

In all, these firms say they do about ~14,500 CDDs per year. We get there by using the best available signal for each firm and sum across our tracked sample.

Count of reported/estimated CDDs per consulting firm

If you're curious about the method, here's our methodology deepdive.

4. Bridging top-down and bottom-up

Our two estimates come out far apart. Top-down is 36k CDDs/year vs. bottom-up only 14.5k CDDs/year. That leaves more than half of CDDs unattributed to any consulting firm. It's frustrating, but also very interesting. 36,000 CDDs could & should be done, but less than half of them are served by named consulting firms.

The delta? That's opportunity for the bold.

The >20,000 CDDs happening each year "off the radar" could be real work delivered by big consulting firms, but not reported as "CDDs". Or it's delivered by in-house diligence teams, an infinite tail of smaller CDD providers, or hybrid firms (banks, M&A advisory firms, audit firms, etc.).

Our bottom-up estimates are most certainly too low. Most firms we look at simply do not disclose CDD volumes at all. Some publish a number once and then leave it on their website for years without updating it. Others talk in broad terms like “transactions supported”. And even when we can track activity, plenty of real work never gets tagged neatly as “CDD” in public materials. Add regional differences and the long tail of smaller providers, and our bottom-up will inevitably come out low.

So where does that leave us? With the insight that there are loads of CDDs happening, and that any market sizing (or CDD for that matter) has room for a bit of guesstimates.

I love this kind of data transparency. Cheers to Roland Berger, OC&C, and Altman Solon.

One million expert calls for CDDs

Our 36,000 CDDs will use expert interviews differently. At Inex One, we've seen some CDDs run north of 100 expert interviews, while others kept it lean at 10.

If we assume the average CDD runs 25 expert interviews, that means our 36,000 CDDs consume 900,000 expert interviews each year. That, in turn, ties with our expert network market sizing, where we estimate that consultants spend $1.4 Bn on expert networks globally. It's fair to assume that PE-backed CDDs drive the bulk of that spend.

How do you manage all those expert calls?

Scheduling and running expert calls is intense. For every good call, there's a dozen experts to reject.

You juggle multiple vendors, screening questionnaires, scheduling conflicts, transcripts and so on. At scale, finding the right expert and managing calls is an operating system problem.

If your firm does CDDs, how you handle your expert interviews (and subsequent transcripts) is critical infrastructure.

With Inex One, you get to:

Run CDDs faster, streamlining all expert networks and surveys
Aggregate and reuse all call transcript insights, allowing you to move faster on the next project - and avoid spending resources on duplicating work.

Inex One is trusted by more than 8,000 clients globally across private equity, strategy consulting and corporate strategy. Try it out today!

The best expert networks in 2026

Julia Farhat — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:53:00 GMT

The best expert networks deliver great experts fast, compliantly, and at a fair cost. But how do you know if the service you get is good?

Inex One has created the world's first rating of expert networks from all over the world, based on their actual service levels. The expert network rating combines key factors such as speed and quality of service, quality and accuracy of experts, and compliance operations.

In 2018, we began mapping the global expert network industry, monitoring more than 100 expert networks worldwide. Traditional expert networks have long struggled to operate in Europe and Asia: with Inex One, you can now reach the best Japanese expert networks, the best expert networks in Europe, in Korea, and many other regions.

Today, Inex One serves more than 8,000 users worldwide, who conduct hundreds of expert interviews and surveys every week. User reviews of Inex One are generally positive. But we don't just help users - we also gather data! This is aggregated and anonymized, and helps the expert network and survey partners improve their service. The data forms the basis for this 2026 expert network ranking.

Which expert network is the best?

Of all 100+ expert networks globally, 20+ expert networks rank as high-performing on Inex One. These firms achieve a Gold, Silver, or Bronze badge.

The best expert networks in 2026, our Gold Partners, based on performance data, are Focal Fact and Northern Insights, Atheneum, and VISASQ/Coleman Research.

Additional high-performers are Silver Partners: COLIFT, Insights Driven Research (IDR), The Continental Exchange, Reticula, Nodes, and Infoquest.

Also among the high-performers are Bronze-tier partners NetworksX, Ridgetop Research, Sharefair , Maven Research, Woozle, and Vedak.

All these are high-quality expert networks that support hundreds of clients on Inex One. We've reviewed an additional few dozen expert networks over the previous years, which did not earn a ranking.

The best expert networks in 2026 on Inex One.

How do you measure expert network quality?

To begin with, we review each expert network's compliance program and operations. Inex One has established an industry-leading expert network compliance program, in close collaboration with senior leaders in our industry. Expert networks that meet our standards are admitted as Inex One Partners, where their compliance operations are continuously monitored.

Once an expert network is active on client projects, we monitor aggregate quality metrics such as speed of service, number of experts delivered, and conversion rate.

Example of metrics in a hypothetical expert interview project timeline.

Also, chat responsiveness, quality of screening answers, and ease of scheduling calls across 1000's of projects are weighed in.

Example of metrics across multiple expert interview projects.

For expert network pricing, we calculate the median price of experts that clients actually take calls with, a transparent metric as opposed to the opaque credits and "premium experts" model that traditional expert networks use. We weigh quality metrics based on their importance to the client user.

Different use cases by client segment

The primary users of Inex One are strategy consultants, private equity investors, and corporate strategy teams. Hence, the metric is tailored to their preferences. A different user group may have different preferences and put different weights on each of the quality metrics.

People using Inex One generally prioritize the skill level of the expert network account manager (how well they understand the brief and find relevant experts), the speed of service, and the quality of experts.

Which survey provider is the best?

This year, we also ranked the best survey providers in 2026. Similar to the expert networks, these firms achieve a Gold, Silver, or Bronze badge. This year, 16 survey providers rank as high-performing on Inex One.

The best survey providers in 2026, based on performance data, are Potloc, GrapeData, Atheneum, and VISASQ/Coleman.

Other high-performers, our Silver Partners, are Insights Driven Research (IDR), Woozle, BWG Global, Dynata, NewtonX, and Unimrkt Research.

The Bronze Partner tier consists of Syno International, Maven Research, Norstat, Qrowdsy, and ROI Rocket.

The best survey providers in 2026 on Inex One.

How do you measure survey provider quality?

As for expert networks, survey providers must go through an extensive compliance and operations review before joining our platform. Only those meeting our standards are onboarded as Inex One Partners.

Once active on the marketplace, we track metrics such as feasibility rates, delivery rates, and effective CPI. We continuously monitor client feedback and vet our partners to ensure they deliver accurate, high-quality data. Maintaining data integrity is our top priority, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for fraudulent activity.

Get expert insights today

Speak to or survey experts from all over the world on Inex One. Access the very best expert networks and survey providers on Inex One.

See Inex One pricing here, request a demo, or simply get started today.

Will strategy consultants still do CDDs next year?

Max Friberg — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:51:33 GMT

My friend, a Partner in a consulting firm, was shocked: “Look, right now I wonder if my job will be around next year”. My friend – let’s call him George – had built his career around CDDs for PE firms. He had just got off a call with a client and vented what happened with me:

“We had done phase 1 on a target for them, and all was set for phase 2. But now they cancelled us. They did 30 expert calls in-house and ran the synthesis with Claude, with the IM and data room”.

“No worries”, I said, “surely it’s just some light-touch work. You’re an expert in this sector – they’ll still want you for the second opinion, and your firm's rubber stamp when going to IC”.

“You don’t understand”, he said, “these megafunds have seen more deals than we have. They have all the IMs, all the comps, and they get data from every banker out there.”

Someone else joined the Teams call, so we switched to our real agenda. But the question stuck with me. Will George’s job still be around next year?

To answer that, let's first look at:

What do CDD consultants do all day?

PPT slides were still 4:3 (print size) back when I was at McKinsey, but the deliverables of a CDD remain the same:

Let’s look at each of these 7 points and their likelihood of being automated with AI.

Use AI to analyze all data. Pretty straightforward. Claude shreds through the data room faster and more diligently than your associate Clark does. You’ll have to double-check both of them, though.
Sourcing data is as hard as you make it, and effort generally pays off. Data that is available to all is alpha for noone. Finding the right experts, asking the right questions, seeing patterns across a mosaic of sources, telling signal from noise and knowing when you have enough data for conviction - all set apart the good investor/consultant from the mediocre.
Crafting an independent perspective is not as easy. Some CDDs might feel like a pure put-up job, without room to question the narrative. But any consultant worth their salt will have a perspective of their own. If you don’t have one, you’re probably not senior enough. That said, I’d think of LLMs as any writing assistant. You can’t let it think for you, but once you have a draft of your own, use it for feedback and inspiration.
Flag commercial risks. Same as the above – you’d be dumb not to use AI for additional inspiration (we turn all stones, remember?), but you’d be equally dumb to use it without first thinking for yourself.
Banker comms. Sure, man, here you go: 8-10%.
Rubber stamp to IC. This one is hard to replace. It might work in firms investing their own money only, but PE today is institutionalized and there is a rulebook. If you don’t tick the boxes, many institutional hands are tied. Now, this is also the least exciting thing for a strategy consultant to be. But your firm’s brand paired with your independent perspective – that’s your moat.
Storytelling. Claude always tells me what I want to hear.

Returning to our graphic, it looks like this:

Ultimately, PE investors are smart and competitive. The payoff for making great investments far outweighs the $500k you might pay a consulting firm.

From what I'm seeing, tech tools (whether AI or not) allow you to screen more deals than you would do manually. They also let you drill deeper into every case you double down on. That's all good - but it rather widens the top of your funnel than replacing downstream steps.

So what’s the verdict - will AI replace consulting CDDs?

George – you won’t lose your job to AI. But you’ll lose your job to a consultant using AI. All the big consultancies are rushing the same way: build tech capabilities to deliver better work.

For CDD-focused teams, this boils down to mainly three things:

1. Accumulate data

Sanitize and share past project materials.
Gather transcripts of all expert calls, client meetings, steercos. Consultants transcribe thousands of calls every week on Inex One. They analyze them in our embedded AI tools – or in their own, through our MCP server.
Figuring out data access rights is central. Should everyone see all content? What if two teams serve competing clients? At Inex One, we’ve solved access rights. You can see whether your colleagues have covered a topic, and request access to individual transcripts and projects. This works both in-app and through MCP.

Picture from the Inex One transcript library

2. Upskill the team: in productivity tools and content.

Specializing your team (or entire firm) early on helps. Sector-specialized consulting firms are outpacing incumbent generalists lately. Gone are the days when consultants just helped “read your watch”; now – more than ever – you’ll need to bring expertise.
Hiring batches of smart youngsters, skewing towards engineers, helps with tool adoption. You need critical thinking, and integrity to question and challenge the data (i.e. managing AI) rather than taking it as given (simply using AI).

3. Eliminate donkey work

Freeing up time for thoughtful analysis. It’s a wide bucket. At Inex One, we help specifically with:

Simplifying expert network management. All expert networks in one platform. You cast a wide net, see all available experts, and eliminate the email chaos.
All call transcripts in one place, analyzed with AI.

Analyze all your transcripts with AI on Inex One

Punters have predicted the disruption of consulting many times before. The pyramid might change, with fewer juniors per senior partner/expert, but I don’t see AI replacing you entirely – if you use the tools available and keep an independent mind. There will be a phase 2, George.

That's a wrap. Let me know what you think I missed, or check out Inex One here.

Want to read more? Shoutout to five people whose writing influenced me:

Christoph Nicau of Valantic writes about how fake market data infects LLM training sets, and the circular “death loop” this creates.
James Agres of 2nd St Strategy shares his experience building AI tools for CDDs – where AI works and where it doesn’t.
James O’Dowd writes about the competitive pressure from AI labs on traditional (mainly ops-focused) consulting firms, and the opportunity for sector specialized firms.
Beltrán Simó describing what in-house AI tools at large consulting firms do, and what skills will be relatively more & less valuable going forward.
Dave Demasi shares learnings from building one of those AI tools - incl. pivoting back from “AI-only” to “AI+human for judgment”.

Expert Network Pricing - what does an expert network interview cost?

Max Friberg — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 09:33:34 GMT

An expert interview usually costs between $1,000 and $1,400 per hour. But for most clients, pricing is a black box. You get asked to shell out in advance for “credits” - which are then deducted in mysterious ways. So-called “premium multipliers” make sure that a call rarely costs just 1 credit.

It shouldn’t be this complicated.

Now, if you want to budget well and avoid overpaying, you need to understand why the price varies and how the different networks charge you. This article is based on our 8 years building Inex One as the independent authority on expert networks, and the hundreds of conversations we run each month with firms who have or ponder switching from traditional expert networks to Inex One. For more detail - here’s a guide to comparing expert networks.

Caveat: You can sometimes get calls cheaper, if you waive IP rights to the call. Some firms operating expert call transcript libraries rely on user-generated content: you pay less for doing expert calls, but your calls become the product that the library firm can resell. Here’s a deep-dive in expert transcript libraries, for the curious.

Expert calls: Paying for insights and service

While typcally bundled in one price tag, theExpert network call fees consist of two parts:

The expert’s fee: This is what the expert takes home. It typically ranges from $200 to $500 per hour for mid-level managers or subject matter experts. For certain sought-after experts in odd niches (e.g. healthcare KOLs, certain C-suite leaders, etc., this can at times exceed $1,000+).
The service fee: This is the network’s markup for finding, vetting, and scheduling the expert, handling compliance, and generally just making a margin. This is all fair - they provide an important service to you.But here’s the catch: expert networks associates are typically incentivized on the service fee they make - so they have reason to keep it artificially high. Therefore, using a single expert network makes you a price-taker. Using Inex One gives you both price visibility and a wide net of experts from networks around the world.

Expert networks charge for the goods plus the service - like a premium restaurant.

Prepaying vs. pay-as-you-go

This is where most first-time buyers get confused (and typically overpay).

Prepaying for credits. Most legacy networks want you to commit to a large upfront subscription - typically $50k-100k/year for starters. In exchange, you get some "credits". Now here’s the catch:

A credit is rarely enough for an expert call. A call with a "premium" expert might cost 1.5 or 2.5 credits. And the expert network is at liberty of deciding which experts are premium.
If you don’t use all your credits by year-end, they expire. You end up having paid for calls you never made. Or, the network graciously offers you to “roll over” the unused credits in next year’s license. This creates a lock-in effect for customers, who tend to have better things to think about than haggling over expert network contracts. Many settle for just rolling over, even when they’re dissatisfied with their network.

Academics call this obfuscated pricing, and it’s quite lucrative until any one vendor defects and offers transparent pricing. That’s what we did:

2. Pay-as-you-go for expert calls. We built Inex One to fix the inefficiencies in expert networks. You pay a small platform fee, and then only for the expert calls you do - in real currency, not credits.

You see the price transparently in your currency (e.g. $/€/£) - that’s the price you’ll pay, no surprises.
The median cost for an expert call on Inex One is ~$1,100/hour. This is effectively ~20-30% lower than traditional networks charge, as you’re not subsidizing a massive salesforce, the expert network’s opex or any unused credits. For larger projects, volume discounts of up to 25% are available - contact us to discuss.

Why are some calls more expensive?

Not all expert calls have the same price tag. You can expect to pay more for:

Scarcity and seniority: There are fewer former CEOs than Line Managers to find and choose between. And senior people tend to charge more for their time.
Geography: Experts in the US and Western Europe generally command higher compensation than experts in emerging markets.
Urgency: Need to speak to someone tomorrow? At least the traditional networks will see the opportunity to slap on a “premium” credit multiplier.

OK let's get started

If you are budgeting for a due diligence project or a market analysis, use $1,300 per call as a safe average with traditional networks. Just watch out for those hidden credit multipliers!

If you use a marketplace like Inex One, you can budget closer to $1,100 per call, while accessing a significantly larger pool of experts.

Get started today.

M&A in the expert network industry (updated 2026)

Max Friberg — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Expert networks have attracted investments from well-known buyout firms Silver Lake, IK Investment Partners, Permira, Astorg and SFW Capital. The industry was resilient through the pandemic, and kept growing in the years since. Read our review of all material deal activity (M&A, fundraising) in the expert network industry (this post is continuously updated).

2000's: The US-based industry gets organized

The first expert networks started out in the late 1990's, serving US buy-side firms. For the first decade, the deal activity focused on "where they'd fit". Both investment banks (GS, Bear Sterns, Leerink) and data providers (S&P, Evalueserve, Reuters) acquired or started their own expert networks.

2004

💵 GLG took $30m from Bessemer Venture Partners. At the time, the expert industry was nascent, with only a handful players.

2005

🤝 S&P bought Vista Research for $30m or perhaps $40m. At the time, Vista and GLG were the two leading networks. Goldman Sachs had considered buying the latter, but backed out due to pricing issues and potential compliance liability issues.

2007

💵 GLG took a $200m investment from Silver Lake, at a supposed $875m valuation.

🤝 Evalueserve acquired Nitron Circle of Experts.

🎂 Having passed on GLG, Goldman Sachs started its own network: Vantage Marketplace. Despite this not being an M&A deal - or that the firm never really got off the ground - the website is worth a mention. A blast from the past!

2008

💵 AlphaSights raised €3m from Burda Digital Ventures (today Acton Capital).

💵 Third Bridge (named Cognolink until 2015) raised €400k from angel investors.

2009

🤝 Guidepoint bought Vista Research for $10-13m. S&P booked a $14m loss on the sale.

🤝 Primary Insight spun out through a management buy-out. The firm had started in 2005 as an in-house expert network at Bear Sterns.

🤝 GLG acquired TGR Research in September for an undisclosed sum. TGR was a small Paris-based expert network founded two years prior. The founders stayed on with GLG.

2010's: The international landgrab

As the industry grew, new expert networks sprung up. A host of firms emerged in the late 00's, focusing on custom-recruiting on LinkedIn. Some of them (notably Third Bridge, Alphasights, Capvision and Atheneum) went on to become global players, others were acquired. The early years were overshadowed by the US insider-trading probes, and subsequent investments in and standardization of expert network compliance programs.

2010

🤝 Third Bridge raised €1.7m and acquired Epito, a Swedish expert network, for an undisclosed sum.

2011

🤝 Business Connect China (BCC) bought Circle of Experts from Evalueserve, and the small US-based Tribeca Insights. Sum unknown.

2012

💵 Third Bridge raised approx. $4.5m from Beringea at an implied valuation of $35m post-money.

2013

💵 Infollion raised $146k from Blume Ventures Fund 1.

2015

💵 GLG bought back the Silver Lake stake, and took $212m from SFW Capital "at an enterprise value in excess of $700m". Silicon Valley Bank provided a $250m credit line.

🤝 Guidepoint acquired Innosquared, a German expert network, for an undisclosed sum.

💵 Atheneum raised €10m at a €50m valuation from Vogel Business Media and business angels.

2017

💵 Third Bridge raised an undisclosed amount from IK Investment Partners, with support from Permira Debt Managers. IK also bought out Beringea’s stake from 2012. The reported share premium account increased by $45m, and long-term debt (>1 year) by $36m.

💵 Lynk (formerly The Straits Network) raised $4m to expand its APAC-focused network.

2018

💵 Atheneum raised €10m from Crosslantic Capital Management.

NewtonX raised $3m seed funding from Third Prime, Switch VC and Xfund.

2019

💵 Lynk raised an undisclosed amount, having previously raised $4m in 2017.

💵 Xperiti raised $500k from IBI Tech Fund and 97212VC, plus $1.2m from New York Angels and others.

💵 Deepbench raised an undisclosed amount from Macquarie Bank, as part of licensing its platform to them.

NewtonX raised $12m series A from Two Sigma Ventures.

2020

💵 February – Techspert.io (UK) raised $5m in a round led by Nauta Capital.

🏦 March - VisasQ (JP) went public on the Tokyo stock exchange.

🤝 May – Uzabase (JP) invested $2m in Enquire (at the time called GlobalWonks).

🤝 July – VisasQ invested $300k in DeepBench.

Both VisasQ and Uzabase are listed in Tokyo, and both firms cited a need for increased global reach and access to better technology as their investment theses.

💵 Sealed Network raised $1m.

The 2020's: Tech innovation and diversification

At the start of the new decade, a number of technical novelties have been introduced, while incumbents have diversified into new products. Inex One partners with many in this next generation of expert networks, matching them with relevant client business, validation, and productivity tech.

2020

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a sudden halt in business for expert networks, and then an unprecedented investment boom that boosted the industry to new levels. All in all, the market grew +10-15% despite the pandemic. Many expert networks raised funds off the back of this.

2021

💵 January - Lynk Global raised $24m

💵 January - Prosapient raised £7.3m

🤝 January - Astorg and company founders bought a Third Bridge stake from IK Investment, investing >$200m in the business alongside the three co-founders.

💵 February - Office Hours raised $5m

💵 March - Arbolus raised $6m

💵 March - Expertwired raised €1m

🤝 August - VisasQ acquired Coleman Research for $102m. 2.5 years later, it wrote off the entire ~$95m (¥15.4 Bn) goodwill post, as Coleman had lost a third of its revenues and turned loss-making.

💵 August - Atheneum raised a whopping $150m from Guidepost Growth, a firm entirely unrelated to the expert network Guidepoint. The valuation was close to $300m.

💵 August - Inex One raised $3m to continue scaling its global expert network marketplace. As of the funding announcement, Inex One serves more than 200 client firms, working with 20+ top-performing expert networks worldwide.

🏦 August - Capvision filed to go public in Hong Kong.

💵 September - Lynk raised $5m from UBS in a bid to cross-sell UBS analysts as experts on Lynk.

💵 October - Techspert raised £8.8m from BGF and Nauta Capital.

🏦 October - GLG filed to go public in New York.

🤝 October - Alphasense acquired Stream by Mosaic Research, for $50 million. Stream was a content library of transcribed expert interviews, generated in part by Mosaic's analysts, in part by platform users. (Note: Alphasense is a research management system; not to be confused with the expert network Alphasights)

🤝 October - Tegus acquired BamSEC, a research tool for indexing and browsing SEC filings. The deal has many similarities to the Alphasense-Stream acquisition, combining expert transcript content with a tool to index and browse them. We discuss the emergence of expert network transcript libraries here.

💵 November - Tegus raised $90m in series B from Oberndorf Enterprises and Willoughby Capital. The funds were said to be used for further growth and to broaden the data offering and product suite.

💵 November - NewtonX raised $32m in a Series B led by Marbruck Ventures, an Australian family office.

💵 December - Enquire raised a $5.5m Series A led by Uzabase and Teneo Ventures.

💵 December - Arches raised $1.6m in a round led by Uzabase.

2022

💵 Jan - Xperiti raised <$300k from VersatileVC.

🏦 March - GLG shelved its plans to go public in New York, as funding opportunities turned less attractive for expert networks in 2022.

💵 April - Arbolus raised $15m from Element Ventures with debt funding from Silicon Valley Bank. In the funding announcement, the company said its revenues had tripled in the last year, and the team doubled to 100 employees.

💵 Jan-May - Prosapient raised £4.65 in equity through a series of transactions at a reduced valuation, illustrating the tougher funding climate for venture-backed firms. The company also raised debt from Leumi ABL, seemingly pledging the entire company as security.

🤝 May - AlphaSense acquired its competitor Sentieo in May 2022, after having sued them for copyright infringement in June 2020.

💵 May - Expertwired raised €1m from angel syndicate Pop Up Qapital and existing investors MB Capital.

💵 September - Tegus raised a $20m bridge round from Positive Sum.

🤝 December - Uzabase was taken private by Carlyle at an EV of JPY 61.4 Bn (~$460m, which was 3.4x sales and 61x EBITDA).

2023

🤝 Jan - Ivy Exec was acquired by market research firm InnovateMR for an undisclosed sum.

🤝 Feb - Xperiti was acquired by Ipsos for an undisclosed sum.

💵 Feb - NetworksX raised $61k at a $7m valuation.

💵 Mar - Techspert raised an undisclosed amount of venture debt in March 2023 from Western Technology Investment.

🤝 Aug - Inlightened was acquired by LocumTenens, a staffing agency serving US healthcare providers. Terms were not disclosed.

💵 Nov - Prosapient raised £1.5m in 2023 in an internal bridge round, on top of £1.5m venture debt. The debt came at a whopping 16% interest rate. The lender was a newly formed company called Cobb Trustees Ltd, by a small investor in Prosapient.

2024

🕵 Jan - CB Insights predicted that GLG will acquire Tegus in 2024. The rationales were a bit cloudy, but it comes after a year of multiple layoff rounds at both GLG and Tegus, where we wonder if GLG is still profitable.

🤝 Feb - Bridger acquired Boston-based expert network Deepbench.

🤝 June - AlphaSense said in a press release it would buy Tegus for $930m. Tegus-employees disclosed on LinkedIn that ARR was >$120m, implying a revenue multiple of 7.75x. This move came after AlphaSense had sued Tegus for copyright infringement in September 2023, accusing Tegus for copying its interface and features. The litigation was resolved on May 8, 2024, without stating any reason publicly. Curiously, AlphaSense did the same thing once before: it sued, then bought its competitor Sentieo (see above).

💵 June - Arches raised $3m (¥ 410m) from multiple corporations, VCs and angels, with the ambition to build an expert call transcript library.

🤝 September - LA-based PE firm Levine Leichtman acquired The Expert Institute, an expert witness firm and legal transcript library.

💵 November - Arbolus raised $20m from Kayne Anderson, Composition Capital and other investors.

2025

💵 March 2025 - Arbolus' VC investor Fuel Ventures sold about half its holding, having generated a ~6x return in 4 years.

🤝 June 2025 - Slingshot Insights acquired Noble Insights for an undisclosed sum.

💵 June 2025 - Enquire raised $3m in a bridge round.

🤝 December 2025 - Uzabase acquired Sealed Network in Singapore. The transaction amount was not reported.

2026

💵 February 2026 - Techspert raised £5 million in debt from Palatine Growth Credit.

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Will we see more investments and deals in this decade? Most likely. Want more insights? Contact us. Want to access the best experts? Sign up here. You might even find me as an expert.

Who uses expert networks?

Max Friberg — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 01:02:00 GMT

TL;DR

Around 11,200 companies use Expert Networks in 2026 - adoption has expanded far beyond Wall Street and into Main Street corporate decision-making.
Corporates are the largest client segment by number of firms using Expert Networks (~47%), yet represent just ~12% of total industry spend.
Consulting firms are the real heavy hitters, with the inverse usage profile of Corporates - they make up just ~9% of clients, but drive ~46% of spend.
Investment and Capital market firms are significant both in adoption (~44% by number) and proportional budget (~42% of spend).
A proliferation of specialized Expert Networks have created administrative headaches for clients, driving the rise of centralized platforms like Inex One.

To understand who uses Expert Networks in 2026, we should look beyond the world of high-finance. Today, expert insights matter to all ambitious business decisions, fueling industries such as private equity, hedge funds, and consulting and mainstream corporate strategy teams alike. Anyone can use an LLM or a quick search to scan petabytes of information in seconds. This means most businesses can make better-informed decisions than they could otherwise. But that’s all table stakes. How can you get smarter than your competitors?

The most critical information they are after isn’t online; it’s in the minds of experts with decades of practical experience. Expert Networks are the most efficient tool to get hold of those experts - by finding and screening them, and arranging phone calls.

The value proposition of Expert Networks is clear: fast, high-signal insights. But who uses them, really? And how much are they willing to pay for this niche expertise?

The heavy users: Sector-by-sector client breakdown

Expert Networks were once the secret tool of Wall Street hedge funds to get an information edge when investing in public markets. While that’s where things started, Expert Networks have since grown far beyond high finance.

We estimate that in 2026, about 11,200 companies across all industries use expert network services. The broad range of clients across sectors shows that getting expert insight isn’t just for insiders anymore. It has become a central toolkit for market research across almost every industry.

Here’s a closer look at the key sectors that engage Expert Networks the most:

Strategy Consultants: ~1,020 firms

High-urgency, high-volume consumers.

Typical use cases include:

Running a Commercial Due Diligence to assess the competitive landscape and value creation opportunities in an investment target.
Market Analysis to inform a client's expansion strategy into new segments, service lines or geographies.

Financial/ Capital Markets: ~4,895 firms

High-stakes, deep-dive usage. Consists of Private Equity (~2,895), Hedge Funds (~1,405), and Asset Management & Banks (~595).

Typical use cases include:

Analyzing the competitive landscape and operational risks of a target company.
Getting a real-time assessment on an impending policy change that could move a stock.

Corporate Strategists: ~5,285 firms

A wide variety of use cases, mainly centered around corporate strategy/M&A work or customer/user/product research.

Typical use cases include:

Informing a market entry strategy into a new vertical or geography.
Customer segmentation and ICP research, mapping buyer personas and their buying journeys.

Tracking the capital spend

These customer segments behave very differently: ranging from very sporadic to daily usage of expert interviews.

In a separate piece of research, we sized the expert network total market to USD 3Bn. Accounting for the segment-level differences, we estimate segment spend as pictured:

There’s a huge difference between different client segments, where consulting firms stand out as voracious users, and corporates as more selective.

While consulting and finance remain the main expert network users, the service has spread far beyond them too. Corporate strategy teams across all industries (e.g. pharma, industrials, TMT), product/user research teams and market researchers have adopted expert network services en masse. This happens through sheer growing awareness of the service, or organically as consultants “move on to the real world”, bringing their favorite tools along. Expert Networks are becoming a staple research tool for any business facing high-stakes decisions, spreading from Wall Street to Main Street.

How to use Expert Networks

The growth of Expert Networks has solved the access problem - you can get expert answers to your most niche business questions. But when there are 100+ Expert Networks - which one do you choose?

And when you use multiple networks - how do you deal with the additional admin work: email chains, scheduling calls, reconciling invoices etc?

The most important research tool is also the most admin-heavy.

Expert Networks, simplified

We built Inex One to get the best of two worlds: engage the best Expert Networks, with minimal admin work.

With Inex One, you access more than 25 specialized Expert Networks in a single, efficient dashboard.

Access Inex One here, or read how clients in Consulting, Private Equity, Corporate Strategy, Product research, and Asset Management use Inex One.

Expert Network Client Mapping: How we sized the market

Max Friberg — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

TL;DR

Expert Networks serve ~11,200 unique firms across finance, consulting, and corporates.
Corporates are driving mainstream adoption - they now account for 45% of the client base by number.
Clients face a trade-off between depth of experts and admin work coordinating Expert Networks.
Big users have multiple Expert Networks in parallel, while smaller customers have one or two.
Consulting firms lead the way in multi-sourcing, with the largest buyers engaging dozens of Expert Networks.
Clients use Inex One to aggregate 30+ expert network, and get the benefit of multi-sourcing with minimal admin work and transaction costs.

We estimate that some 11,200 firms within finance, consulting, and strategy use Expert Networks. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, growing healthily despite - or maybe thanks to - a volatile macro climate.

How did we count them all? Let’s dive in!

How we mapped the Expert Network industry

No B2B market is easy to size up - after all, it’s a classic task you’d pay strategy consultants to do for you. It’s especially true for expert network clients, as data is proprietary, closely guarded, and fragmented.

But as it turns out, the answer was hidden in plain sight. For the last eight years, Inex One has been analyzing, aggregating and improving the expert network industry. As part of that, we had to figure out which clients to help first.

Drawing on our consulting roots, we used a dual sizing approach:

Top-Down Analysis: Finding the theoretically largest possible client pool.
Bottom-Up Synthesis: Analyzing public disclosures and proprietary data from industry players, summed up - and then bridged to the top-down numbers.

Starting from the top

We start by sizing the theoretically largest market - counting all plausible expert network clients. These client segments are proven users, with the resources to use even the traditional, prepaid, Expert Networks:

Financial Services: Globally, there are some 10,000 hedge funds and 10,000+ private equity funds.
Consulting: The consulting industry is massive, and can vaguely be defined as any firm selling advice - which is in the millions when you consider micro-firms and independent consultants. For our exercise, we use the roughly 3,000 consulting firms assessed by Consulting magazine, across their various regional rankings. We assume “being assessed” by them as a proxy for having sufficient market presence and scale. For now, we disregard the fact that also some independent consultants use Expert Networks.
Corporates: We assume that all firms with 250+ employees could be expert network users, as they’d likely have dedicated teams for A) corporate strategy/M&A, or B) B2B product strategy and user research. This segment includes some 75,000 firms (250+ employees) in the EU and the US alone, so let’s round up to 100k relevant firms globally, as the services are less established in APAC.

So all in all, we have some 120k+ firms, perhaps 200k when adding segments not yet counted (banks, asset managers, smaller corporates, etc.).

This is a lot! Now, most of these firms don’t even know what an expert network is. Even in 2026, Expert Networks give an information edge to the firms who know how to use Expert Networks.

Great, so 200k is our theoretical TAM in number of clients. Now it’s time for the:

Bottom-up synthesis

While our top-down approach gave us the theoretical maximum, our bottom-up synthesis is based on actual reported numbers. Lots of data, as it turned out, is hidden in plain sight. Most expert networks disclose (or dare we say flex) the number of clients they serve. Like any good consultants, we counted all the available data and made informed guesstimates to fill the gaps.

Many Expert Networks publicly detail the size and the composition of their client base in regulatory filings, marketing materials, press releases, or on their websites. For example:

GLG disclosed that it works with more than 3,000 clients, including nearly half of Fortune 100 companies, 1,000+ PE funds, 700+ social impact orgs, 500+ public equity funds, etc., in its S-1 filing and factsheets.
Guidepoint reports that it works with more than 3,870 clients, including 1,500+ corporates, 1,000+ PE-VC firms, 500+ hedge funds, 750+ consulting firms, 120+ leading banks, etc. The reported number likely includes ‘all contracts ever held’ and the regular clients could be lower.
AlphaSense states that it has over 6,000 clients. AlphaSense is not a pure-play expert network, so we’ll adjust this number downwards a bit to match the share of clients we think are actually using their EN services.
VisasQ, which acquired US-based Coleman, reports that it serves 1,821 clients globally, including 500+ corporations, 250+ consulting and finance, and 100+ “overseas clients”.
AlphaSights reports that it works with over 900 firms, including 250+ PE funds, 450+ hedge funds, 100+ asset managers, 20% of the Fortune 500 companies, and the top global consulting firms.
Third Bridge says that it works with over 950 investment firms.
Capvision discloses that it serves more than 2,000 clients globally, including 700+ financial institutions, 200+ consulting firms, and 300+ other corporations.
Inex One serves about 600 clients as of early 2026. This is concentrated to consulting, private equity firms and corporates, but also includes banks, hedge funds, asset mgrs, and market research firms.
Dialectica reports doesn’t share the number of client organizations, only the number of “client users” - but we can work with that.
Atheneum reported that it serves more than 500 large organizations in fundraising documents.
proSapient says that it serves over 100 clients across Europe and the USA.

There are more than 120 active Expert Networks, but we estimate that these 11 networks contribute roughly to 88% of the market in terms of revenue.

In total, compiling data from these 10 major networks, plus Inex One’s own figures, gives a preliminary total of ~16,900 client-expert network contracts (88% of the market). If we extrapolate this to 100% of the market, it gets us to ~19,150 client contracts in total.

Great - now let’s break it back down to our customer segments.

Expert Networks use different names for their customers. So we’ve harmonized all names to the granular segmentation data that GLG used in their 2021 IPO filing. Where Expert Networks haven’t detailed the segment split, we assume it’s the same as GLG’s, which at the time was the dominant expert network. If we then placed all client-expert network contracts in a big pile, it would look like this:

Factoring the multi-source adjustment

The aggregate client pool of ~19,150 is a lot; but let’s keep in mind it’s the sum of all contracts; not the number of individual firms using Expert Networks.

Most firms using Expert Networks contract with more than one vendor, to cast a wide net and avoid being stuck with unfavorable terms. To account for this, we adjust the number of client contracts across segments:

Consulting firms: Use multiple networks to support international operations and/or the need for speed to insight.
Investment firms (PE/HF/Asset mgmt.): Use multiple networks to cast a wide net of insights, yet they typically use fewer networks than consultants do.
Corporates: Less likely multi-source, as their needs are more often infrequent and lower-velocity.

We see that even within high-velocity sectors like consulting, PE or hedge funds, the multi-sourcing behaviour isn’t uniform. A firm’s degree of multi-sourcing correlates pretty well with the volume of calls they make, and the urgency of the projects in which they make those calls.

The most prolific firms in each sector use lots of Expert Networks. Conversely, there’s a long tail of thousands of mid and small-size firms who use just a few networks, in a power law-like distribution.

The vast majority of clients are not super users. They maintain a lean setup with just 1 or 2 core vendors. Here’s our estimate of the average number of parallel contracts held by the top 100 spenders and the weighted average across sectors.

Consultants use more Expert Networks than anyone else, as their projects tend to be fast, and intense, and range across sectors (as opposed to e.g. sector-focused investment firms). But beyond the largest spenders, there are thousands of smaller-spenders (research firms, independent consultants etc.) pulling the statistical average down, even though the bulk of the industry spending happens at the top.

There’s a similar pattern across all segments, with the ‘Top 100’ firms being far more prolific in their multi-sourcing than their peers.

When you use Inex One, you get access to more than 30 vendors in one platform, under one contract. For this exercise, we’ve thus counted that as one single contract.

Accessing multiple Expert Networks in one place gives you all the benefits of multi-sourcing (fast access to niche experts and competitive pricing), with minimal admin. Now any firm can run research as effectively as the MBB consultants, without the admin overhead.

Adjusting for multi-sourcing, we get to a unique client count of 11,200. Consulting and finance firms make up ~55% of the market while corporates contribute to the rest ~45%.

Expert Networks - simplified

The long and winding history of Expert Networks continues - growing from secretive hedge funds into a core tool for any business seeking insights. As the market grows more complex, so does the need for users to simplify it.

Inex One de-risk your expert research by aggregating more than 30 Expert Networks and survey firms in one platform. You can work smarter, not harder - and focus on the insights.

See what 8,000+ users say, or just get expert insights here.

Appendix

We first ran this analysis & article in early 2022. Since then, the expert network industry has grown, and many Expert Networks have bumped their public client count (some rather soon after that article was published). Here’s what has changed since that initial estimate.

Who uses Expert Networks: what changed in our estimates

The estimated number of firms using Expert Networks grew by 150%
Our estimate of the unique client base has grown from 4,500 in 2022 to 11,200 in 2026. This is mainly due to the market growing overall, a wider data capture, and Expert Networks disclosing higher client numbers.
- Data Set Expansion: Accounts for 20% increase
  More of the major Expert Networks (e.g, Dialectica, Atheneum, AlphaSense) have begun to disclose data on their client base, allowing us to capture more granular data.
- Market Growth: Accounts for 60% increase
  Other large networks (e.g., GLG, Guidepoint, Capvision, VisasQ) have grown their reported client base, indicating a phenomenal market expansion. 35% of this is due to Guidepoint radically increasing their reported number of clients (from 1,000 to 5,000).
- Residual Market Share: Accounts for 20% increase. Our new methodology now also accounts for the cumulative client base of the 100+ smaller, specialized Expert Networks, holding ~12% of the market share.
The client mix has changed
The reported client mix has evolved, with a bias towards strategy consulting and finance firms. This was a surprise to us, running counter to the overarching narrative in the expert network space of Corporates being the next growth area:
- Corporate User Base: Increased by ~110%
  Corporates are adopting Expert Networks mainly in corporate strategy and M&A teams, and for product innovation and user research.
- Strategy Consulting & Finance User Base: Increased by ~200%. We believe this segment’s jump is largely due to our expanded inclusion of networks serving regional, niche, and specialized consulting firms, and including market research firms in the mix.
Clients use more Expert Networks in parallel
A decade ago, many clients were fine with just prepaying for GLG. That has changed, with the majority of expert network users now engaging more than one network. This gives them a wider selection and more competitive pricing. Many opt for Inex One, to effectively get 30+ vendors in one platform.
Consequently, we updated the multi-sourcing factors, which means the sum of individual expert network-client contracts represent fewer individual clients using Expert Networks.
In the past year alone, Inex One has helped more than 150 new clients start using Expert Networks efficiently, with great user reviews. That brings the count to more than 5% of the total market - and growing.
Want superior access to Expert Networks? Get started here.
With widened adoption, the avg. spend per client has decreased.
The market has grown in value, but that growth is outpaced by the growth in unique new client firms.
- Overall market value: Grew by ~25%
  Our expert network market sizing shows the industry has grown by a healthy 12% CAGR over these years.
- Average spend/client firm: Decreased across all segments. Many new clients have found the industry, typically starting small and bringing down the average spend/account.

--------------------

Notes and limitations:

This analysis relies on combining publicly available data with proprietary market intelligence. For full transparency, here are the key assumptions and limitations used in our client mapping model:

We applied GLG’s client split, because it is the largest expert network and the client split was readily available. However, AlphaSights has fewer corporates and consulting clients than GLG, making hedge funds and asset managers a much larger share of their total clients). Using their split would have made our estimate of the two latter segments larger, and the $-spend-per-firm smaller.
The adjustment for “multi-sourcing” is a critical assumption, based on what we’ve learned from conversations with hundreds of clients. We are fairly confident about the adjustments used: after all, our expertise is expert interviews ;)
The average client segment spend split is calculated using Inex One's proprietary internal data. It is important to note that average spend figures can fluctuate slightly based on the specific expert network model.

Expert network market size in 2025: The $3Bn Market Overview

Max Friberg — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:01:00 GMT

TL;DR

The expert market network hit ~$3Bn in 2025, growing ~12% annually (2023-25) after a quieter stretch (2021-23).
Growth is back, but service diversification and intensifying competition are set to reshape the industry in 2026.
Supply and demand are both expanding: more experts, continued PE-driven research needs, and broader corporate adoption helped increase the number of firms using expert networks by ~150% (2022-25).
Consulting remains the spending engine (~50% industry spend), while Corporates are now the adoption engine (~45% clients by number).
Legacy players continue to lose market share to newer generations of firms: 1st gen share 37% vs 44% for 2nd gen firms.
The market is global at the top, but fragmented underneath: only a handful players compete worldwide, while newer firms win by specializing in regions, verticals, or new models.
The trend in 2026 and beyond next era looks tech-first and more efficient: platforms like Inex One are making the market more competitive by routing demand towards agile networks.

The Expert Network industry is back! We estimate the Expert Network industry reached ~$3Bn in 2025, growing 12% annually between 2023-25 after a quieter stretch. The past year had parallel storylines, with growth, service diversification, and intensifying competition. In this report, we look at the evolution of different ‘generations’ of players, from first generation giants to younger, tech-driven challengers, and share our take on who is winning and what trends actually matter in 2026.

Expert network industry global revenues 2012-24

The industry has seen around 16% compound annual growth over the last decade. This growth is primarily driven by widespread adoption of expert networks in the growing private equity industry and the strategy consultants they engage. But in recent years, we see corporate strategy and market research teams who had never used the service before becoming regular customers. They now make up ~45% of the clients by numbers! Strategy consultants and private market professionals transitioning to corporate teams and bringing their favourite tools along has inevitably helped as well.

The slump and the rebound

The last five years have been a roller coaster:

Covid slump: Deals ground to a halt in early 2020, only to continue as a…
Covid boom: The expert network industry expanded rapidly during 2020-22, fueled by low interest rates and frenzied dealmaking.
Era of Uncertainty: Growth slumped in 2022-23 as private equity deal volumes dropped, deal “auctions” and related consulting CDDs dried up, and corporate budgets were reined in due to higher interest rates and geopolitical instability.
Continued adoption: The industry found its footing again in 2024, despite continued macro instability. Expert networks continued their march onto main street, as regular corporations adopt the service for both strategy and product/ user research, and consulting firms find ever new reasons to tap experts for knowledge. By 2025, the industry built momentum and grew by a healthy 11%.

Expert networks are no longer a luxury for high-stakes deals in high finance; their services are increasingly considered table stakes when running any serious B2B market research.

2025 retrospective: Top trends

B2B Survey Sampling: ENs are increasingly being used for reliable, high-quality B2B surveys leveraging their expertise to source professionals and right decision makers for all niche requirements.
AI-led Interviews: Scaling fast in B2C as the segment relies on quantity rather than quality of individual responses - imperfect responses still produce meaningful patterns at scale. Slower adoption in B2B as the segment focuses on small-sample, high-stakes calls. AI as co-pilot to create questionnaires, take notes, and summarizing the conversations may be the way ahead.
AI Training/ Labelling: Few ENs working in complex and regulated sectors (e.g., Office Hours in Healthcare) have started recruiting experts for data labelling and expert annotations for AI training. As AI companies focus on data quality, few niche players are evolving into an ‘infrastructure layer’ offering expert-verified datasets.

Looking to start using an expert network? Try these resources:

The evolution of Expert Networks: From rolodexes to high-velocity recruitment

Over the past 25 years, four broad generations of expert networks have emerged. Each generation has built on previous generations’ successes, while altering the operating model and/or focusing on under-served client segments.

The four broad generations of expert networks

1^st generation expert networks: The trailblazers

The first expert networks were all founded around the turn of the century. These included GLG (1998), Vista Research (2001), Coleman (2003), GuidePoint (2003), Primary Insight (2005), and a few more. These trail blazers of the industry were all New York-based, building a proprietary offline rolodex of experts that they would resell to primarily public market investors (hedge funds, asset managers), family offices, and banks/brokers. The founders mostly had a background in hedge funds, banks/brokers, and financial data companies.

2^nd generation expert networks: The market expansionists

Seeing the success of early expert networks, a new generation sprung up from 2006 onwards. The founders had often been clients of the 1^st-gen networks, e.g. strategy consultants as the founders of Capvision (2006; Bain), Third Bridge (2007; Bain), AlphaSights (2008; Bain, McKinsey), Atheneum (2010; Kaiser Associates, McKinsey), BCC Global (2008; McKinsey), or employees, e.g. Mosaic Research (2010; Vista), Ridgetop (2008; Vista), Maven Research (2008; GLG), Magellan (2014; AlphaSights).

The 2nd-gen expert networks initially struggled to break into the investment clients, as 1^st gen networks were already entrenched. So instead, these newer expert networks focused on Private Equity clients, who were starting a decade-long bull run, and the strategy consultants they engaged.

Entangled growth of PE industry (AUM and Deals) and Expert Network industry

Every client segment behaves differently. While institutional investors had predictable research needs around earnings releases, PEs and Consultants had faster-moving projects that could start “whenever”. They also researched more niche and ever-changing industries, so expert networks had to do more custom-recruiting. 2nd generation expert networks focused on this specific need, excelled, and in turn significantly expanded the market.

3^rd generation expert networks: The tech disruptors

A new generation of expert networks sprung up in the mid-2010’s, often founded by former employees at incumbent networks. These firms used modern technology (either internally built or building on top of Inex One), with Tegus and AlphaSense Expert Insights (fka. Stream) going for entirely new operating models. They focused primarily on strategy consultants and the emerging corporate strategy segment. Many of them successfully targeted a niche – be it a region, an industry, or specific client segments.

3^rd generation expert networks include Dialectica (2015; ex-AlphaSights), Techspert (2015), Lynk (2015; ex-GLG investor), Liahnson (2015, ex-GLG), NewtonX (2016, ex-McKinsey), ProSapient (2018; ex-Coleman), Tegus (2016; ex-AlphaSights), SixDegrees (2017; ex-Third Bridge), Focal Fact (2018; ex-GLG), Arbolus (2018; ex-AlphaSights), Bridger (2019; ex-GuidePoint), FirstThought (2019, ex-GuidePoint), Nodes (2019; ex-GLG), Arches (2019; ex-Accenture), NetworksX (2020; ex-Third Bridge), Triangulate Knowledge (2020, ex-GLG) IDR (2020, ex-Atheneum), and Colift (2021).

We at Inex One (2018) are also a the 3^rd generation. While we're not an expert network ourselves, we solve the same "job to be done" for clients: getting great experts fast, and run B2B surveys. Inex One partners with some of the best expert networks across generations, who sell their expert services on the platform.

4^th generation expert networks: The new guard

More recently, we’ve seen additional upstarts, again founded by previous employees of incumbent expert networks. Some firms that we see tremendous potential in are Infoquest (2023; ex-Dialectica), Reticula (2023; ex-Dialectica), ENCO Insights (2023; ex-ProSapient), Northern Insights (2024; ex-GLG) Avenor Research (2024, ex-Bridger), and Continental Exchange (2024, ex-Third Bridge).

Predictably, the new generations of expert networks have chipped away the market share from older firms, often by targeting new operating models and/or client segments. The newer generation firms focus on being agile and responding to custom needs of the expanding market. The industry is seeing what Clayton Christensen would call a ‘Disruptive Innovation’:

See our mapping of all expert networks started out of other firms here.

Evolution of market share of different generations of expert network firms

The global landscape: Who plays where?

As you can see, the industry is getting increasingly crowded. On a global scale, GLG and AlphaSights are tied as the largest players. The former has had a few rough years since its failed IPO 2021, consequently, competitors are chipping away at the previously dominant market share (market share has decreased from 51% to 24% within a decade). The latter, however, is on a phenomenal growth trajectory - alongside other firms.

While most expert networks aspire to have a global coverage, they all have their limitations. Many firms are naturally strongest in the regions where they first started. A few of these firms excelled and have become regional champions - but the challengers are already visible on the rear-view mirror.

There are four distinct categories of players

We identify GLG, AlphaSights Third Bridge, GuidePoint, Dialectica and AlphaSense as ‘global leaders’. These six giants have scale and infrastructure to provide high-quality service across almost every continent. Beyond these five firms, the market is territorially fragmented.

“Regional champions” are expert networks with a strong foothold in their respective regions or industry verticals, while also offering global services. Capvision and SixDegrees have a strong position in China. VisasQ is particularly strong in Japan and with the acquisition of Coleman have gained a significant foothold in the US as well. ProSapient and Atheneum have significant market share in Europe (especially within consulting firms).

What about the 100+ smaller expert networks? Smartly, they don’t try to beat the giants at their own game. Instead, most of them win by picking a specific lane:

A specific region: Focus is solely on a specific region (e.g., DACH, GCC etc.)
An industry vertical: Focus on specialized verticals such as healthcare, energy, deep-tech etc.
A different business model: For example building libraries of expert call transcripts shared with many clients, going into prepackaged data services, B2B surveys, or expert witness services.

We find a handful of these firms being particularly strong in their business – these are our ‘regional challengers’ separated from the larger ‘regional prospects’ category.

Expert networks specialized by region

When we closely look at who has ‘boots on the ground’, the territorial division becomes stark. It is a smart play by these players who are doubling down on regional focus before they can go after the global giants. We have plotted notable regional firms below.

VisasQ, Mimir and ShareFair are strong in Japan, whereas Capvision, BCC, Six Degrees, and CIC play in China. Nodes, Liahnson, and Arches each cover different parts of Southeast Asia.

Infoquest has a focus on the Middle East, as do Accurate Insights and Trust Insight in Brazil. Europe has a number of firms with a particular strength in their home market, such as Atheneum, Colift and EPH in Germany, Xperts Council in France, and ProSapient, Arbolus and Focal Fact in the UK and Ireland.

Regional footprint of newer generation expert network firms

Who are the customers of expert networks?

If you looked at the expert network industry in the early 2000s, it looked like an exclusive service for the hedge fund community. The services, however, were soon in demand in the wider financial industry, reaching private equity firms, asset managers, banks and consultants. And from there onto the regular economy, as corporations of all types adopted expert networks for strategy and market research. We estimate that about 11,200 firms use expert networks in 2026 - a scale that was hard to imagine even just a decade ago!

This ‘democratization’ of usage is primarily driven by a few fundamental trends:

Increased supply

More experts can be searched and contacted online than a decade ago.
Professionals across industries are increasingly open to the concept of micro-consulting.

Increased demand

A phenomenal growth in private equity assets under management fuels spend on deal analysis by both PE firms and the consultants that they engage.
Corporate strategy, product, and strategy teams are increasingly accessing expert networks to inform their strategic decisions.
Market researchers, upset by mediocre B2C sample quality, are increasingly shifting attention and spending to the qualified B2B respondents of expert networks.

Expert network supply and demand - access to experts and a growing market of buyers

Growth engines

There are four key client segments that drive the industry:

Consulting (incl. market research)
Asset management (including hedge funds, long only funds, SWFs, IMs and family offices)
Private equity
Corporates

Though the user base has grown, spending is skewed towards a smaller number of large customers. In 2026, the consulting sector remains the largest segment, accounting for almost half of the total industry spend. Widespread adoption within corporates has catapulted them into being the largest segment in terms of numbers, yet they only account for a tenth of the industry spend. Capital market players show a remarkable balance - 44% by client numbers and 42% by industry spend.

We see that the firms that predominantly serve consulting and PE firms (e.g., AlphaSights, Dialectica, Inex One and partners) are among the fastest-growing in the industry, compared to firms with a larger asset management business. The asset management customer group has also shifted part of their spend to transcript libraries from doing traditional ‘one-on-one calls’. This has driven strong growth for players offering libraries, and intense competition. Incidentally, transcript libraries have also eroded 1-on-1 call margins in that segment.

If you are interested in more detailed coverage on the expert network industry, you can get the full 2025 market sizing dataset here.

2026 and beyond: The next era of Expert Networks?

Is the expert network industry finally ‘maturing’? It’s a question that comes up every time the market slows down. Fears that the industry reaches maturity come and go as the industry swings from frantic growth to temporary slowdowns.

The industry has kept growing through multiple economic cycles and crises. However, the ‘next era’ of the industry will look very different from the last.

Number of job posts suggest that the industry is recovering from the 2022-23 slump

The pressure on 'legacy' players

The heat is turning up on the legacy players. They are facing two major challenges:

Expert fatigue: the ease of finding experts attracts new entrants to the market and risks creating a fatigue both among experts (receiving too many identical requests) and among clients (receiving too many similar sales pitches). The increased competition has eroded the margin.
Marketplace efficiency: platforms like Inex One enables a more efficient market, driving business to high-performing expert networks, away from legacy operators.

Interestingly, the predicted ‘consolidation’ of the industry hasn’t really materialized. Instead, the industry is more fragmented than ever with new firms focusing on specific regions and industries where they can offer better quality popping up every year.

This is where we think the industry is headed in the next decade: a more efficient, tech-first market. At Inex One, we’re building the infrastructure for the next phase. By creating a platform that allows clients to access the best specialist networks in one place, we’re helping to turn a fragmented market into an efficient one. The "Old Guard" model of relying on a single, massive vendor is fading; the future belongs to those who can find the best experts, wherever they happen to be. Do you want to be part of this change? Read the reviews of Inex One, or contact us today!

Note: We have approached this market sizing as CDD consultants do: by analyzing public financial reports, IPO filings, benchmarking and, of course, hundreds of expert interviews over the years. Thank you to everyone who contributed with insights! However, if you have a different take on where the numbers landed or want to dive deeper into the 2026 forecast, I’d love to hear it. Let’s talk on LinkedIn or book a meeting!

The CDD sausage and Expert Network OpEx

Max Friberg — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 07:26:00 GMT

Expert networks have immense OpEx, largely driven by their inefficient modes of interacting with clients. This "black box" problem cannot be solved by the networks themselves, but by introducing a dedicated expert network aggregator.

When I was at McKinsey, I routinely used 4-5 expert networks. I would blast out the same email to them all and get hundreds in return. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s part of how the CDD sausage is made.

Most strategy consultants are slightly less self-flagellating, but still use 3 expert networks per project. That’s the pain-to-gain tradeoff. Limit yourself to just one network, and you see just a subset of all relevant experts. Conversely, for every network you engage, the admin work grows.

Now, if consultants think expert interviews are a pain to arrange – you should see the other guy. Expert networks suffer from inefficient admin work, too. Let’s quantify this by looking at GLG's P&L statement from its 2021 IPO attempt, at the time the leading expert network.

74% gross profit after paying experts is pretty good. Then they spend 57% of revenue on operations, support, SG&A. That includes things such as salespeople, IT, that snazzy midtown office, marketing and finance – but in what is really a high-velocity recruitment firm, the by far largest team is recruiters.

Recruiters (associates) are the productive engine of an expert network. They are the ones generating those $589 million revenues, by recruiting experts and matching them to clients looking for insights.

But the engine looks like an old 2-stroker, due to:

The expert network black box

Expert network associates routinely service 6-10 projects in parallel. That means an associate spends on average 1 hour per project and day.

But projects are different. Some projects you get day 1, and you’re the only network. On others, you’re invited late to pick up the scraps. Problem is you don’t know which one is which. It’s a lemon problem.

So you’ll end up guessing and allocating your time randomly. You’ll work on some projects that won’t yield, as the client already took their calls last week with another network. In other projects, you’ll leave the client disappointed, wondering where the experts are.

If you only knew which project would yield, you’d sell more expert interviews per day. Your clients would be happier, and your P&L more attractive.

Real-time status and wallet share

With Inex One, expert network associates see the project status live, across all projects. They can plan their day optimally and adjust focus between projects in real-time.

Consider the user experience, getting project invitations either on the platform (seeing their EN Score), or as a rando email.

At scale, your workflow looks like this:

The result? Clients get optimal service, and expert network associates make more money per hour worked. This productivity gain translates to better economics for the expert network and client, which is why an expert network aggregator is superior vs. emailing with expert networks.

Expert networks on Inex One see in real-time how many experts are published and booked across the entire project and its angles. This lets them focus their time on areas where they add most value to the client, minimizing spam to experts.

Curious to see what users say? Read the reviews here.

Want to try it for yourself? Sign up here, or book a demo.

How to use Expert Networks best: The EN Score

Max Friberg — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 16:18:05 GMT

The EN Score helps you get optimal service from your expert networks. It aligns incentives between clients and their expert network partners. The result is better service and lower costs for all.

The EN Score is a sort of nudge, helping clients to act in a way that gives them the best outcome. Mathematically, the EN Score is the rolling average of the number of calls that you do, over calls you say will do.

A high EN score shows the expert networks that you're a great client, that they’ll make money prioritizing your projects. This makes them go the extra mile for you, giving you great experts fast.

How to get optimal service from expert networks

Trust is built with consistency. As a client, you benefit from being consistent and doing projects over time. Expert networks see this:

In the past year, Camille has asked for 70 calls and completed 47. Anything above 30% is considered good; anything above 60% is great. Camille’s EN Score is 67% - she can expect to get priority service from the expert networks.

The Lemon problem and the Nudge

The EN Score creates transparency and efficiency, by creating a repeat game. Conversely, when I was at McKinsey, I played a short-term game. I’d blast emails to 4-5 expert networks (ENs) to see who they could all find. I optimized for service now. Like peeing your pants, it's sub-optimal in the medium term. You wreck your reputation and create extra work for expert networks, which drives up costs for all parties.

Because here's the other side of the equation: an expert network associate supports 6-10 projects in parallel. That means an associate has about 1 working hour per project and day.

But projects are different. Some projects you get day 1, and you’re the only network. On others, you’re invited late to pick up the scraps. Problem is you don’t know which project is which.

You’ll end up guessing, and allocating your time randomly. You’ll work on some projects that won’t yield, as the client already took their calls last week with another network. In other projects, you’ll leave the client disappointed, wondering where the experts are.

Nobel laureate George Akerlof called this a lemon problem: when you don’t know which clients are “good ones”, you’ll have to treat all clients as “OK”. This is suboptimal for all parties.

Solving for optimal Expert Network service

The EN Score removes the guesswork. EN associates clearly identify “the lemons” from the good clients and serve them accordingly.

Clients take notice, too. We find they give realistic expectations and communicate better with the ENs than over email. They realize it’s a repeat game. This result is less wasted efforts on both sides, less spam to experts, and better service quality to the client.

Curious to see what users say? Read the reviews here.

Want to try it for yourself? Sign up here, or book a demo.

Expert networks in Latin America

Julia Farhat — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 06:53:01 GMT

Latin America is a dynamic economic force, home to global players like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. As these economies evolve, to truly capitalize, you'll need more than just 'googleable' information; you need direct, local knowledge. That's where localized expert networks become invaluable; they're the key to unlocking the insights driving strategic decisions for global and local stakeholders alike.

It's the ultimate strategic location for the expert networks themselves. With significant timezone overlap with North America and an attractive labor pool of professionals and lower operating costs, networks can efficiently serve North American clients while building a strong local presence. The secret lies in the regional approach: native language skills and deep market knowledge are what give you access to accurate, relevant insights.

Nine expert networks have offices in the region, serving both domestic and international market research. The first homegrown Brazilian expert network, Accurate Insight started in 2015.

With Inex One, you can access the best Latin American expert networks and B2B survey providers in one platform. Avoid cross-border contracting, or getting lost in translation. Join more than 8,000 users on Inex One - see Inex One reviews here.

Latin American expert networks for market research

Over the past decade, we've seen a significant increase in expert networks present in Latin America, with both global players establishing regional offices and specialized local networks emerging. Brazil, in particular, has become a hub for these localized operations.

Expert networks bridge the gap between international experts and clients.

Accurate Insight, founded in 2015 by former Atheneum managers, was the first Brazil-based network.
Wivenn was established shortly after, in 2016, by former bankers. They operate out of São Paulo, Brazil.
Maven Day (formerly Maestro Key) was also founded in 2016. With their HQ in São Paulo, they've since expanded to the US, UK, Nigeria and Mozambique.
Atheneum, a global player, has had its office in Santiago, Chile, since 2019.The only expert network with an office in Chile.
Trust Insight, the newest addition to the localized networks, was founded in 2020 by a former Maven Day employee. They're also based out of São Paulo, Brazil.
Dialectica expanded its operations to Bogotá, Colombia, in early 2022.
Insights Driven Research (IDR) extended their coverage into the region with a new office in Puerto Rico in 2024.
Arches Global has recently expanded into the region with a new office in Bogotá, Colombia, earlier in 2025.
Arbolus, a UK-headquartered expert network, the newest network in the region, opened their office in San José, Costa Rica, in early 2025.

Access the best LATAM networks with Inex One

Through Inex One, you can access multiple expert networks in one place. You only pay for the research that you consume; not upfront. Instead of negotiating contractual agreements with multiple separate vendors, you have one master contract that applies to all the best networks globally.

“With Inex One, we acces subject-matter experts fast and efficiently. The platform is intuitive and user-friendly. The transcripts and AI summaries are great, and their customer service is excellent. Inex One combined the reach of multiple global expert networks with the simplicity of modern SaaS."

- Eskil Nilsson, Head of Business Development, ex-McKinsey (see reviews here)

You get multiple benefits using Inex One to access Latin American expert networks:

Cast a wide net: access multiple LATAM expert networks in one portal, and get the best from each one.
Streamlined Contracting Process: One contract only. Inex One simplifies and centralizes administrative tasks associated with engaging multiple networks, saving time and reducing complexity.
Flexible and Transparent Pricing: Inex One offers a unique payment model where clients only pay for the expert interviews they conduct, providing cost-efficiency and flexibility.

Access the best global expert networks in one platform, on Inex One.

Using Inex One empowers international clients to effortlessly tap into valuable Latin American expert resources, enabling well-informed and strategic decision-making.

Ready to gain a competitive edge in Latin America? Get started here, or talk to our team here.

Compliance at Inex One: The 3 Lines of Defense

Max Friberg — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 09:53:00 GMT

Inex One serves the leading market research, private equity and strategy consulting firms globally. Our clients require the highest standards of integrity, discretion, and adherence to regulatory guidelines. As the global marketplace for expert networks, Inex One defines the best practices for expert network operations, standardizing compliance frameworks, operations, and policies across all networks.

Inex One provides a platform where clients can connect with the best experts globally, confident that the expert networks and survey firms are continuously monitored for compliance and operational excellence.

Inex One is your central hub for primary research, streamlining access to all expert networks and survey firms under one contract and compliance framework. Compared to engaging a patchwork of separate firms, Inex One users have central compliance oversight of their primary research.

The three lines of Defense

Inex One centralizes and standardizes primary research across your entire firm. Our robust compliance framework is built on three lines of defense:

Vetting, due diligence and standardized compliance across all suppliers
Compliance control tower - tools to empower your central oversight
Global monitoring and industry leadership

Line 1: Vetting & Standardized Compliance across our Supply Partners

Inex One has curated a selection of the world's best expert networks and B2B survey firms, each rigorously evaluated for their independent compliance capabilities. Under one contract with Inex One, you can access them all with standardized compliance rules and pricing.

All Inex One partners must annually recertify their adherence to our compliance framework. This includes:

Regular employee compliance training. Covering topics of anti-corruption and anti-bribery, conflicts of interests, ethical rights and obligations, privacy violations, treatment of confidential and material non-public information.

Internal whistleblower programs, to promptly address any compliance concerns.

Comprehensive Expert Vetting: Each partner must implement stringent processes for vetting their experts, including identity verification, professional background checks, and assessment of potential conflicts of interest.

Mandatory Expert Training: Our partners are required to provide their experts with ongoing, mandatory training on critical compliance topics, including but not limited to:
- Prohibition of discussing Material Non-Public Information (MNPI).
- Strict adherence to confidentiality agreements.
- Rules regarding current employer affiliations and sensitive industry topics.
- Managing conflicts of interest.

Robust Compliance Frameworks: We assess our partners' internal compliance teams, policies, and technological infrastructure to ensure they meet the highest industry standards. Partners must adhere to all applicable legislation and industry standards. We think of these in three tiers:

Firstly, there's general legislation applicable to all market research, e.g.:

Secure data processing, minimization, anonymization and deletion of data (e.g. the EU GDPR, CCPA, Chinese CAC measures).
Not giving or soliciting advice (medical, investment, legal).
Not breaching any NDAs or confidentiality agreements.
Not disclosing any material non-public information ("MNPI"), including but not limited to MNPI related to clinical trials, publicly traded companies or IPOs.
Declaring incentives to tax authorities if above applicable thresholds (e.g. US W9 forms).

Secondly, there is legislation specific to healthcare market research, e.g.:

Declaration of studies (e.g. Loi Anti-Câdeaux in France).
Declaration and limitations of payments as per Loi Bertrand (France), The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (US), and similar requirements imposed by self-regulation (e.g. EFPIA member disclosure).
Adverse events reporting obligations.
Fair market value compensation.
Secure treatment of patient information (e.g. the US HIPAA).
Practitioners must be duly licensed and may not be on any debarment/ excluded individuals list.
Prohibiting clients from using the market research as a means to solicit any medical services/advice or promote any product or service to a HCP.
Limitation on market research targeted towards children (e.g. the US COPPA).

Finally, market research associations worldwide have guidelines and codes of conduct relevant to their geography and sector building upon the legislation. These associations range from general to sector-specific, e.g.:

general market research (e.g. ESOMAR, CRIC, AMSRS, UK MRS).
general healthcare (e.g. the BHBIA).
medical devices (e.g. AdvaMed), and
pharmaceuticals (e.g. EphMRA and ABPI).

Line 2: Your Compliance Control Tower

Inex One gives you the tools to monitor all your firm's expert network and survey interactions. You can implement specific compliance protocols across all your expert engagements, regardless of the underlying expert network. This includes:

Customizable Screening & Approval Flows: Tailor screening questions and automated rules to flag experts. Implement automatic approvals/rejections, or notifications to the compliance team about experts based on predefined criteria.
Centralized Expert Profiles & History: Review expert profiles, detailed biographies, and responses to screening questions from all networks in one unified dashboard. Maintain a comprehensive audit trail of all expert interactions, including optional recordings/transcripts.
Communication Oversight: All communication between your team and the expert networks, including project details and expert profiles, is centralized, providing transparency and control.
Real-Time Monitoring & Alerts: Set up notifications to alert your compliance team when experts meet specific criteria or require review, ensuring timely oversight.
Secure & Compliant Data Handling: Our platform is designed with robust data protection and privacy measures, ensuring that all personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive project data are handled in full compliance with global regulations (e.g., GDPR).

Read more about the Inex One compliance infrastructure here.

Line 3: Global real-time monitoring and alerts

Compliance is an ongoing commitment, not a one-time check. We monitor expert interactions and surveys done by more than 500 customer organizations worldwide. We collect quantitative and qualitative feedback on service quality, pricing, and compliance. Through automated monitoring and continuous client feedback loops, we are the first to know if the service levels are deteriorating at any expert network or survey firm. In such rare cases, we can swiftly contain risk to our clients by stopping that vendor from engaging on new projects until investigated.

As Inex One has grown to become one of the largest buyers of expert network services globally, we’ve been able to enforce our compliance rules and checks across all vendors.

Inex One is your Digital Research Management Assistant

With Inex One, you access the best expert networks and B2B survey firms with a robust, centralized compliance system that protects your firm, streamlines your workflows, and controls costs. You get peace of mind to focus on gaining insights, being confident that every interaction adheres to the highest ethical and legal standards.

Want to learn how other firms use Inex One? Check out our case studies, or contact us!

Why does Inex One charge for Platform Access?

Max Friberg — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 08:37:00 GMT

Inex One is pay-per-use access to the best expert networks and B2B survey firms worldwide. To unlock this access, customers must pay an annual access fee to use the platform. This serves two purposes:

It buys you unlimited access to the industry's best tech, including AI call transcripts chat tools, compliance tools, a dedicated account manager, and time-saving workflows.
It guarantees the integrity of the platform. Inex One is not for everyone. As a customer, you come to Inex One to get great service from the best expert networks and survey firms. They can deliver this as they trust the quality of customers on the platform. This selective approach fosters a flywheel of mutual trust and engagement. Vendors are confident they are serving serious clients, leading to exceptional service, which in turn drives customer satisfaction and repeat business.

Inex One creates a flywheel of mutual trust and benefit

Similar to the Costco model - admired by builders like Charlie Munger - Inex One only works with qualified customers. This ensures that only committed and serious users benefit from the platform and the dedicated support of our vendor partners.

Not all customers are ready to use Inex One. For example, some clients might have prepaid to use a traditional expert network. In those cases, we advise the customer to wait until the contract expires before engaging with Inex One.

The benefit of gated access: Maintaining High Standards

Accepting unqualified customers would dilute the platform's value to suppliers. This chips away at the vendors’ trust in the average customer, which reduces the effort they put in on the average new project.

Consequently, by keeping a high bar for entry for new customers, we ensure that all users - including you - can get the best market research service available.

Initially I was concerned about the availability of quality of experts on the platform, but it turned out that the experts I was connected with were just as good as the ones provided by GLG, Third Bridge and others.

- James Agres, founder of 2nd St Strategy, ex-McKinsey and EY-Parthenon.

Read all customer reviews of Inex One here.

Lessons for the Road – with Ajay Gupta

Max Friberg — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 09:19:51 GMT

Every time I speak to Ajay, my brain grows. I’ve been fortunate to count him as an investor and advisor since 2021.

Ajay Gupta is a McKinsey Senior Partner Emeritus, based in Chicago. Last week, he joined our monthly Team Learning session, to talk about his journey and his advice to young professionals starting out their careers in our firm. As often with Ajay, his advice was poignant and concrete – so much that I’m sharing it here in hopes it may inspire others too.

Ajay never had a big master plan for his career. But he followed a set of principles that helped him recognize and pursue opportunities. More on these principles shortly.

Ajay Gupta, Senior Partner Emeritus at McKinsey and investor in Inex One.

Ajay started his career somewhat unexpectedly for a would-be McKinsey partner: in oil-field exploration across Asia and in the North Sea. A hard-hat job in a rough climate, he thrived.

It was a very entrepreneurial culture; they dared betting on ambitious young people. The CEO of Schlumberger was this self-made Scottish guy, who had worked his way up from the shop floor. We all looked at him and thought, ‘That could be me!’.

After 5 years in the field, Ajay was talked into an MBA, where he in turn encountered McKinsey. At the time, the firm had just 3,000 employees (vs. more than 40,000 today!). Ajay initially hopped between different industries (“against the advice of my seniors, it took me a while to specialize. I did what I found interesting”).

His enthusiasm really showed when we got to this part of the conversation. Ajay likes to ask “why is is?”. A seemingly simple question, it has surprising depth. This question means you doesn’t settle with accepting worldly constraints as granted, but challenge their very existence with curiosity. Ajay effectively applies first principles thinking, where you keep drilling to the very root of any constraint or problem.

Following his curiosity, Ajay eventually gravitated towards healthcare and rose to become a Senior Partner in McKinsey’s Healthcare and Medical Products practices.

His advice to young professionals:

Enjoy the journey. Whatever you do for work, make sure you enjoy it. You have one life! If your job doesn’t inspire you, find out what does – and move on!
Whatever you do: be good at it. If you’re good at something, you tend to enjoy it more – and vice versa. But learning complex things requires you to:
Be resilient. Almost nothing that you do is going to go well at first try. Learning is hard and takes time. You must enjoy the learning journey, finding enjoyment in dedicated practice. It helps if you decide to:
Strive to learn from everyone around you. Intellectual curiosity is incredibly important. Be curious: how could we make things work better? Learn to listen well.
Finally, maintain relationships. The world is small, and you will meet people again. Don’t hold grudges. Show gratitude to those who have been generous or helpful to you along the journey.

Expert Networks for Independent Consultants

Max Friberg — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 10:07:00 GMT

Being an independent strategy consultant has its perks: flexibility, control, and the ability to focus on projects you're passionate about. But you miss some of the perks of big corporate consulting. Access to expert networks is one of those.

Traditional expert networks are geared towards large consulting firms, who pay large upfront retainers. This isn't feasible for independent and freelance consultants. And, let's face it, when you're not a high-volume client, you're lower prio than back at the old firm.

That's where Inex One comes in.

Expert Networks for Freelance Consultants

Instead of prepaying for opaque credits, you simply pay for what you use on Inex One. This model gets the incentives right: ensuring you get the same high-quality service as the big firms.

Initially I was concerned about the availability of quality of experts on the platform, but it turned out that the experts I was connected with were just as good as the ones provided by GLG, Third Bridge and others.

- James Agres, founder of 2nd St Strategy, ex-McKinsey

Here's why it works for independent consultants:

No More Upfront Costs: Ditch the large retainers. Inex One lets you access expertise on demand - because managing liquidity isn't easy when you're independent.
Priority Service: When you're paying only for completed expert calls, you're a valued client, not an afterthought. Inex One has been ranked the best expert network platform by users every year since 2023.
Specialized Expertise: Is your GLG rep a 24-year old fresh graduate, still learning the ropes? On Inex One, you have 20+ specialized expert networks in every market and industry. This lets you access the best experts, fast.

Inex One gives you the tools of the titans, the expertise you need to compete effectively.

Ready to explore a superior way to access expert insights? Check out Inex One and see how it can empower your independent consulting practice.

Listen to our podcast for independent consultants, book a demo, or get started right away!

5 ways that Inex One differs from traditional expert networks

Max Friberg — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:46:00 GMT

When I was at McKinsey, we spent lots of money - and more importantly - many hours on expert networks. So I left the firm and built Inex One to automate away all the donkey work.

Since then, Inex One has grown to become the preferred expert network platform for leading strategy and investment firms. We're proud to partner with the best expert networks and survey firms in the industry.

Inex One differs from traditional expert networks in five ways:

1. Access to Multiple Expert Networks

Regular expert network: Working with a single expert network means you're limited to the experts within that provider’s network.
Inex One: You conveniently access multiple expert networks in one platform, to get the most relevant experts - all in one place.

2. Cost Efficiency

Regular expert network: Traditional expert networks typically come with high costs, and often require prepayments. With only one vendor, you're what the economists call a price-taker - you're stuck with what you got. Most annoyingly, traditional expert networks use "credits", to obscure the real price you pay.
Inex One: You get price visibility across multiple networks, letting you compare costs (in real $/€/£) and select the best experts for your budget. Plus, you only pay for the calls that you make; there are no prepayments needed. Here's our deep-dive in pricing compared across expert networks.

3. Streamlined Workflows

Regular expert network: Working with multiple expert networks over email is complex. You have separate annual renewal negotiations, and long email threads with each vendor about every project. Your time is valuable - don't waste it on basic admin!
Inex One: Streamlined contracting, billing, and compliance in a single platform. Cast a wide net across multiple top expert networks, to get the best insights fast.

4. Improved Knowledge Management

Regular expert network: Most traditional expert networks don't share recordings, or charge $100 extra per transcript. This often means you'll end up having to do the same call over and over, repeating your own or your colleagues' work. There's no efficient way to see what your firm already knows and collaborate across your team.
Inex One: All expert calls are recorded, transcribed and summarized on Inex One, and shared only with your firm. You can LLM-chat with all your transcripts to extract structured insights fast. This automated knowledge management lets you build on the insights you've already paid for, and continuously dig deeper.

5. Global Reach with Local Expertise

Regular expert network: Most traditional expert networks will tell you they cover all industries and geographies, but the data says otherwise. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, which limits your access to experts with specific or local insights.
Inex One: In one platform, you can engage specialized expert networks in Japan, Korea, Europe, and all other parts of the world. Local providers are better at finding experts for you than London-based generalists.

Get smarter now

Inex One reinvented the traditional expert network model. The platform lets you access superior insights, control costs and compliance, and collaborate efficiently with your team. Since early 2024, it's rated the #1 expert network platform on G2. Get started today, or book a demo.

B2B and Healthcare surveys - how we connect top-down with bottom-up sizings

Erik Adling Tufvesson — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 16:24:00 GMT

This is part 3 of our series on the B2B and Healthcare survey sample industry. This piece explains our methodology for estimating industry turnover to $1.1 billion in 2023.

Every year, ESOMAR publishes a detailed research report on the global insights industry. We encourage you to read it! The report combines multiple detailed data sets, to generate the most comprehensive view of the industry. Sources include:

ESOMAR’s Annual Global Market Research Survey, which they send to insights associations and companies, collecting financial data, growth rates, and employment statistics.
National market research associations contribute insights and local data on their respective markets.
Individual contributions from large research organizations (e.g. Kantar, Nielsen, and Ipsos) and various other experts and participants in the ecosystem.

In the 2024 report, ESOMAR said the global insights industry was $142 Bn, and introduced the research triangle below:

ESOMAR says that from the $142 Bn, market research is $54 Bn, out of which 65% or $34.83 Bn is “MR doing MR” (as opposed to other things like reporting or research software).

Breaking down the $35 Bn of MR revenue. The ugly table on the right is my value-add

The $34.83 Bn includes all market research methods done by all market research firms globally. These include automated/ passive research like social media monitoring, which isn’t relevant to us sizing the B2B and Healthcare survey industry. We exclude all methods except the five that we consider relevant:

Online / mobile quant
Face-to-face interviews (“F2F”)
Telephone CATI
F2F Group discussion / Focus groups
In-depth F2F interviews

These relevant methods generated $17 Bn in turnover in 2023, making up about half of the total MR doing MR segment.

Bottom-up meets top-down

Then we asked the industry: which companies do you use for B2B and Healthcare surveys?

About 50 firms were mentioned frequently enough, after we excluded companies that primarily resell 3rd party sample or are primarily B2C, e.g. consumer panels, regular fieldwork companies, exchanges, and traditional full-service market research firms.

We estimated the revenue of those 50 firms individually and bottom-up to a total of $7.5 Bn. We did this by triangulating from multiple sources (expert interviews, public financials, reported panel sizes and number of completes, marketing materials, etc.).

From the $7.5 Bn, we removed the parts of these companies that were non-survey sample revenue (e.g. research software, reporting, marketing services, etc.).

Having excluded $4.4 Bn of non-survey revenue, we had $3 Bn of relevant survey sample revenue left, when summing up all 50 companies. We estimate that about $1.9 Bn of this was B2C revenue, leaving an aggregate of $1.1 Bn of B2B or Healthcare survey sample revenue.

Putting it all together, we get two images showing the numbers from slightly different angles:

The 50 firms we mapped generated $1.1 bn in B2B and HC survey sample revenue, with total revenues of $7.5 bn. Bridging this number with the $17 bn in relevant methods from ESOMAR, we get $9.5bn in revenue from firms not included in our mapping: firms primarily doing B2C or 3rd party sample.

Looking to skip the heavy lifting of mapping 50 firms and connect with the top B2B and Healthcare survey providers with high-quality, proprietary data? Get started here or book a demo of Inex One.

The Russian Dolls of the Survey Industry

Max Friberg — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 16:23:00 GMT

In our recent blog post, we sized up the $1.1 Bn global B2B survey industry, by estimating bottom-up the 50 main vendors that users of Inex One (and the vendors themselves) talk about. But this number is inflated. Here’s why.

Survey Firms: Rivals by day, Suppliers by night

When I started researching the survey industry, I was amused by how industry longtimers would call the industry “incestuous”. Turns out survey companies habitually buy survey sample from each other.

In theory, that’s fine (your own panel has almost all the respondents you need, and you buy the last 200 from Patrick’s panel). In practice, it opens up for various risks that the survey industry is grappling with. It also complicates things for entrepreneurs who try to size the global B2B survey industry, but we’ll manage.

Credit where credit's due

A very public example of how common 3rd party sampling is came in the summer of 2024, when Dynata filed for chapter 11. Dynata is the market leader for surveys in the PE/ consulting space, so these numbers are highly relevant. The bankruptcy filing included a list of the 10 largest unsecured creditors. These are companies that have given something to Dynata, but weren't paid yet. The word “unsecured” means that they have no collateral; they’ve already done their part of the transaction and are waiting for the payment back.

Seven of these companies were other survey companies (see below):

Dynata is buying survey respondents from these companies, for surveys that it sells to its clients. This is completely normal!

Now, what do these amounts mean? In total, Dynata owed $6.3m to its top-10 unsecured creditors, of which $4.9m (78%) was to survey firms. Dynata had $39m in total accounts payable (page 190).

If we assume that the 78% is representative also for survey sample (whether internal or 3rd party) as part of total accounts payable, then Dynata would have owed $30.2m for sample at the time of bankruptcy.

In that case, Dynata gets ~16% of its sample ($4.9m / $30.2m) from 3rd party sample suppliers. The 16% could be either:

higher as we only account for the debts to their top-7 sample suppliers. There might be more external sample suppliers in the total $39m accounts payable.
lower, if survey sample is a larger share of total accounts payable, and all of it - except the top-10 unsecured - are to proprietary panelists (in which case 3rd-party is 4.9/32.7 = 13%). It could be even lower of course, if I misunderstood Dynata's accounting.

Whatever the number is, buying 3rd party sample is completely normal and common practice - after all, they're going the extra mile to help their client complete their survey. But it does complicate things.

All’s well when we all sell

We’ve seen that our headline $1.1 Bn industry revenue number is inflated, as survey companies buy sample from each other. When we size them individually and add up the total, we get a number that is larger than the amount the actual clients (real-world companies) are spending on surveys.

The Russian dolls of revenue

We couldn’t untangle the 3rd party sampling in all firms, but simply excluded companies that primarily resell 3rd-party sample (e.g. EMI, RepData). The companies that we included all have a meaningful part of their total sample being proprietary.

When building the Inex One survey platform, we were wary of the survey industry’s quality crisis. So we looked for companies that had their own panel and could explain in plain language how they sourced, qualified, and surveyed the respondents. Given our background, expert networks doing bespoke recruitment was our first port of call. These expert networks included BWG Strategy, Maven and IDR. Over time, we got to know other quality survey providers with different primary methodologies, including social media/river sampling and insights firms such as NewtonX, Potloc and GrapeData, panel companies, and CATI firms like Unimrkt and Ronin.

When you engage a survey provider on Inex One, they guarantee the quality of their respondents. We partner with survey providers who primarily use their own panel, and complement with 3rd party panels only if required. If they do so, they will be transparent with you about the process and the sources. This way, you remain in control of where your respondents are coming from and the quality of the research you’re paying for.

Ready to access the best B2B and Healthcare survey firms? Get started here, or book a demo.

The B2B and Healthcare survey sampling industry market sizing

Max Friberg — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:22:00 GMT

In 2023, the B2B and Healthcare survey industry reached $1.1 billion, growing by 5% from the previous year. We conducted a comprehensive bottom-up analysis, estimating the B2B survey revenue of 50 leading survey firms, panel providers, and expert networks. This research draws upon more than 100 conversations with leaders in the B2B survey industry, and the work we do with the leading B2B survey companies on Inex One. We’ve compiled a unique set of data combining public, hard-to-reach, and proprietary sources, to benchmark and sense-check the numbers.

Having done a few years of expert network market reports, this is the first extensive sizing of the B2B and Healthcare survey industry. We welcome feedback, additions, and improvement suggestions.

In contrast to B2C surveys, B2B and Healthcare surveys target respondents based on their - typically very specific - professional qualifications. Healthcare is a large and distinctive (special qualifications and regulations) part of total B2B, and is therefore often defined separately. But in this article, we use “B2B“ to describe all professional segments, including healthcare.

B2B surveys represent a subset of the $142 billion global insights industry, as defined by ESOMAR. In a related article, we discuss the methodology behind bridging the gap between the global $142 billion and our $1.1 billion estimate. To get the actual dataset, you can purchase it here.

The B2B survey industry has five main methods to access respondents, with a sixth being access through external panels. Below, we explain these approaches. If any survey terminology looks unfamiliar, use the survey lingo explainer for reference.

The 5 ways to access B2B survey sample

When investment firms, strategy consultants, or market research firms want to survey professionals, they have five ways to get hold of them. Here are the vendors that these firms mentioned frequently to us:

When sizing the B2B and Healthcare survey industry, we exclude companies that primarily resell 3rd party sample or are primarily B2C, e.g. consumer panels, regular fieldwork companies, exchanges, and traditional full-service market research firms.

The firms are listed by their primary method of recruiting survey respondents. This is a bit simplified, of course. In practice, survey sample providers use multiple methods in parallel. A firm like NewtonX for example, uses social “river sampling” as the primary method of finding new respondents, but complements with bespoke recruitment. They also tap into their own database of previously engaged respondents. Many firms also top up their own pool of respondents (whether freshly recruited or from their database) with 3rd party sample.

Some firms have built an entire business on brokering 3rd party sample. They focus on client service and consulting, sometimes survey programming, and then access respondents from other firms. Many of these firms (e.g. EMI, RepData, Cint) have bought or developed their own trust scores and high-end fraud detection tools.

To an economist, this division of labor sounds fair, and it often is. But especially in B2C surveys, excessive 3rd-party sampling has contributed to massive quality and fraud problems that the industry is grappling with.

Finally, 3rd-party sampling creates a Russian doll-problem when estimating revenue. So when sizing the industry, we excluded firms that mostly use 3rd-party sample.

So. Exclusions, exclusions. Now let’s get to the good part. How do these firms recruit respondents for B2B surveys?

1. Bespoke recruitment

Bespoke recruitment is done mainly by expert networks. These firms collect detailed profiles and CV history of individuals and qualify them over the phone. This method guarantees high-quality respondents, but is also the most expensive way to build a survey panel. Bespoke recruitment of respondents is not an economical way of recruiting an entire survey panel; the cost of recruiting like this is higher than the CPIs most customers are comfortable with. But expert networks have a growth hack for their survey panels: they build them as a side effect of selling $1,000+/h expert interviews. Bespoke recruitment is economical when you do expert interviews, which lets you accumulate an expert database that can also be used for B2B surveys.

2. CATI

Telephone survey interviewing has been around for ages. Its popularity got a boost in the 1970’s, when interviewers started doing Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI): recording responses in real-time and getting guidance on the next questions from a computer. CATI brought big efficiency improvements and has ever since been a core market research method. Most CATI firms focus on political polling and B2C research, but some firms also have a material B2B business.

CATI has long been an established survey method

Today, most large CATI firms operate globally from India, Pakistan and the Philippines, but there are large CATI centers also in many OECD countries, e.g. Krämer and AMR Research in Germany, Ronin and B2B International in the UK, and Focus Crossroads in the US.

At first glance, a CATI center looks similar to a bespoke recruitment firm: rows of desks with people in headsets talking to experts/respondents. The main differences are that CATI interviewers are typically temps (“0-hour contracts”), and projects are sold as complete research pieces (“you will get 400 completes on this in 3 weeks”) rather than multiple vendors competing to fill them. The majority of CATI business is B2C and political research, but the approach is effective also for B2B surveys.

CATI firms typically don't accumulate databases of respondents but are still effective for projects requiring quick, high-volume data collection from specific respondent groups.

3. Social (online) river sampling

Ever seen hyper-targeted ads on LinkedIn/Facebook asking you to do a survey? That’s social river sampling - an effective way to recruit specific B2B respondents.

Social river sampling companies use tech tools similar to what edgy sales teams use, as they (a bit simplified):

Generate automated gross lists of people who have the exact CV profile that you want by trawling mostly LinkedIn but also Github, Twitter, etc.
Attract them to your survey:
- Serve ads.
- Send messages (e.g. DMs/ InMails, email cadences, automated texting).
Typically ask you to verify your identity with your LinkedIn account, in conjunction with completing the survey.

Social river sampling is similar to bespoke recruitment, but automation keeps your costs down to a level where you can often source the respondents from scratch. You don’t get as detailed profiles and you’re a little more exposed to bots/fraudulent respondents, but savvy buyers understand that and consider it alongside the - oftentimes lower - price tag.

Few social river sampling firms explain how the sausage is made, but I found this marketing and user research company called Wynter laying out the approach beautifully.

4. B2B and Healthcare panels

Recruiting people for surveys is costly - what if you could get participants to sign up themselves? Turns out, it's possible!

B2C firms recruit consumers en masse through games (e.g. Prodege), or online reward pages. Consumers visit these platforms for entertainment or rewards and encounter small polls along the way.

So where on the internet do senior B2B leaders hang out? I want to slide my survey in their DMs.

Well, B2B panel firms have a few hacks for this, for example:

Social networks or industry guides (e.g. Sermo, WebMD and M3 all offer healthcare professionals social networking sites, online guides that they can browse for advice, or online directories to promote their services).
Partnerships with other firms’ B2B communities. For example, Dynata has a long-standing partnership with airlines and hotel chains. These firms let Dynata send surveys directly to business travelers and reward them with air miles. It looks like this, and has given Dynata access to hard-to-reach B2B demographics - even though not everyone on Reddit was impressed.

5. Reusing your panel

On top of recruiting new respondents using methods 1-4 above, any B2B/HC survey firm worth its salt has a database. This is where they store respondents they’ve engaged previously. These respondents’ profiles get enriched over time, as each respondent takes more surveys. This is called a knowledge graph, creating returns to scale for survey firms as they grow (provided they don’t churn the respondents!).

How to get quality respondents for your survey

All these methods are established and proven ways to access B2B and Healthcare survey respondents. Different vendors have specialized in different recruitment methods, and each built a database and industry knowledge reflecting the type of survey projects they’ve done historically. Therefore, the survey firm that is best suited can vary between projects.

Inex One partners with the best B2B and Healthcare survey firms globally. On the Inex One survey platform, you can find and engage multiple top vendors and compare their bids. Find the right survey firm, to get high-quality insights for your most important business decisions.

Ready to access the best B2B and Healthcare survey firms? Get started here, or book a demo.

Tools for international market research

Max Friberg — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 15:22:10 GMT

International market research is difficult. Once you go cross-border, you run into a new set of challenges. Which vendor should I engage? How does the contract and pricing look? Can I trust the quality?

We've built Inex One to solve these challenges. I was myself a big market research buyer back in consulting. I used multiple expert networks and survey firms in parallel - it was messy and draining!

With Inex One, you can access all the best international market research providers in one place, for expert interviews and surveys. You have one single contract that applies to them all, and prices are stated clearly upfront.

Inex One also monitors supplier quality across. More than 6,000 users of Inex One worldwide give feedback on the vendors' quality and price-performance. This feedback informs what features we build, and how likely a vendor is to be recommended for future projects in that geography or industry. The best vendors get loads more business, while some lower-performing are eventually taken off-platform. This ensures that customers always get the best service in the market.

Tools for cross-border market research

Let's say you are a Corporate strategy team in the US, doing research for your international expansion. You could engage a strategy consulting firm, or you could do the research yourself.

The first thing you would do is to search online. You will find these things:

Market entry reports from consulting firms (each one of varying quality, recency, and relevance.
Market reports from public agencies (e.g. this one, this one, or this one).

You're welcome. Now, let's say you want to go one level deeper, with some proprietary research. You'll want to speak to local experts - people who have worked in your industry and can relate to your business. This is where many strategy professionals turn to expert networks. (If you're entirely new to them, check out this primer: What are expert networks?).

Which expert network should I use?

It depends. Expert networks are specialized, high-velocity headhunting firms. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, as we discuss in the expert network market sizing. If you research a specific geography or industry, you want expert networks that share your focus.

We've listed a few common themes here:

Expert networks in Japan. The Japanese economy is the world's third largest after the US and China. But the expert network industry took longer to develop in Japan than in many other large economies, with VisasQ starting in 2012. Today, it's bustling, with both domestic and international players having offices in Tokyo. With Inex One, you can access multiple top Japanese expert networks under one contract.
Expert networks in Korea. The first Korean expert network, Nathan Research Group, started in 2013. Today, there are multiple expert networks in Korea, many of which are available on Inex One.
Expert networks in Europe. There are more than 15 expert networks in Europe, ranging from multinational companies to regional specialists. With Inex One, you can access expert networks specialized in all major languages and regions, e.g. the UK, Nordics, German, French, Spanish and Italian-speaking regions.
Expert networks in the Middle East. There are four expert networks with offices in Dubai, from which they service the Middle East: GLG, Infoquest, Guidepoint, Alphasights, and Swissmen. In addition, Atheneum and IDR have offices in Pakistan, serving the Middle East.

Expert networks can also be approached from a functional perspective, where different client segments have different needs. So far, there are two industry categories with multiple dedicated expert networks are:

Expert networks for Energy, Industrials and Materials. Four expert networks are focused on the global energy industry: ENCO Insights, Pangea SI, Candour Energy, and KEEN.
Expert networks for Healthcare and Life Sciences. The expert networks who say they have a particular focus in healthcare are Guidepoint, Atheneum, IDR, and Techspert. Other networks with meaningful healthcare practices include Alphasights, Third Bridge and GLG.

Compare expert networks with our guide, or work with multiple top networks in one unified platform - on Inex One.

Expert networks in Europe

Max Friberg — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 15:59:00 GMT

There are more than 15 expert networks in Europe. Thousands of strategy and investment professionals rely on them to do business decisions. While the expert network industry started in the USA around the turn of the century, it didn't take long to expand to Europe.

Inex One simplifies access to European expert networks. With Inex One, you can access the best European expert networks and B2B survey providers in one platform. Avoid cross-border contracting, or getting lost in translation. Join more than 6,000 users on Inex One - see Inex One reviews here.

European expert networks for market research

European expert networks play a crucial role in supporting decision-making for private equity firms and strategy consulting companies. The networks provide access to experts in Europe, typically for domain expertise in specific industries.

The European expert network industry has grown rapidly over the past decade. In broad strokes, the history goes like this:

GLG was the first expert network to open in Europe, with its London office (2004), followed by Zurich (2008, later closed), Dublin and Paris (2009), Frankfurt (2015; later closed).
Guidepoint opened in London in 2007, and in Düsseldorf by acquiring Innosquared in 2011 (founded in 2009).
Third Bridge launched with a London HQ in 2007, opening a Munich office in 2014.
Alphasights launched its London HQ in 2008, and expanded to Hamburg in 2016.
Coleman Research opened its London branch in 2009.
2010 - Atheneum launched in Berlin and Munich simultaneously.
2015 - Dialectica launched in Athens and London simultaneously; Techspert launched in Cambridge, UK.
2018 - Prosapient and Arbolus launched in London. Focal Fact launched in Dublin. NKP in Copenhagen and Previro in Stockholm.
2020 - Expertwired was founded in Amsterdam, as the first Dutch expert network. The company closed down in 2023. Nexus Network launched in London.
2021 - Colift launched in Hamburg, as the first expert network focused on Germany and DACH.
2024 - IQExperts launched in Frankfurt, focusing on the DACH markets.

By engaging European expert networks, PE firms and strategy consultants get better insights faster, gain a deeper understanding of the European markets, and can ultimately improve their chances of business success.

Expert networks bridge the gap between international experts and clients

Compare European expert networks

Inex One offers access to multiple expert networks in one platform, with flexible payment options. This unique approach sets Inex One apart from other players in the European expert network landscape, making it a valuable resource for international clients seeking European market expertise.

With Inex One, we access subject-matter experts fast and efficiently. The platform is intuitive and user-friendly. The transcripts and AI summaries are great, and their customer service is excellent. Inex One combines the reach of multiple global expert networks, with the simplicity of a modern SaaS.

- Eskil Nilsson, Head Of Business Development, ex-McKinsey (read the case study here)

You get multiple benefits using Inex One to access European expert networks:

Cast a wide net: access multiple European expert networks in one portal, and get the best from each one.
Streamlined Contracting Process: One contract only. Inex One simplifies and centralizes administrative tasks associated with engaging multiple networks, saving time and reducing complexity.
Flexible and Transparent Pricing: Inex One offers a unique payment model where clients only pay for the expert interviews they conduct, providing cost-efficiency and flexibility.

Access the best global expert networks in one platform, on Inex One.

Using Inex One allows international clients to access European expert networks easily, tapping into valuable resources and making well-informed decisions. Get started here, or talk to our team here.

Expert networks in Korea

Max Friberg — Tue, 28 May 2024 12:01:00 GMT

Korean expert networks support investors and strategy professionals doing research in and out of Korea. South Korea is the world's 13th largest economy, and home to massive corporations and international market leaders with professional management practices. Consequently, there's a continuous need for expert insights, both from domestic and international firms.

Eight expert networks have offices in South Korea, serving both domestic and international market research. The first homegrown Korean expert network, Nathan Research Group, started in 2013.

With Inex One, you can access the best Korean expert networks and B2B survey providers in one platform. Avoid cross-border contracting, or getting lost in translation. Join more than 6,000 users on Inex One - see Inex One reviews here.

Korean expert networks for market research

The Korean expert network industry has grown rapidly over the past decade, as more firms have joined in.

The CVs of one of the co-founders of Liahnson shows the rapid growth of expert networking in Korea in the 2010's

GLG opened a Seoul office in 2011, the first in the market.
Nathan Research Group started in 2013, as the first domestic Korean expert network.
Liahnson & Company started in 2015. The founders were formerly with GLG.
Alphasights set up in Korea in 2016, to serve consulting clients.
Guidepoint opened in Seoul in 2016.
Atheneum opened a Seoul office in March 2019.
Hudson Research Partners started in 2020, focusing on Korea.
The Clevers started in 2021, as a purely Korean expert network.
Third Bridge opened a Seoul office in 2024.

By engaging Korean expert networks, PE firms and strategy consultants get better insights faster, gain a deeper understanding of the Korean markets, and can ultimately improve their chances of business success.

Expert networks bridge the gap between international experts and clients

Compare Korean expert networks

With Inex One, you can access multiple expert networks in one platform. You only pay for the research that you consume; not upfront. Instead of negotiating contracts with multiple separate vendors, you have one master contract that applies to all the best networks globally.

“Being able to work with multiple networks in one platform is great - we save a ton of time. Inex One is now our only expert network provider. We don't need anything else.

- Benoit Jacob, Investor, DN Capital (see reviews here)

You get multiple benefits using Inex One to access Korean expert networks:

Cast a wide net: access multiple Korean expert networks in one portal, and get the best from each one.
Streamlined Contracting Process: One contract only. Inex One simplifies and centralizes administrative tasks associated with engaging multiple networks, saving time and reducing complexity.
Flexible and Transparent Pricing: Inex One offers a unique payment model where clients only pay for the expert interviews they conduct, providing cost-efficiency and flexibility.

Access the best global expert networks in one platform, on Inex One.

Using Inex One allows international clients to access Korean expert networks easily, tapping into valuable resources and making well-informed decisions. Get started here, or talk to our team here.

Japanese expert networks

Max Friberg — Thu, 23 May 2024 15:01:03 GMT

Japanese expert networks support investors and strategy professionals doing business in Japan. They connect clients with experts in Japan, helping them make informed decisions and grow their businesses.

Inex One simplifies access to Japanese expert networks. With Inex One, you can access the best Japanese expert networks and B2B survey providers in one platform. Avoid cross-border contracting, or getting lost in translation. Join more than 6,000 users on Inex One - see Inex One reviews here.

Japanese expert networks for market research

Japanese expert networks play a crucial role in supporting decision-making for private equity firms and strategy consulting companies. The networks provide access to experts in Japan, typically for domain expertise in specific industries.

The Japanese expert network industry has grown rapidly over the past decade. Two of the leading players (VisasQ and Mimir Uzabase) are publicly traded, and many others have followed their path expanding across Asia.

By engaging Japanese expert networks, PE firms and strategy consultants get better insights faster, gain a deeper understanding of the Japanese markets, and can ultimately improve their chances of business success.

Expert networks bridge the gap between international experts and clients

Key Players in the Japanese Expert Network Landscape

There are several expert networks based in Japan:

VisasQ launched in in 2012, went public in March 2020, and acquired US-based Coleman Research in August 2021. Its main client base consists of domestic Japanese corporations.
ShareFair launched in 2019 and operates as one of the leading Japanese expert networks.
Mimir Expert Research shares similarities with VisasQ and operates as part of Uzabase, a listed business intelligence provider.
Resory was founded in 2019 as GS Partners, by former managers at the Japanese branch of Capvision.
Other notable players. Other expert networks with offices in Japan include Hudson Research, Nodes Global, R&Y Associates, Arches, GLG, AlphaSights, Atheneum and Guidepoint.

Compare Japanese expert networks

Inex One offers access to multiple expert networks in one platform, with flexible payment options. This unique approach sets Inex One apart from other players in the Japanese expert network landscape, making it a valuable resource for international clients seeking Japanese market expertise.

The Inex One platform provides us with great insights across geographies and industries. Having 25+ networks at your disposal is game-changing.

- Taichi Takagi, Consultant at Sigmaxyz, Tokyo (see more reviews here)

You get multiple benefits using Inex One to access Japanese expert networks:

Cast a wide net: access multiple Japanese expert networks in one portal, and get the best from each one.
Streamlined Contracting Process: One contract only. Inex One simplifies and centralizes administrative tasks associated with engaging multiple networks, saving time and reducing complexity.
Flexible and Transparent Pricing: Inex One offers a unique payment model where clients only pay for the expert interviews they conduct, providing cost-efficiency and flexibility.

Access the best global expert networks in one platform, on Inex One.

Using Inex One allows international clients to access Japanese expert networks easily, tapping into valuable resources and making well-informed decisions. Get started here, or talk to our team here.

Shared insights are double insights

Max Friberg — Fri, 03 May 2024 07:43:31 GMT

We're launching Workspaces!

Users can now invite 3rd parties to collaborate on projects. 🤝

Imagine you are...

a Private Equity investor and want your consultants to see what you already know on a deal (and avoid them duplicating your expert interview work).
a Strategy Consulting team, and want to work closer with your end-client, sharing raw findings as you progress.
a Corporate Strategy professional, who wants the raw data (that you're anyways paying for).

Collaborate on survey findings, expert lists, call recordings, transcripts and AI summaries - in one platform.

Originally, Inex One helped customers (MR firms, strategy teams and consultants, private equity investors) to engage with one or multiple expert networks (for IDIs), or a survey vendor.

For the customer, the value-add was access to a global range of vendors, with easy single-point contracting, workflows, and billing through Inex One. We're proud that this product is rated #1 on G2!

Last year, we enabled Survey multi-sourcing. In addition to getting bids from multiple survey companies in one place, the customer can now partition the survey across multiple vendors (e.g. "you fill the LatAm quota; you fill the EU-5", etc.). This was a hit in the MR industry, where senior thought leaders have given great public testimonials.

Our new Workspaces feature lets customers collaborate with other customers.

A prime example is a private equity firm - or a corporate strategy team - who engages an external consultant for a project. Previously, the work process was a black box. Now, you can invite the consultant to your Inex One and see all experts, all IDI transcripts, and all survey raw data.

In addition, all research you've ever purchased is saved on Inex One. You can go back and revisit it anytime. This makes the Workspaces even more: the customer can store all raw data from IDIs and surveys that they've purchased themselves and commissioned from 3rd parties.

Invite colleagues or 3rd party collaborators on Inex One

Customers who reuse insights from previous work end up spending less on future projects. Invite your guests here or book a demo.

How to Compare and Choose the Right Expert Network for Your Business

Max Friberg — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 20:11:00 GMT

Expert networks let you access the expertise of people worldwide. Expert networks are - in many cases - the fastest path to deep market insights. But not all expert networks are created alike. Choosing the right expert network can be difficult - but worth your time. The difference in quality of service, cost, and commitment can vary greatly.

How do I know which expert network to choose?

The right expert network for you depends on your needs, size, and budget. Expert networks have different pricing tiers and service levels for different clients.

Market research, simplified

With Inex One, you access >30 top expert networks and survey providers in one platform. Why choose one, when you can have them all?

You don't have to pay large upfront fees or place all your eggs with one expert network. With Inex One, you get the best providers, under one master contract, pay-per-use.

When you use Inex One, you get matched with the expert networks that are best suited for your projects. These expert networks can deliver relevant experts to you fastest and at the lowest cost. Here's how our algorithms arrive at selecting the best networks per project:

How to compare expert networks

Specialization – Does the expert network have internal expertise that can give them in-depth understanding of your request? A specialized network can be a proactive thought-partner, instead of a reactive order-taker.
Geographic footprint – Does the expert network have a footprint in your target markets, with knowledge of the local languages and customs? This will help them to source relevant experts more effectively.
Price and pricing model – Are you required to pay annually up-front, or can you pay-per-use? What is the price per credit, and for related services like transcripts and surveys? (All expert networks on Inex One are pay-per-use).
Compliance infrastructure – Does the firm display a commitment to compliance and high professional standards? Can you access their compliance contracts, policies and practices, and do they seem reasonable? Do they help you comply with leading privacy laws (e.g. the GDPR and CCPA) when handling your data and that of the experts? (All expert networks on Inex One are vetted for compliance).
Data infrastructure – Is the platform on which expert calls are managed secure and robust? Can you access documentation on its structure, and policies around e.g. data access restrictions, and breach contingency plans? (Coordinating expert networks on Inex One is far more secure and robust than traditional expert network emailing).

Inex One gives you access to multiple specialized expert networks in one dashboard, under one single contract. Contact us to learn more, or visit the Expert Network Directory for an ever-growing list of all the networks that we come across.

Major private equity and strategy consulting firms use Inex One to access expert networks and get insights fast.

Cost control in market research

Max Friberg — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 08:48:01 GMT

I've got good news and bad news. Let's start with the bad ones: market research budgets are tight.

With tighter budgets, investors and strategy professionals seek to reduce their direct spend. Firms have frozen hiring, reduced travelling, and cancelled office parties. But did you know that market research is one of the single largest expense categories for most strategy consulting, market research and investment firms?

Now for the good news: these costs can be controlled. Here are 5 things that we see clients do:

1. Usage-based pricing for expert network services

Historically, expert networks required their clients to pay upfront at the start of each year. Clients got a bank of "credits" in return. They happily paid up because... well there was no alternative. If you consumed more than your allotted credits, you had to pay more. If you didn't use all of them - too bad for you! Research Directors - who normally have a lot more qualified tasks - had to chase teams to use up credits with various networks, before they expired.

To top it off, expert networks would charge 1.5 credits per expert, a hidden price increase that's not visible to the Research Director until they get the invoice.

But your business is cyclical. Sometimes you do more market research; sometimes less. Inex One accommodates this, by charging only for the expert calls that you make.

Still want to prepay, for budgeting or discounts? We can arrange that, and your prepayment won't expire.

2. Diversify your vendor base

We've seen price differences of 300% for similar expert interviews and surveys. Why?

Because the price that you pay is the vendor's [operating expense + incentives to experts + margin]. These can differ wildly between vendors and geographies. For example, our data shows that specialized networks typically find experts in their region more effectively than those doing "every industry, every country".

With Inex One, you get the best expert network for each project, keeping their - and your - costs down.

3. Implement a control system

Back in consulting, market research spending felt like a free-for-all. Sure there was a budget per project, but as didn't know the price of an expert call, we were guessing.

Now what if you have 100 employees all guessing what they're spending? In your largest direct spend category?

Now, what if you could compare prices across multiple quality vendors? And see every $ spent in real-time, drilled-down by office, team, billing code and user? Check this out.

4. Don't do the same interview twice!

When I was a consultant, I spoke with the same expert three times in a year. Mentioning it to a colleague, we realized she'd spoken with him too!

Our interviews covered similar topics (a niche industry's market size, growth, trends, and competitive landscape), yet we paid money and time over and over. Don't repeat my mistake!

All expert interviews done on Inex One are automatically recorded, transcribed, summarized and stored in your firm's proprietary content library. You can reuse it to get a head start in future projects. Your administrator decides who can access what content, and for how long it's stored.

5. In-source survey work

Many private equity firms tell us they've begun in-sourcing survey work, instead of having consultants do it for them.

Sometimes all you need is the raw data, without the full analytical support (and cost) of a consulting firm. After all, commercial due diligence is a hot dog. But running your first survey can be daunting. Here's how to run a due diligence survey - it's that easy!

Behind the Scenes of Stellar Surveys: What Influences the Cost of B2B Sample Data?

Ana Price — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 12:30:09 GMT

Just as a treasure map guides you to hidden riches, data serves as a map guiding businesses toward informed decisions. This is true in the world of surveys, where the accuracy of your data directly influences the quality of insights you get. While high-quality data might come with higher upfront cost, it's akin to obtaining a top-tier treasure map—one that leads to more valuable results.

This is the second article focusing on data quality that we write with our partner NewtonX. In the first article we focused on what tools survey companies use to safeguard data. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at why B2B sample data can often come with a higher price tag than B2C sample, and the factors that play into these costs.

1. Invest in Treasure instead of Trinkets

Imagine that you're on a treasure hunt and the treasure is not marked on any map. To find it, you'd have to invest time, effort, and resources to uncover its location. This is similar to B2B sample data - targeted expertise that's not readily available online or on platforms like LinkedIn.

For instance, let's say you want to hire a survey company to survey people who have recently purchased a specific product or service. Knowing who has bought the product/service isn’t information that’s easily accessible, and the survey company will have to dig deep to find the right participants. You might try to blast a broad survey panel but, if your research is niche, your survey provider will likely advise against it. High specificity typically demands more effort. That often translates to a higher cost not only to pay the people to take your survey, but also for the survey company to identify and recruit them.

Similarly, when it comes to B2B sample data, the expertise you're seeking might be hidden among various sources, requiring someone to speak to individuals to verify their identity and knowledge. This is hard work! Just as rare treasures are more valuable, data from these unique niches give you insights that can drive significant business gains.

When you secure accurate and dependable data, you're essentially paving the way for more meaningful insights. You might find a treasure chest of gems instead of just a handful of trinkets.

2. Factors That Influence the Cost of B2B Sample Data

Using another analogy, imagine you're on a mission to bring your architectural vision to life—a skyscraper that will stand as a testament to your business's success. You can choose between a team of inexperienced builders with handheld tools, or a renowned architect and construction firm - at a higher cost. The decision becomes easy when you consider the magnitude of the project. In a similar vein, the costs of B2B sample data is subject to many factors.

Uniqueness of Data

Consider your architectural marvel as a skyscraper with distinct features that set it apart from ordinary structures. In the same way, data from specialized industries or professional segments is usually elusive and hard to obtain. If you're running a survey on decision-makers in niche markets or industry experts, identifying suitable participants could be a challenge. The rarity and specialization of these participants contribute to increased costs due to the effort required for data collection. The more rare or specialized the respondent, the more hard work goes into finding them, which adds to the cost of your survey.

Accuracy and Reliability

Visualize constructing your skyscraper using subpar materials and unseasoned labor - an undertaking that would inevitably lead to structural vulnerabilities. Likewise, inaccurate data can result in misguided business decisions.

Here's where profile verification takes center stage and is especially important when conducting B2B research. Opting for a survey company who verifies participant data ensures that your "construction materials" (data) are dependable and fortified. Verification can take many forms including IP tracking, phone verification, screening, and cross-referencing a participant against published sources. None of these options are cheap or easy which is why best-in-class survey companies invest heavily in tech and personnel to ensure they give clients accurate results.

Custom Recruitment for Precision

Continuing with our skyscraper analogy, you’ve opted to use a team of accomplished architects and builders celebrated for their attention to detail. In contrast, consider the outcome when surveys rely on cheap or syndicated data - much like constructing a skyscraper with pre-fabricated, off-the-shelf components. While it might serve its purpose, it lacks the distinctiveness and grandeur you're aiming for. This is where the value of vendors who emphasize custom recruitment comes into play.

Just as a skyscraper's design is tailored to its location, purpose, and architectural vision, custom recruitment ensures that survey participants are handpicked to align precisely with your survey's goals. While this specialized approach might involve a higher cost, it means that you gain accurate data.

Why Would a CFO Take a Survey for $10?

Now, let's delve into a practical scenario. Imagine you're running a B2B survey aimed at high-ranking executives in a specific industry. In your search, you stumble upon a survey company that's offering these executives a modest $10 incentive. Naturally, you pause and wonder: Why would these busy executives, who already earn a good salary, bother with such a relatively small reward? It's a valid question. In reality, these so-called "executives" might not be executives at all.

Secondly, it’s hard to imagine how the survey company itself would make any money considering it needs to balance its own expenses to track down and engage these time-pressed, senior professionals.

In all likelihood, rounding up the right participants for your survey won't be a walk in the park, and will likely cost you far more than $10/participant. So, is it worth the investment? If you're after data that holds any value or accuracy, the answer is yes. After all, making a smart investment in quality data can yield substantial returns in the long haul.

Data is Your Compass to Better Decisions

Think of data as your compass - it guides businesses to better decisions. In the world of surveys, good data means good insights. Sure, getting quality data might be pricier upfront, but it's like having a top-notch map that leads to more valuable findings.

In this journey, we've journeyed through the reasons why B2B sample data often comes with a higher price tag and dived into the factors that play into these costs. We've uncovered how targeted data, akin to hidden treasures, demands more effort to uncover and why opting for vendors who focus on precision in recruitment and profile verification pays off.

This is our second blog post written in collaboration with NewtonX exploring the world of data quality in surveys. We've explored why B2B sample data can come with a slightly higher price tag, how the pieces fit together, and why choosing vendors who sweat the small stuff is the smart move.

Empower Your Survey Game with Inex One's Survey Marketplace

Inex One's Survey Marketplace is where you find top survey companies, including NewtonX. Need decision-makers or data from niche industries? Our network of trusted partners has got you covered.

Just like you wouldn't skimp on your skyscraper's foundation, don't skimp on your surveys. Quality data matters. Explore our Survey Marketplace, equip yourself with the right tools, and turn every survey response into valuable insight that fuels your business decisions.

Behind the Scenes of Stellar Surveys: The Data Quality Edition

Ana Price — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 12:48:06 GMT

Surveys have continued to grow as a popular research method for companies to gather primary insights. Yet concerns over fraud and compromised data quality have cast a shadow over the reliability of these services.

It’s critical for companies to find trusted partners to execute their market research. We’ve partnered with one of our trusted survey partners, NewtonX, to bring you a two-part series on Data Quality in the survey world to give you the tools to find the right partner for your next survey.

9 Techniques in the Survey Toolkit

The first step involves understanding the tools survey companies wield to safeguard data quality. Below we’ve defined the key tools and techniques used by top-tier survey companies:

Custom recruitment - the method of identifying, contacting, vetting, and ultimately signing-up panelists to participate in a specific project and potentially join a database. Typically companies rely on participants from previous studies who then become part of a database. While having a large database of willing participants can be useful, especially from a cost & speed perspective, it can mean that for new studies clients aren’t getting the exact right or freshest perspectives.
Profile verification - the way in which a survey company can confirm a panelist is who they say they are and that they are suited for a project. Sources can include LinkedIn profile checks, CV analysis, IP tracking, email verification, using meta-data (especially if the panelist has already completed projects with that company in the past), or even background checks.
Content knowledge checks - asking a panelist to pick correct definitions, define various acronyms, or provide other information which confirm their expertise on a topic.
Open-end validation - checking for duplicate answers, frequent misspellings, irrelevant answers, and/or gibberish entered in open-ended fields.
Conflict-answer flag - asking the same question twice or asking similar questions looking for conflicting answers.
Speeder flags - flagging any panelists who finishes a survey too quickly, e.g. in less than one-third of the median length of a survey.
Red herrings - adding a fake vendor to a list of real companies.
Straight-line flagging - flagging when a panelist selects a majority of options in a multi-select question or continually selects an individual answer on a grid.
Duplicate checks - checking for duplicates to ensure that the answers of the survey panelists are not recorded twice.

Smart Questionnaire Design for Fraud Prevention

Apart from these strategies, employing a smart questionnaire design is paramount to counter fraudulent activities. Thoughtfully crafted questions and response options can act as a preliminary defense against bad or deceptive responses. Logical traps, consistency checks, and even CAPTCHAs are proven deterrents against bots and malicious actors. Any serious survey company will help you write out a smart questionnaire to avoid any risk.

Custom Recruitment and Profile Verification: Pillars of Data Quality

One of the top ways survey companies ensure high quality data is by relying on profile verification and custom recruitment to curate a targeted, authentic participant pool. With regards to custom recruitment, companies use both manual and tech-enabled techniques to identify and onboard panelists.

Profile verification is another tool that’s essential to ensure good data quality. Expert networks tend to excel here (when they have the populations in their databases) because they have a deep set of data points on each individual they work with. That means it’s easy for them to quickly know if a certain expert has ever bought a specific product or service, or if they fit a set of criteria (e.g. CTO of a 500 person company headquartered in Germany). However this can prove dangerous if relied upon too much as the databases can become static and dated which leads to challenges sourcing niche experts at scale.

Other companies, like NewtonX, have developed a proprietary algorithm to identify and verify the right people to take surveys for their clients.

Quality is Worth Every Penny - Consider the Cost of Bad Data

As mentioned above, many best-in-class survey companies invest heavily into technology and personnel to maintain high data quality standards. But you might ask, doesn't this inflate survey costs? Oftentimes the answer is yes, but imagine if you made a critical business decision with bad data. The cost could be catastrophic.

For instance, the CTO of Cascade Insights learned the hard way what can happen when a survey panel provider doesn’t have proper quality checks. He ran a large project and once completed, discovered that most of his data had to be discarded due to poor quality after the survey panel provider outsourced the sample collection to a 3rd party. In another example, Cint, one of the largest B2C Marketplaces in the world, had a costly end of 2022 due to high amounts of fraud across their business.

Guiding Your Quest for Excellence

So, how can you practically apply these insights to select a capable survey provider? The simplest route is through Inex One! All providers on our platform undergo rigorous evaluation before being accepted. We assess their processes, technological capabilities, and compliance adherence, ensuring that clients always achieve the best results.

Most importantly, enforce data accountability when evaluating potential vendors. Request a clear overview of their data quality measures. Understand their tools, technologies, panelist recruitment methods, and verification processes. Remember, an informed decision today can prevent significant repercussions down the line.

Ready to get started? Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

Capvision and expert network compliance

Max Friberg — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 08:59:18 GMT

Late 2022, Chinese police raided several offices of Capvision, the largest expert network in China. Six months later, China's state broadcaster CCTV sent a 15-minute report featuring the crackdown, accusing Capvision of collaborating with overseas institutions to evade Chinese law and leak state secrets. Capvision was singled out as a "leading company", offering experts "high renumeration to illegally obtain various types of sensitive data" and "posing a major risk" to national security.

Following the report, Capvision issued various statements saying it complied with Chinese laws. While at least two experts have been detained Capvision has not been charged with anything. The two experts, both Chinese nationals, had allegedly shared sensitive government information, one of them specifically military information.

Image from China's CCTV of Chinese police raiding the Capvision office in Shanghai (AP)

The crackdown and allegations have rattled the investor community, leading to clients such as CICC cutting ties with Capvision altogether. Many clients that we speak to have paused their dealings with Capvision, to first see how things develop. Some have shifted business to other expert network vendors, but research volumes in China are down overall. Correspondingly, large consulting firms report that business in China is drying up. Also Western expert networks are scaling back in China, with GLG reducing its local team, while both Alphasights and Third Bridge have reduced new hiring in China. In early October 2023, Chinese regulators said Capvision's "rectification" was completed, having improved their processes.

At Inex One, we've seen an uptake in clients reviewing their expert network vendors, and seeking to improve the way they engage them. Our compliance portal has come in handy for many such clients, giving them four layers of defense.

Secure data processing. When Capvision was raided, Chinese police took control of their databases and client correspondence. With Inex One, all your expert network correspondence, call recordings and transcripts are stored in encrypted on-shore databases - governed by Western law.
Standardized contracts. All expert networks on Inex One adhere to a single set of best practice compliance policies, developed together with our global Board of Advisors.
Compliance control tower. All communication between investment professionals/ consultants and expert networks take place on Inex One. This gives superpowers to compliance professionals to protect their firm. Designated compliance professionals can see all communication, review and block any experts.
Strength in numbers. Inex One continuously monitors all expert networks. If any one firm is suspected of any compliance breaches, we can swiftly deactivate them from serving any of our ~400 clients. We heard about the Capvision raids soon after they happened. Had Capvision been an approved partner of Inex One (which they were not), we would have reviewed their continued presence on the platform and informed all affected clients.

Do you want to learn more about our industry-leading compliance platform? Contact us for a demo.

Expert networks in 2023: News, trends and discussion points

Max Friberg — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 07:23:58 GMT

Most large strategy consulting and private equity firms have Research Directors (RDs), who oversee the research partners' performance and costs. While some Research Directors do only light monitoring/ issue resolution, others drive an active agenda to build competitive advantages for their firm. In that latter group of RDs, we've frequently discussed four themes during 2023:

Compliance post Capvision raids: How to protect your firm and research.
Cost control in market research services.
AI in the House: Can generative AI give us a competitive edge in market research?
Should I build my own expert network?

We will explore each of these themes in blog posts over the coming weeks. But for starters, here's a high-level description of each one:

Expert network compliance post the Capvision raids

In November 2022, Chinese police raided the offices of Capvision, the largest Chinese expert network. Many Research Directors paused their firm's relationship with Capvision when the news story broke in May this year. However, the actual raids had happened long before that. Many Research Directors are now considering how to better protect their firm, stay compliant and stay alerted about any future material changes in their vendors.

Cost control in market research

The years leading up to 2022 were characterized by a hot market and strong expansion in the aftermath of the covid lockdowns. 2022 started with rising interest rates and macro turbulence from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The main effects on our client base have been slower dealmaking and fundraises, lower valuations and lower corporate budgets for indirect spend. This has forced strategy consulting and investment firms to take a closer look at their own operating costs, including the costs for market research services.

AI in the house: Can generative AI give my firm an edge in research?

Following the release of ChatGPT in Nov-22 and the subsequent wave of AI tools, Research Directors began exploring ways to apply user-friendly AI to their own businesses. The appeal is obvious: to better access, use & reuse insights within your firm. However, the field is evolving quickly and most firms are still learning and exploring early AI applications. Inex One recently began offering AI summaries and quality transcripts for free, with additional major AI features coming this fall!

Build your own expert network

Private equity firms have for long had networks of industrial advisors: up to a few hundred senior executives that they engage in deal sourcing and portfolio companies. In more recent years, some consulting firms have built their own "expert networks": a system to reengage former employees or particularly popular experts. The basic idea is to reduce the cost for accessing their insights. However it also introduces new challenges in administering the network and access to it, keeping it fresh and building technology to run it.

We'll walk through each of these themes in blog posts over the coming few weeks. Stay tuned!

Want to get going sooner?

Do you decide on or influence the research tools at your firm? Let's discuss!
Do you want business insights fast? Get started here!

Why Run a Survey?

Ana Price — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 14:37:14 GMT

Many clients ask “Why should I even bother with a survey?”. A lot of insights can be gained from online research and expert interviews. Why would any client spend additional money when an expert can get you all of the information you need?

It’s a fair question.

Let’s break this down further and use an example.

Jane Doe is an associate at Mega Gains Capital, a private equity firm focused on tech investments in Europe. She has been researching a software company, AccountPay International, which offers Payroll and Accounting software to companies across Europe. Jane and her colleagues are working through the standard DD process… legal, HR, financial, etc. Recently, however, she’s been working her way through the commercial due diligence and has also hired consulting firm McKansas & Company to help.

Now, they are diving deeper into the commercial diligence questions… How big is this market? Who are the main competitors? What is the growth outlook? But Jane and her hired consultants are stuck on the customer side… specifically why there isn’t a lot of diversity among AccountPay International’s customers.

Now, there are a few options here for Jane and her consultants:

Run expert interviews with customers & potential customers of AccountPay to understand what they like and don’t like. Given the type of customer and presence across Europe, they’ll likely need to speak with quite a few experts to gather enough information to make an informed decision on the investment.
Or she could run a survey.

What would a survey look like? To start, Jane and her consultants need to define a few things:

What is the goal of the survey?
What questions should they ask?
Who is their Target Audience?

1. Setting the goal:

This seems pretty obvious but is oftentimes overlooked - before you jump straight into writing your questionnaire and getting bids, think about what you want to achieve with your research and what you want to do with the results. Is your goal to validate an hypothesis? Get customer feedback? Find new revenue streams? Without a clear goal you run a high risk of using the wrong methodology, asking the wrong questions, or even targeting the wrong audience (i.e. wasting a lot of money and time).

Going back to Jane’s survey, an unhelpful goal would be “we want to understand what potential customers want with accounting & payroll software”. Instead she and her team should be more explicit “We would like to understand why AccountPay International customer base is made up primarily of businesses with 100 or less employees and how they can add larger customers with 500-1000 employees”

2. Defining your questions:

One of the most undervalued but most important parts of a survey is making sure you ask the right questions. In market research lingo this is called Questionnaire Design or Survey Design and is imperative to get valuable data. There’s a lot of things to consider when writing your questionnaire. To name a few:

Length of your survey - Make sure your survey isn’t too long otherwise you risk survey fatigue (try taking a 30 minute survey online and see how focused you are by minute 25).
- Industry best practice is to try and keep the length of an online survey to around 10 minutes.
Avoid leading and biased questions - for example, don’t use “how great were our amazing sales representatives” and instead write “how helpful or unhelpful were our sales representatives”.
Use multiple-choice/closed survey questions where possible.
Use qualifying/screener questions to make sure the right people take your survey.

There’s a lot of great resources to help you write a smart questionnaire. By using Inex One, you can be matched with the right provider who can support you across all parts of the survey lifecycle.

3. Defining the target audience:

When you have a clear goal in mind for your survey, it’s straightforward to define your target audience. In Jane’s case, there could be a few options:

Current customers of AccountPay International across their largest markets
Previous customers of AccountPay International who decided to switch to their competitors
Customers who evaluated AccountPay International but ultimately decided to use another software solution
Potential Customers of AccountPay International

But let’s go back to Jane’s goal “We would like to understand why AccountPay International's customer base is made up primarily of businesses with 100 or less employees and how we can add larger customers with 500-1000 employees”.

Knowing the above, it’s probably helpful for her to survey the following audiences:

Current customers of AccountPay International who have 100 or less employees (what do they like, what are they missing)
Current customers of AccountPay International who have 500 or more employees (what do they like, what are they missing & compare these results with audience type 1)
Current customers of competitors of AccountPay International with 500 or more employees

But couldn’t Jane and her team get this information from a few expert interviews? Well, they could but would the opinion of a handful of companies be representative or significant enough to invest millions of dollars?

Probably not.

Expert interviews are a great way to gather qualitative insights but by running a survey Jane and her team:

Can get insights from hundreds of customers & potential customers within a few days (imagine how long it would take her to complete 50+ of expert interviews).
Utilize a cost-effective method of gathering information quickly and at scale.
Gather quantitative data points to support & inform the qualitative insights they get when interviewing experts.

Finally, when talking about audience targeting we always have to mention making sure you use trusted & high quality providers to ensure the right people are taking your survey. Fraud is one of the biggest issues in the survey world and bad data can mean investors spend a lot of time and money and end up with nothing to show for it.

Inex One requires all of our partners to go through an extensive and rigorous onboarding so you know you can rest assured that you’re only getting high quality, trusted results.

So what’s next?

Now that Jane and her team have their research goal, questionnaire objectives, and defined target audience, they are ready to find the right partner to run the survey. Jane could use Google or ask her colleagues, or she can just go to Inex One and launch her project in a few minutes.

In less than a day, she’ll have bids from multiple survey providers and can work with one or as many as she needs to complete her survey. Even better, Inex One handles all of the administrative work of contracting and payments, and the easy-to-use tech platform means that her workflow is painless.

Looking to launch a survey or want to learn more?

Inex One offers a comprehensive solution for your primary research needs, catering to strategy consulting, private equity, market research, corporate sectors and more. With a seamless workstream, access to selected expert networks and survey providers, and a secure insights library, Inex One serves as the ultimate one-stop-shop.

Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

Survey sampling: Comparing targeted outreach and online panels

Max Friberg — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 13:37:08 GMT

Back in the day, survey sampling was made in-person with a notepad (“pen and paper” research). You’d walk up to relevant-looking individuals and ask away. These days, active quantitative surveying is mostly digital. There are two broad methods of finding your respondents: with Targeted outreach, or Online panels.

This post is a continuation to the one titled "How do I run a due diligence survey?", looking closer at the methods of reaching survey respondents. Check it out if you haven't read it already!

Your survey sampling method is a top factor influencing your data quality and the cost of doing research. Let’s take a look at the two methods!

The appropriate survey sampling method depends on what type of respondents that you’re looking for. For example, if you’re surveying a wide category such as “Women in the US aged 40+, who own a car”, online panels are a great option. Conversely, if you’re looking for something more specific (like “IT decision makers in German automotive aftermarket suppliers”), then targeted outreach is the better option.

Why? Well, those German IT decision makers might of course be sitting around on a survey website all day, but maybe they are not, in which case you need to do targeted outreach.

Part 1: What are Online Panels for surveys?

Online panels are everywhere. The largest panels are online reward pages such as Swagbucks or Inbox Dollars. Also, many consumer-facing companies engage with their customers through online communities, reward programs or user lists. These companies can make extra revenues by letting 3rd parties run surveys across their customer lists.

When you send a survey to any of these reward pages or corporate panels, all the members can choose to respond to it. You only want the relevant people to take it of course. That is solved by using a set of “screening questions” at the start of the survey, to weed out any irrelevant respondents. For example, if you’re looking for “dog owners in the Midwest”, your screeners could be “Do you own a dog? Y/N”, and “What country and state do you live in?”.

Assuming respondents are honest, the screeners will only let “dog-owners in the Midwest”, continue to your proper research questions, generate survey data and get paid for their time.

I can send my survey to any online panel, or multiple.

To streamline things, some survey firms operate multiple online panels. For example, Prodege runs Swagbucks, InboxDollars and a few more sites, while Dynata operates all the corporate panels in my image above.

Even one level further up are the “panel aggregators”, who aggregate multiple online panels. Through APIs, they can cast a very wide net. For example, Cint partners with just about every panel out there - including those from Dynata and Prodege.

Online panels are great in many cases. You can get many replies quickly at a low cost. But that presumes that the people you wish to survey are indeed there, on the panel, ready to take a survey for a few bucks. However, when we researched how the survey industry works, we found two major flaws in online panels.

1. Online surveys can introduce bias

Over decades, ever fewer people have been willing to respond to (any) surveys. When response rates fall towards the low double-digits, your results can get biased as the ones who did reply may not be a representative sample of the intended population. After all, if I were paying $3 per survey response, I’d expect many replies from thrifty undergrads and maybe not that many from senior decision makers.

2. Online surveys are popular with fraudsters

With online survey panels, you have no idea who took the survey. Respondents are typically recruited on online reward sites, each paying at best a few dollars per day. That’s simply not worth the time for many would-be survey respondents. So who takes all the surveys?

Turns out fraud is rampant in online panel surveys. Scientific estimates range from 20% up to 81% of responses to online panel surveys being fraudulent. These fake responses are delivered by bots, distraught respondents, or fraudsters running “click farms”. Survey fraud is so common that all the market research industry associations are banding together to fight it.

"Fraudulent activity is becoming increasingly sophisticated, particularly in online research."
- Jane Frost, CEO of the UK Market Research Society, 10 March 2023

Respondent bias and fraud have made researchers more careful around online sample. This plays a big part in why the share price of industry leader Cint has tanked 90% since the IPO. Some market research firms have dropped online panels altogether, only using expert networks for survey respondents.

Here’s a hilarious video of a guy taking surveys a full day (condensed to 15 min). Find me a senior executive doing this stuff and I’ll eat my notepad! 😄

Part 2: What is Targeted Outreach in Surveys?

If online panels cast a wide net to reach your desired respondents, targeting outreach is the more surgical approach. You reach out only to respondents whose identities are known, where you have reason to believe that they are relevant for the survey.

Survey companies that have good detail on who their respondents are can send targeted outreach to the relevant ones. These survey companies can drill down to relevant subsets of respondents, and even allow for individual targeting: even doing 1-on-1 deep interviews if needed.

Why expert networks are excellent at surveys

Expert networks are among the highest-quality survey panels. Their core business is to recruit experts for telephone interviews, for which clients are willing to pay handsomely. As they go about their day, they accumulate scores of vetted experts and a lot of data.

The expert network might speak to 10-20 candidates for every expert call sold. Most of these candidates join the expert network’s database. Over time, the database grows into an attractive, high-quality survey panel for targeted outreach. The expert network has spoken to every expert in their panel, verifying their identity and career history. The high CPI for an expert interview makes it worthwhile to do so.

Compare this to a regular online panel. The respondents would typically sign up themselves, without any human touchpoints. As the CPI in online panels is low, there’s little budget to vet the respondents manually. Despite the best efforts, this has led to widespread respondent fraud in online panel surveys, as noted above.

You thus end up with two sets of survey panels: online panels with lower CPI and lower respondent detail, and expert panels with higher CPI and higher respondent detail – enabling targeted outreach. Together, they are the foundation for the global $57 Bn online survey research industry.

Do you run surveys for market research? Get better data and lower cost by using Inex One. Sign up or request a demo.

Worth noting: the Cint founder/former CEO and former CCO/COO both invested in Inex One in 2021. At the time, they had both left and exited Cint.

How do I run a due diligence survey?

Max Friberg — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 09:46:18 GMT

A consultant friend asked me this the other day. It was a deja vu moment: I once asked the same thing myself. We’ve learned a few things since then. Here’s what my strategy consulting friend asked:

How much does a survey cost?
How do I choose the right survey vendor?
How do they find the right respondents?
How long does it take?

Let’s walk through the answers, one by one:

How much does a survey cost?

I’ve seen survey prices range from $3k to >$100k, with most in the $10-15k range. The price depends primarily on four factors, in order of importance:

Sampling method (B2B or B2C panels)
The profile and type of respondents (a CEO will normally be more expensive to survey than a plumber)
Your need for add-on services such as translations, survey programming, and analytics.
The length of your survey (often called ‘LOI’)

The sampling method is how you reach respondents. It has outsized importance for the cost of your survey. You typically pay an incentive to survey respondents (to make them take the survey), and a fee to the survey company (to identify the right respondents).

There are two ways to reach respondents: (a) using online panels, and (b) targeting specific individuals.

Click to enlarge the image.

Different survey sampling methods are good for different purposes. Simplistically, go for targeted outreach if you have a niche/ hard-to-reach audience (that have a “low incidence rate” in the general population). Conversely, use online panels if you’re researching a broader set of consumers. See our comparison of survey sampling methods for more detail.

How do I choose the right survey vendor?

Nobody knows lol.

When I was a consultant, my project manager Carl asked me to find a good survey vendor for a project. The firms he had used were, in his words, “clunky and expensive”. I asked Google and got something like this 🫠

Click to enlarge the image.

So we ended up using some survey firm that Carl had used before. It felt like this:

Fast-forward a few years, and Inex One launched the Survey Marketplace. You can now RFQ the world’s best survey firms and compare pricing/ timeline and feasibility - in one platform. Inex One continuously monitors all vendors for quality and compliance, making sure that you have the best firms at your fingertips.

Want to see how it looks? Book a demo or Get started top right on this page!☝️

How do survey firms find the right respondents?

Finding respondents is called “survey sampling” in industry lingo. There are two ways to do so:

Online panels (incl. web intercept and communities). You send the survey to many people and let them determine if they’re relevant to take it, by answering qualifying questions. This is most common for consumer surveys.
Targeted outreach. You send it directly to the people that are relevant to take it. This is most common for B2B/ professional surveys.

Regardless of sampling method, you should include qualifying questions to make sure the right people take your survey. Therefore, the survey design is key to target the right audience and receive reliable, high quality data back. There are pros and cons with both options for survey sampling. We compare survey sampling methods here.

When you run a survey on Inex One, you work with top-quality survey providers. They are professionals in both survey design and helping you choose the right survey sampling method.

How long does a survey take?

Running a survey typically takes anywhere from a week to a month, for the strategy and investment teams that use Inex One. Sometimes it can be run faster, while sometimes you run it for longer. The time needed depends on what audience you are targeting (and their availability), the sampling model and the survey vendor that you choose.

The Survey Marketplace lets you get bids from multiple survey vendors, so that you can compare and choose the one that is most appropriate for you.

How do I launch a survey?

The easiest way to launch a survey is on Inex One. You get access to the best survey providers in one portal, and help with scoping and designing your survey if needed. This helps you to get an optimal survey quality, price, and speed of delivery.

Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

Five reasons to choose a marketplace for your next survey project

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 12:52:36 GMT

Surveys play a crucial role in gathering data and insights for various projects, from commercial due diligence to market research studies. With numerous survey vendors available worldwide, ranging from boutique programming firms to multinational panel providers, finding the right survey vendor can be overwhelming. That's where a marketplace like Inex One comes in.

Here are five reasons why you want to try a marketplace for your next survey project:

1) Access multiple providers and compare prices
The obvious advantage of using a marketplace is that you can easily reach out to multiple providers and request project quotes. This makes it easier for you to find what you are looking for, compare prices and features, and make well informed purchase decisions. By eliminating the need for individual negotiations with vendors, you'll save valuable time and money.

2) Conduct expert calls and run surveys on one platform
For complex projects that require expert insights alongside survey data, Inex One is the place to go. Beyond surveys, we collaborate with top-tier specialized expert call providers. Managing workflows for projects that collect data from multiple sources can be difficult, but Inex One makes it easy to keep everything organized in one place.

3) Coordinate multiple survey vendors within one project
Are you running a global survey and want to work with survey providers with different geographical expertise within the same project? Or do you just want to buy respondents from multiple panels? Regardless of what your reason is, Inex One allows you to seamlessly coordinate and manage multiple survey providers within the same project.

4) Find the right vendor and methodology
Navigating the complex survey market can be challenging, especially for those new to survey procurement. Inex One's platform is helpful in finding the most suitable vendor and deciding on the right survey methodology. Our dedicated account managers and survey solution guide you through the entire process, ensuring you find the perfect fit for your needs.

5) Collect all survey data in one platform
Another significant advantage of leveraging a marketplace like Inex One is the ability to centralize all your survey data in a single platform. This creates an internal knowledge library easily accessible to anyone in your organization who requires it (in accordance with your organization’s access rules of course!). Having all survey data in one place streamlines analysis, facilitates insights sharing across teams, and eliminates the hassle of managing multiple accounts with different vendors.

Inex One offers a comprehensive solution for your primary research needs, catering to strategy consulting, private equity, market research, corporate sectors and more. With a seamless workstream, access to selected expert networks and survey vendors, and a secure insights library, Inex One serves as the ultimate one-stop-shop. Take advantage of the benefits a marketplace offers for your next survey project - get started with Inex One today!

What are Expert Network Transcript Libraries?

Max Friberg — Wed, 24 May 2023 08:20:42 GMT

Many firms have started offering digital libraries of transcribed expert calls in recent years. What are they, and how do they compare? Here’s our breakdown.

In the beginning, there was the Roundtable. GLG hosted meetings on popular topics, inviting a senior expert and a few clients for an “idea dinner”. Some meetings were held over phone, with clients dialing in to listen. Sometimes, a client couldn’t make the time of the meeting; so it got recorded and made available for purchase.

In 2013, Third Bridge took the model further, inventing the Forum product. At the time, TB was one of the largest expert networks globally. Whenever a big topic came around (e.g. earnings announcements in a popular stock), they found themselves selling 1h interviews with the same former C-suite execs to lots of investors who followed the stock.

With Forum, they forward-integrated, saying “hey all you analysts out there, we’ll do the call for you (and sell you the transcript)”. Some clients said “meh, I’m better at asking the right questions”, while others quite liked the convenience. They would read a couple Forum transcripts to “get smart” and do their own interviews on only the most interesting deals.

Going upstream

Over time, TB learned to anticipate which calls people wanted to do, and recorded transcripts well in advance. This wasn’t wizardry; they simply went for popular equities & debt securities that lots of funds trade in & out of around earnings announcements. This worked so well that Third Bridge even recast itself as a data company.

In 2018, Guidepoint got in the game, launching a tool called Guidepoint Insights. Similarly to Third Bridge Forum, it had full-time professionals employed to generate transcripts.

All the while, regular 1h calls remained the core business of both Third Bridge and Guidepoint. The new transcript services were seen with some skepticism from the core business, fearing they might “cannibalize” the 1h phone call.

In 2016, two brothers in Chicago had launched Tegus, a transcript-first expert network. The content library was the main biz; selling 1h calls the secondary. The business was inspired by Costco’s membership model:

Tegus charged clients a hefty subscription fee to access all content, instead of per transcript.
They incentivized (increasingly forced) clients who did calls with them, to also publish them to the content library. Clients pay just $4-500 per expert interview, but Tegus owns it, scrubs it for compliance sensitivities, and publishes it to their library after two weeks.

Together, this created a flywheel where users would read Tegus transcripts, do a couple follow-up calls and thereby generate new content for other subscribers to read. All the while, Tegus has an army of analysts generating call transcripts themselves, to make sure there is sufficient content available.

Whereas Third Bridge and Guidepoint sought a way to get more yield on certain popular expert interviews while still selling 1h calls, Tegus wants to become the content library of all transcripts, reducing the need for many interviews to happen altogether.

Content coverage by type of library

It's getting crowded in the library

In 2020, the expert network Mosaic launched a similar product, called Stream. It had many similarities to Tegus and the two are often mentioned alongside in Fintwit threads.

As of May 2023, Tegus has the largest transcript library in number of logged calls. There is however a notable difference in the type of content: Tegus and Stream content is mostly user-generated and often quite short. As calls are user-driven, there are multiple overlaps on the same asset (e.g. Tegus has ~500 calls on Block/Square).

Conversely, Third Bridge Forum, GLG and Guidepoint’s libraries are largely authored and planned. The interviews are longer and conducted by full-time employed, unbiased interviewers. This means there’s some merit to Third Bridge’s claim to have the biggest archive of expert interviews. But the services are increasingly similar, as also Third Bridge and Guidepoint started doing user-generated content.

Expert call transcript library database sizes 2021-23

Who is it for?

Content libraries are mostly used by public market investors. For example, hundreds of hedge funds and asset managers trade in and out of the Microsoft stock every week, so sharing transcripts of ex-Microsoft managers is relevant to lots of people.

On the other hand, PE shops (and the consultancies they hire) buy an asset and hold on to it for six years. After six years, any transcripts you did for the acquisition are pretty dated. So libraries of transcripts on past deals are less valuable for private equity investors.

The same applies in the corporate segment: Corporate strategy and M&A teams are typically very much experts themselves. When they do expert interviews, those are rather niche (in the far tail end of expertise). Again, transcript libraries have somewhat limited appeal, other than perhaps monitoring what your former employees tell the world about your firm.

Transcript libraries are mostly relevant for public market investors

That said, there’s a “bull case” for transcripts being relevant for just about everyone. It’s an efficient way to “get smart” on a general topic. This has an appeal for a lot of roles in different types of companies. One could argue that it has a bigger appeal than general expert calls, if it comes at a lower cost (in money and time to access).

Content meet Browser

In October 2021, two big announcements happened: Alphasense bought Stream, while Tegus bought BamSEC.

Alphasense is a Research Management System (“RMS”) helping mostly institutional investors (hedge funds, public asset investors) to index and smart-search through all their content (filings, earnings calls, expert calls – you name it). BamSEC is a rudimentary version of Alphasense.

The rationale is similar to both, here in the words of Alphasense: “This acquisition allows AlphaSense to add its market-leading AI search technology on top of an incredibly valuable content platform, and is consistent with the companies' shared mission to empower business and financial professionals to make smarter decisions through the best tech-enabled market intelligence and insights."

Here’s what I think happened:

Hedge funds liked and used TB Forum. They bought one-off transcripts and chugged them into their RMS:es alongside other relevant content of all sorts.
Guidepoint, Tegus and Stream grew the supply. The RMS companies noticed an opportunity to offer more call transcript content.
In June 2020, Sentieo (an RMS) struck a deal to redistribute all Third Bridge Forum content. (Sentieo was a close competitor to Alphasense, and later acquired by them in May 2022).
In Sep 2021, Alphasense raised $180m and went shopping for content. Stream was an apparent target.
Tegus feared becoming a generic content producer among others, as it would threaten their juicy subscription revenues (starting at $25k/seat). So they decided to become a full-blown RMS, and bought BamSEC.

The content arms race

Funds raised by transcript library firms

In the past two years, the leading firms have been sprinting to build comprehensive research platforms.

Alphasense-Stream has raised more than $500m to build “The market intelligence platform trusted by over 2,000 leading organizations”. In May 2022, it acquired Sentieo, its main competitor in AI text analysis and search.
Third Bridge raised more than $200m and hired 90+ professional analysts to interview experts and generate content.
Tegus raised $110m, acquired BamSEC, and in Aug 2022 also Canalyst (a platform that simplifies financial modeling).

While Alphasense and Tegus are evolving into broad RMS:es, Third Bridge distributes its both on their own Forum portal, and through multiple other RMS:es like CapIQ, Bloomberg, Factset and Refinitiv Eikon. Third Bridge seems more focused on the content they generate than what mode their clients consume it.

Why aren’t GLG, Guidepoint and Alphasights joining the 🥳?

GLG, Guidepoint and Alphasights are among the largest expert networks around. They should have the scale and funds to build at least a decent content library, perhaps even an RMS. Yet they’re plodding along compared to Third Bridge, Tegus and Stream. Why aren’t they joining the bandwagon?

Maybe they don’t like competition (wouldn’t surprise me much 🤭). Or maybe they see some other risks in the business model.

Addition on May 26th:
1. After sharing this blog post, some readers got back to me saying Alphasights is indeed working in stealth mode on "AlphaNow", a platform of user-generated content and company 1-pagers.
2. Also Guidepoint reached out to say that they're revamping their portal, expanding content globally and introducing new content types.

OKOK, so the battle is on!

Challenges to the transcript library model

Is content the holy grail for expert networks? It clearly has an appeal, but also a few risks: Compliance, Shelf-life and Quality.

Compliance. In most ways similar to compliance around regular 1-on-1 expert calls, but with one major difference: a leak of MNPI would be broadcast to a huge global audience. Oops. No wonder that Tegus talks about their huge compliance team. I wonder if this emphasis on reviewing "Every.Single.Transcript" means Tegus assumes some liability in case of a compliance breach?

Shelf life. How relevant is a transcript from last year to a stock you’re trading today? No idea. It could be a lot (“I use sentiment analysis over multiple years of transcripts to identify a trend”), or not at all (“there’s nothing as old as yesterday’s news”). Expert network databases are comparable – and shelf life is arguably short. Here’s why:
For more than 20 years, GLG has accumulated the largest expert database in the industry. Recently, it reached 1 million experts. But it didn’t give them any meaningful economies of scale. For more than a decade, GLG has been losing market share, despite that shiny database.
Furthermore, an expert profile is arguably more valuable than a transcript. The expert can be engaged to speak on many topics, whereas a transcript is only a point-in-time snippet of one part of their knowledge.
Quality. Any content library will inevitably contain some great content, and some mediocre. The great content may or may not be relevant to whatever stock you are researching today. How do you distinguish signal from noise? If I read expert transcripts, will I get insights that my competitors don’t already have? Will I merely get cool ideas – that I might as well get in a distilled form, for free, on FinTwit or my favorite analyst’s newsletter? Also, does user-generated content risk introducing bias, or negative alpha, or even outright incorrect info?

There are also smaller primary research content businesses like In Practise, who have taken a niche focus and are segmenting the market further. The founders of In Practise were involved early on with Third Bridge Forum. In Practise publishes a relatively small volume of high quality interviews and research, aimed at long-term fundamental investors, and prices significantly lower than the larger players.

Expert call libraries: Treasure trove or heap of old news?

What about the experts?

An expert on an expert network is able to resell their expertise many times over. As shown by recent IPO filings, some experts’ earnings go well into the tens of thousands.

Conversely, experts who record their knowledge onto content libraries get paid only once – when they record the content. Already today, some experts rumble about regular expert interviews, e.g.:

What if they discover the economics of sticking that experience onto a content library?

By agreeing to be recorded, the expert agrees to hand over all future earnings to the content library (for as long as the content is relevant). That’s a great trade for the content library, but not-so-great for the expert. This insight – and the general iffiness with being recorded and broadcast to anyone with a credit card – might make some experts decline working with the transcript libraries altogether.

This seems to be the case. We see many clients using a content library for run-of-the-mill content, while getting specialized insights from 1-on-1 calls with Inex One. When using Inex One, clients build their proprietary call transcript libraries. All calls are transcribed and made available within their firm only, enabling you to accumulate a proprietary insights asset.

The future of expert call content libraries

Content libraries are useful and therefore popular with investors. They’ll continue to grow, especially in high-deal-velocity areas (public markets and growth equity). Which type of content – user-generated or authored – that has the biggest appeal remains to be seen, as does the pricing power of the various players.

Other firms analyze more specialized industries (e.g. private equity investors, strategy consultants and corporate strategy teams), or have stricter confidentiality requirements. If you’re such a user, Inex One is the tool for you. Thousands of users do quality expert calls and surveys on Inex One. See why they love Inex One here, or book a demo.

Expert network investments and upstarts

Max Friberg — Mon, 08 May 2023 17:11:24 GMT

Some very successful companies were founded by people who had a fair bit of practice in their industry. Having worked at an incumbent leader, they understood the user needs and spotted untapped market opportunities.

For example, Zoom founder Eric Yuan left a cushy job as VP of engineering at Webex (Cisco). Similarly, Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri built and sold PeopleSoft, before leaving to create Workday. In the payments industry, Max Levchin built Affirm after co-founding PayPal.

Inex One is a case in point too, where the founding team has experience from both management consulting, expert networks, and disruptive software.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” - Seneca

This applies to expert networks too. The first expert networks emerged some 25 years ago and the industry has grown healthily ever since. The global expert network industry saw revenues exceed $2 Bn last year, driven by a set of innovative firms. These firms improve on the traditional expert network model with better tech, people practices, or business models (here's an explanation of different expert network business models). While industry long-timers such as GLG, Guidepoint and Coleman Research still make up a large part of the industry, those firms have been losing share for over a decade. Many of the strongest expert networks today were founded by former leaders at the traditional firms.

Our infographic below shows how the 50 largest expert networks have grown, merged, and emerged from one another.

Expert network investments and upstarts

How to use machine learning in survey research

Josefine Vinberg — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 09:16:26 GMT

Market research has always been an essential component of business strategy, providing insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. But in recent years, advances in technology have transformed the market research industry, enabling businesses to gather and analyze data at an unprecedented scale. One of the most exciting developments in this space is the use of machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to learn from data and make predictions or decisions based on that data.

What is Machine Learning?

Before we dive into how machine learning is being used in market research, let's take a moment to define what machine learning actually is. At its core, machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to learn from data and make predictions or decisions based on that data. In other words, it's a way of teaching computers to think and make decisions like humans do.

There are three main types of machine learning: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. In supervised learning, a machine learning algorithm is trained on a labeled dataset, which means the data is already classified or categorized. The algorithm learns to recognize patterns in the data and can then use that knowledge to make predictions or decisions on new, unlabeled data. Unsupervised learning, on the other hand, involves training a machine learning algorithm on an unlabeled dataset. The algorithm looks for patterns in the data and clusters similar data points together, without any preconceived notions about what the data represents. Finally, reinforcement learning involves training a machine learning algorithm to make decisions in a specific environment, based on a system of rewards and punishments.

A transformation of how surveys are run and analyzed

Now that we have a basic understanding of what machine learning is, let's explore how it's being used for survey data analysis.

Analyzing survey data can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Machine learning algorithms can be trained on survey data to automatically identify patterns and trends in the data, allowing businesses to quickly and easily extract insights that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. With traditional survey analysis methods, you might spend hours manually combing through the data, looking for patterns or correlations. But with machine learning, you can train an algorithm to automatically identify the most common themes and issues in the data, allowing you to quickly identify the areas of your product that need improvement.

Another area where machine learning is being used is survey design. Machine learning can help businesses design better surveys by analyzing data from previous surveys to identify the questions that are most effective in eliciting the desired responses. This can lead to more accurate and useful data.

Machine learning can also be used for sentiment analysis, analyzing open-ended survey responses to determine the sentiment behind the message. This can help businesses to automatically classify text data as positive, negative, or neutral, and to understand how respondents feel about a particular topic.

New opportunities

In conclusion, the role of machine learning in market research and surveys is rapidly expanding, offering new opportunities to gather and analyze data more efficiently and accurately than ever before. With the ability to process vast amounts of data, detect patterns and trends, and identify sentiment in text data, machine learning is changing the way businesses make decisions and stay competitive in their industries. As technology continues to evolve, it's likely that we'll see even more innovative applications of machine learning in market research in the years to come.

If you're interested in staying ahead of the curve, it's worth exploring how you can leverage surveys in your own business to gain insights and drive growth. Inex One partners with some of the market’s top B2B and B2C survey vendors. To get started, sign up here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

Getting started with expert networks

Max Friberg — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 14:02:59 GMT

Expert networks are a powerful source of insights, but how do you start using them? There are more than 150 expert networks globally. This makes it difficult to choose the right expert network. So we compiled this starter kit: Expert Networks 101. It helps answer common questions such as:

Which expert network is the best for me?
What is the cost of expert network services?
Which compliance rules apply for expert networks?
What are the alternatives to GLG, Alphasights, Guidepoint and Third Bridge?

1. Which expert network is the best for me?

Different expert networks have different areas of expertise and experience. Their capability to deliver relevant experts is a result of what clients it historically served (and what experts it has recruited for them). Consequently, each expert network has a different geographic footprint and industry depth.

Some expert networks try to do every industry, every geography, with varying success. But let's admit it: I'd much rather work with a Japanese expert network associate to find experts in Japan, than a London-based generalist.

Specialized expert networks have an edge over competitors. Access all the best expert networks on Inex One.

Expert networks: Walmart or Amazon?

Traditional expert networks such as GLG and Guidepoint apply a "Walmart approach" - one shop to sell everything. This works well in their home US market and Western Europe, but less well in other geographies or in niche industries. Instead, a new crop of specialized expert networks have emerged to fill the gap. These firms are capturing market share in the global expert network industry. They include Germany/ DACH expert networks such as Colift, China-focused expert networks such as Six Degrees, Australia-focused expert networks like NetworksX, and Japan-focused ShareFair.

Conveniently, all these firms - and some 20 other specialized expert networks - are available on Inex One. Using the "Amazon approach", you get access to all specialized expert networks in one portal, under one contract.

2. What is the cost of expert network services?

Expert interviews typically range from $700-$1500, depending on the location and seniority of the expert.

On Inex One, prices are clearly shown upfront, and you only pay-as-you-go for interviews made. This is a significant improvement over legacy expert networks such as GLG, Guidepoint and Alphasights.

Those firms require large upfront payments ($50-100k is common) for a pack of "credits". One credit should represent the cost of a typical expert interview. But in practice, interviews cost more (a Dialectica sales rep even admitted their average is 1.25 credits/call). 🙄

This model is very lucrative for the networks, of course. They can negotiate a seemingly low "price per credit" with the Director of Research, but then sell experts at a multiple to their Associates.

As a consequence, many clients are confused over what their actual cost of expert network services is. When switching to Inex one, that becomes clear. This case study shows how one client saved >40% on expert network cost, using Inex One.

Which compliance rules apply for expert networks?

Compliance rules for expert networks support transparency, integrity, and sustainability in the industry. Expert networks implement robust compliance programs to meet regulatory requirements and maintain the trust of their clients and stakeholders. These compliance programs include contracts, dedicated personnel, training of staff and experts, and technology. Broadly speaking, there are six sets of compliance rules for expert networks:

Anti-bribery and corruption laws: These laws prohibit giving or accepting bribes or other incentives to get business or an unfair advantage. Examples include the "Sunshine Acts" for payment to healthcare professionals in many countries, the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the UK general Bribery Act, which comes with a helpful explainer.
Insider trading regulations prohibit trading based on material, non-public information (MNPI) that you've received in breach of confidence (so called "black edge"). Expert networks ensure that experts don't breach the duty of trust to their employers and won't disclose any such MNPI. And it's in everybody's interest they don't! If an expert inadvertently quips any such MNPI to an investor, the investor cannot trade that stock - lest they commit insider trading. Professional investors build their investment cases over weeks and months - one improper expert call could spoil it all and disqualify them from trading the stock altogether!

Because of this, clients in part rely on expert networks to protect their firm and to only present suitable experts after appropriate vetting and compliance training.
Data privacy regulations: Expert networks are veritable confetti machines of PII (personally identifiable information). Importing, processing, and sharing PII is what they do all day long - typically in emails. This used to be cool, until the EU came along with the extraterritorial General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and many countries followed suit. Most expert networks have systems to handle PII, but they put their clients in an awkward spot by spraying PII in emails and spreadsheets to the client firms. To comply with the GDPR and similar regulation, firms use Inex One to manage all expert PII in one portal. Here's a free eBook on GDPR for expert network users. 🤩
Conflicts of interest: Expert networks must not arrange consultations where the expert might have a conflict of interest, as it could affect the type and integrity of information shared. For example, an expert must not discuss companies in which they work or have ownership, without explicit approval from that company.
Business ethics: Expert networks must have high business ethics e.g. for maintaining the client confidentiality, sharing accurate and unbiased information, and avoiding any actions that could harm the reputation of the expert network, the experts or its clients. This includes guiding and contracting with experts to not share any confidential information (whether MNPI or other confidential information).
Client requested rules. Some expert network clients have their own rules that they require expert networks to comply with. Here's an example expert network policy (2018 version) from Oaktree, a respected US asset manager. Inex One's Compliance System supports clients to track all consultations across all expert networks, and implement custom flags and compliance rules.

What are the alternatives to GLG, Alphasights, Guidepoint and Third Bridge?

There are more than 150 expert networks worldwide. Choosing the right vendor might feel complicated, and expensive. Inex One solves this by gathering the best expert networks in one portal. Today, more than 400 client firms use Inex One, from Tokyo to Los Angeles.

See a detailed comparison of expert networks like GLG, Alphasights, Guidepoint and Third Bridge to Inex One here.

That's it - you've got the basics and you're all set! Get started using expert networks here.

Trends in the survey industry

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 07:51:21 GMT

Surveys are an integral part of market research, and businesses across industries rely on them to gather insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. With the rise of technology and data-driven decision making, the survey industry has undergone significant changes in recent years. We’ve previously explored how the survey industry works and its broad categories of B2B and B2C respondents.

In this blog post, we'll explore some of the latest survey trends. Whether you're a seasoned market research professional or just getting started, we hope that you will learn something new. Let's dive in!

Trend #1: Increased use of mobile surveys

Mobile surveys have become increasingly popular in recent years, as people spend more time on their phones. Ensuring your surveys are mobile optimized isn't only about making the format responsive and adapted to a smaller screen. You should also adapt the content; use short and simple questions and avoid open text responses. When done right, mobile surveys offer several advantages over traditional surveys, including greater convenience, faster response rates, and higher engagement levels.

Trend #2: Focus on respondent experience

Respondent experience is becoming an increasingly important aspect of survey design. Respondents are more likely to provide accurate and honest feedback if the survey experience is positive. To improve respondent experience, surveys are made shorter, more engaging, and more personalized. Across consumer and B2B samples, gamification techniques such as quizzes, puzzles, and games can make surveys more interactive and engaging.

Trend #3: Integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming the survey industry by making it easier to analyze and interpret large amounts of data. These technologies can help businesses identify patterns, trends, and insights that would be difficult to identify manually. For example, AI-powered sentiment analysis can help businesses understand how customers feel about their products and services by analyzing text data from surveys, social media, and other sources.

Trend #4: Use of video surveys

Video surveys record replies as short videos, instead of written text. While they are more costly to collect and analyze, they can provide businesses with more detailed and nuanced feedback than traditional surveys. Video surveys are particularly effective for gathering feedback on products and services that involve visual or sensory elements. They can also be used to capture emotions and reactions, which can be valuable for understanding customer behavior.

Trend #5: Increased focus on data privacy and security

As businesses collect more data through surveys, data privacy and security have become critical concerns. Respondents want to know that their personal information is being protected and used appropriately. Businesses are responding by implementing stricter data privacy policies and procedures, as well as using secure data storage and transmission methods.

Trend #6: Fraud detection

Data quality is key to successful market research. Fraudulent data can skew results and compromise data quality, and undermine the buyers’ confidence in surveys as a research method. Fraud and fraud detection has become a hot topic during recent years, and the methods to detect fraud are getting more and more advanced. Using a CAPTCHA code is an efficient way to prevent malicious software and bots from accessing your survey. Another way to avoid low-quality respondents is to only work with providers that source from their own databases or do custom recruiting, and who don’t buy samples from third party panels.

At Inex One, we know just how valuable surveys can be. As a marketplace and collaboration tool for expert networks and survey vendors, we've seen firsthand how businesses of all sizes use surveys to gather feedback from customers and stay ahead of the competition. But if you lack the right tools, finding the right vendor, deciding on survey methodology, and building a survey can be a nightmare. Inex One gives you access to the best survey providers in one platform. Our partners can help with everything from scoping, designing, programming and gathering the responses. Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

How do Expert Networks operate?

Max Friberg — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 11:44:00 GMT

Expert Networks help people who seek expertise connect with the people who possess it. They do this at a global scale, across all countries and specializations. There are more than 100 expert networks globally, offering 6 types of expert network services. These all revolve around the core activity: identifying relevant experts on demand. This core activity is similar to headhunting, but with the difference that expert networks recruit for 1-hour consultation sessions rather than for full-time jobs.

Inex One is the marketplace for expert networks. We monitor every expert network, keeping track of which are most relevant for every project. You can access the 25 best specialized expert networks - with no fixed costs - on Inex One.

The expert network industry as we know it today emerged with Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) in 1998 and boomed in the early 2000’s with the emergence of additional players (including Alphasights, Third Bridge, and Guidepoint). It then took a double beating: first from the drop in M&A activity of the 2008 financial crisis, and then from a series of insider-trading scandals. 2010 to 2020 was a decade of booming growth, as expert networks surfed the wave of unparalleled private equity dealmaking. This success was interrupted only briefly by the covid-19 outbreak, and possibly more long-term by the decline in investment activity in 2022.

These are the six types of expert network services:

The core expert network business (calls, recruiting, meetings)
Expert network B2B Survey providers
Expert network consulting services
Expert network aggregators
Expert network transcript libraries
Expert witness services

1. Expert Networks: "The core business"

Most expert networks operate what we call “The core business”. These expert networks rely heavily on the smarts and flexibility of their employees, who go to great lengths to find suitable experts for their customers. This requires hours of manual work, googling, and trawling career databases such as LinkedIn, Xing and Viadeo. The experts recruited are managed in internal databases and might be engaged in future projects.

Many expert networks automate the more repetitive parts of the associates’ work (e.g. copying experts from LinkedIn, searching the database, sending personalized messages). However, the core business remains the same: having competent people recruit experts for ad hoc engagements.

Many expert networks focus on a particular region or industry, where they have a stronger footprint than others. These firms specialize in one or multiple geographies or industries, developing an edge over the larger firms that seek to cover everything at ones.

In recent years, five business models have emerged that are adjacent to the core business. We’ll analyze them one by one below.

2. Expert network B2B Survey providers

Investors use expert networks to get deep insights. Surveys are another tool to the same goal. adjacent service, often used in conjunction with expert interviews.

Expert networks accumulate plenty of experts, as they go about their core business. For every expert recruited for a call, they might speak to 10-20 others. Most of these become detailed profiles in the expert network’s database. Over time, this database becomes an attractive, high-quality survey panel. Therefore, offering B2B surveys makes sense for expert networks as they achieve scale.

Expert networks are among the highest-quality survey panels, as respondents are interviewed and vetted. It wouldn’t be feasible to get the same detail on respondents in a regular B2C panel, as the CPI is too low. However, expert networks get detailed respondents while going about their high-CPI core business. Once the database is in place (and kept fresh), it makes sense to monetize it also for surveys.

Consequently, you see most larger expert networks offer B2B surveys, with Third Bridge being a somewhat surprising exception. Conversely, some B2B survey firms such as Ivy Insights have branched out into expert networking.

We explained how the survey industry works last year, as Inex One launched a survey platform. Clients often struggle to find the right survey vendor (“Who should I use, what should it cost, how long should it take?”). With the Inex One survey platform, you can get multiple quotes and engage the best vendors in one dashboard.

With Inex One, you can do a full suite of primary market research – from expert calls to B2B surveys and B2C surveys – in one platform. Access the best vendors, compare quotes, and collaborate efficiently with your colleagues.

To dig deeper - check out our explainer on different methods of survey sampling.

3. Expert network consulting services

Since the early days of expert networks, clients have found certain experts particularly interesting, and arranged longer project work with them. Sometimes the expert network would include a translator or note-taker. Such “breakout engagements” were always a minor part (<10%) of expert networks’ revenues. But some expert networks made it a business of its own, in some cases

GLG has a consulting arm offering commercial due diligence, market assessments and corporate strategy projects. They engaged a team of ex-McKinsey consultants and a network of freelance consultants. GLG’s consulting business has grown to the point where some large consulting firms reportedly considered it as a threat to their own Private Equity consulting. Consequently, some reportedly reduced their spending with GLG to not fuel a competitor.

Screenshot from GLG’s website in February 2023, recruiting for a role conducting commercial due diligence projects.

Other expert network firms offering – less extensive – consulting services include Atheneum, Alphasights and Expertpowerhouse.

4. Expert network aggregators

Inex One launched in 2018, with the mission to build an efficient marketplace for expertise. The founding team had seen the inefficiencies in traditional expert networks and designed Inex One to solve them.

The concept is simple: to streamline workflows and help expert networks invest their time in the most productive way. This reduces costs and increases quality of service. While Inex One started out as an aggregator, it has since evolved into a marketplace. This reflects a dual focus on both clients and vendors, as opposed to a one-sided aggregator. At the start of 2023, Inex One supports 800+ clients and 30+ expert networks and survey firms worldwide, seeing steadily growing business volumes.

Consverge started in 2020 as an expert network aggregator. The model differed from Inex One as Consverge’s employees coordinate all the projects. Clients communicated with Consverge, who in turn spoke with the expert networks. The company – founded by an ex-Third Bridge employee – closed down in July 2024.

A few regular expert networks have also explored the aggregation model. Coleman, Prosapient, Lynk, Right Angle ("ENC") and Mosaic Research all built expert network aggregator software in recent years. Neither product has gained much traction, though. Each firm struggled with an inherent conflict of interests: being both marketplace and a vendor undermined other vendors’ trust in them. At the start of 2023, both Coleman and Mosaic had canceled their aggregators, to focus on their expert network businesses, while Lynk was laden with operational issues. Mid-2024, we learned that also ENC was failing to pay its expert network partners, while mostly serving India- and Russia-based clients.

To be a successful expert network marketplace/ aggregator, you need vendor-neutrality and traction with users.

To see why 800+ clients use Inex One, try it out here or book a demo.

5. Expert network transcript libraries

Expert network transcript libraries are online databases of past expert interviews. Expert network transcript libraries are mostly used by public market and growth equity investors. There are many market participants interested in the same asset, and it can be traded “any time”. This makes every transcript relevant to a large enough audience to bear the costs for producing and hosting it. Conversely, content libraries are less relevant to private market investors, corporates and strategy consultants. Their research tends to be confidential and specific to their use case. Once a PE fund has acquired a company, they’ll hold on to it for 5-6 years. During that time, other funds can’t invest and therefore wouldn’t read call transcripts about the company. And when it’s time to sell, the 5–6-year-old transcripts are likely outdated.

Expert network transcript libraries come in two main types:

Managed content libraries. The library owner identifies “hot topics” that its clients are likely interested in. They employ analysts who in turn interview experts and publish the transcripts to the library. The main managed content libraries are Third Bridge Forum, AlphaSense Expert Insights, Guidepoint Insights and the GLG Library. Smaller/ niche players include Alphasights' AlphaView, In Practise and CB Insights' Yardstiq.
User-generated content libraries (UGC). The library owner organizes expert interviews for its clients, and transcribes all calls for its library. The client pays a bit less per call, in exchange for having it published to the library. Tegus led the way in UGC.

The two models increasingly blend, as both Third Bridge, Guidepoint and In Practise have launched user-generated content, while AlphaSense Expert Insights complements its user content with their own hosted content. Check out our extensive explainer on Expert Network Transcript Libraries here.

6. Expert witness services

Parallel to the regular expert network industry – serving mainly strategy and investment professionals – there is a smaller yet thriving market for legal experts (“Expert Witnesses”). These firms deliver legal and medical experts, background checks and related services to attorneys at US law firms. Leading firms include IMS Consulting & Expert Services, The Expert Institute, and the expert witness divisions of GLG and Guidepoint.

How will the Expert Network industry develop?

The market for expert networks is the market for insights-on-demand. It stretches far beyond the “core business” into alternative business models. We believe the industry will continue to grow, driven by simple supply and demand:

Demand is growing. Global value chains are ever more complex, and companies specialize into niche segments. If you’re looking to invest in a company that exports niche components around the globe, you probably want to research the local market conditions (competitive dynamics, regulatory trends etc.) in at least some of the largest regional markets (e.g. China, Japan, Germany, UK, and the US). Speaking with local experts is an efficient way to do this.
Supply is growing. More people make themselves available on online career directories, and people are increasingly open to “gigs”. This makes it easier for expert networks to identify and recruit global experts.

There is merit to all expert network operating models, and there is likely room for multiple players to thrive.

Expert networks complement other research services

We will round off with a last image, showing what the Inex One team sees as a central trend in investment research. With increasing industry complexity, more sources of expertise are required to maintain a given level of industry insight.

Take Sweden as an example:

In the 1950’s our main exports were iron ore, paper, and pulp, to Northern Europe. Industry analysis and investment research was mostly done in boardrooms of, well, middle-aged men.
Since the 1980’s, rapid industrialization and growing global trade in subsequent years have been some of the factors behind the success of global management consulting firms. Management consulting is a complement to having full-time industrial advisors/employees, and the industry sees strong, sustained growth.
In the last decade, the expert network industry has grown rapidly. The industry is in turn a complement to what came before it, as it is used by both consultants and regular corporations.

Inex One helps you gather all your expert networks in a single platform. We believe it’s a logical continuation to the trend, and the future of the expert network industry.

Click here to get started with Inex One, or book a demo.

Surveys explained

Max Friberg — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 10:11:00 GMT

Inex One simplifies surveys for commercial due diligence and market research. We began back in 2018 by simplifying expert interviews for strategy and market research work. As we expanded into surveys, we stumbled on the many acronyms and specific lingo. Here’s our internal explainer of the words we needed to understand for ourselves. I hope you’ll find it helpful - and tell us if anything’s missing!

B2B surveys - business-to-business market research. Surveys that target a specific, qualified sample set for their professional (business) insights. Expert networks with quality databases often make them available as panels for survey sampling.
B2C surveys - business-to-consumer market research. B2C respondents are generally consumers, surveyed at the point of sale or soon thereafter. The survey often focuses on buying intent, brand awareness, or brand appreciation. Compared to B2B surveys, B2C surveys have lower CPI and typically higher incidence rates in any panel.
Complete - A complete response to a survey, where the respondent is qualified based on profiling criteria and the response is legitimate and complete.
CATI - Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews. Phone surveys that follow specific scripts, with a clear hierarchy and logic of questions. Typically much shorter than IDIs, with little or no room for open-ended questions and qualitative commentary.
CDD surveys - surveys run as part of a commercial due diligence (whether buy- or vendor-side). These tend to be B2B surveys and focus on key decision makers involved with the target company or industry at large. Questions often cover the competitive landscape, market trends and evolution.
CPI - Cost per interview/ survey response (also called “CPC”, cost per complete). This is the price that you pay for the survey sample, divided by the number of complete responses. The cost is influenced by the availability of your targeted respondent groups, and their incidence rate in your sample.

Please don't fiddle with your phone when crossing the street. But if you do, why not answer a mobile survey?

IDI - In-depth interviews, for example arranged through an expert network, or as a call with a survey respondent for detailed follow-up questions.
IR - Incidence rate. The percentage of respondents that qualify to take your survey. If you survey a broad audience (e.g. “all men”), your incidence rate is ~50% of the population. If you need to be more specific, (e.g. “oncologists who have prescribed drug X more than 10 times in the last two years”), your incidence rate can be a lot lower.
LOI - Length of interview. The expected time needed to complete a survey, usually calculated in minutes.
Panel - A company or system with a group of respondents available as sample for surveys. Panels can be pre-organized (e.g. members in a club, loyalty/reward programs, mailing lists), or - less commonly - spot-recruited (e.g. through targeted ads on social media, text messages, or at a point of sale).
Profiling criteria - Criteria, or questions asked, to determine if respondents are relevant for a survey. When surveys are distributed to large panels or respondent groups, profiling criteria let you filter out any respondents that are not qualified to take the survey. For example, if your survey is aimed at coffee drinkers, a profiling question could be “Do you drink coffee at least once per week?”.
Respondent - An individual that replies to a survey.
Sample - A group of respondents, or completed responses. These are sourced from one or multiple panels.
Survey - A set of questions distributed to respondents. Surveys are used to collect feedback and data from a sample, to understand an entire population, market, or industry. Surveys can be distributed in numerous ways (e.g. online/mobile, pen-and-paper, telephone, or passive monitoring). For our audience at Inex One - primarily strategy consultants, investment professionals and market researchers - we choose to narrow the definition of surveys to only those distributed online via web/mobile to both B2B and B2C audiences.

How do I launch a survey for my market study?

The easiest way to launch a survey is on Inex One. Access the best survey providers in one portal, who help you with scoping and designing the survey. This gives you optimal survey quality, price, and speed of delivery.

Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

How the survey industry works

Max Friberg — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:11:00 GMT

The survey industry is a $57 Bn behemoth, encompassing a wide range of research services, use cases and methodologies. As Inex One launches a survey platform, we set out to define and demystify the industry.

We’ve done this once before: explaining and demystifying the expert network industry. Investors and strategy consultants now work with the best specialized expert networks on Inex One. Some clients save >40% on cost, and many users say that using Inex One is superior to legacy expert networks.

The survey industry: using available data

The survey industry is a subset of the wider insights industry, with a turnover of roughly $119 Bn globally, according to industry association ESOMAR. The main services provided here are online/mobile surveys (qualitative and quantitative), passive online research, and social media research. Reporting is another big piece and a special case. While the other service categories are actual research methods, reporting means all services around them (e.g. selecting research method, designing a survey, cleaning and reporting the data). Market research firms and strategy consultants do this type of work.

The global insights industry 2021

Breaking it down

Here’s one way of slicing the ESOMAR data into smaller buckets. I estimate that surveys and related reporting were worth $57 Bn in 2021. This includes both quantitative and qualitative surveys, and related reporting. Check out our survey glossary to clarify any tricky terms.

I made this graph with Think-cell. I love this service. The company - a lean tech team in Berlin being market leaders in a global niche - has been an inspiration to us when building Inex One.

What are B2B and B2C surveys?

B2C surveys target respondents for their personal insights as consumers. These surveys typically ask questions about their consumer behavior, preferences, and buying intent. These surveys can go to broad audiences (e.g. coffee drinkers, parents in the countryside). B2C survey questions often focus on an experience, e.g. “How do you perceive this brand”, “Would you recommend this product?”, or “What would you be willing to pay for X?”.

Correspondingly, B2B surveys target respondents for their professional insights. B2B surveys ask questions about things like industry trends & outlook, and key purchasing criteria when evaluating a business purchase. Consequently, a B2B survey targets a smaller part of the general population than a B2C survey does. This lower “incidence rate” means that surveying B2B respondents is typically 10-30x more expensive than B2C.

Got it, now what are Quantitative and Qualitative surveys?

Generally speaking, B2C surveys are quantitative, while B2B surveys are qualitative. There are of course lots of exceptions to the rule, but the general availability of B2C respondents makes those surveys quantitative almost by default. Similarly, “the general unavailability” of B2B respondents makes those surveys qualitative in most cases. You might not find enough respondents for a proper quant survey even if you may have wanted it. :)

Quantitative B2C audiences are typically defined only high-level with a few data points (e.g. location, gender, age group, FB likes). These surveys are often published on offer walls where members of communities or loyalty/reward programs can opt-in to take them. Also, some panels recruit respondents with online ads or mailing lists/ or blasts.

Qualitative surveys are more in-depth, often asking detailed questions from a smaller group of available respondents. To ensure data quality and the relevance of each respondent, respondents need to go through more thorough checks (e.g. manually recruited by an expert network). Therefore, qualitative surveys (often targeting B2B respondents) tend to be 10-20x more expensive per respondent than those targeting B2C (which are often quantitative).

Here are two very qualitative elephants, just because I needed to break up this big block of text.

Who does surveys?

Corporates, brands and investors are the main survey buyers. They typically engage market research or consulting firms to run research projects with surveys. Those firms, in turn, provide a range of ancillary services beyond just a survey. This includes designing the survey and deciding on respondent groups, analyzing the raw data, making strategic recommendations, and overall project management. They often run expert interviews in parallel, using Inex One. In very specific or simpler cases, they could also run the survey in-house, using a self-service tool to design the survey.

How do I run a survey, and who is involved?

Here’s the general workflow for an online/ mobile survey:

A corporate, brand or investor requests a survey.
A survey vendor (or the buyer themselves) designs the survey. This includes deciding what type of survey is needed (e.g. number and type of respondents, which questions and their prioritization).
A survey vendor (or the buyer themselves) programs the survey. This means putting it into a survey tool that generates links for respondents, and adds any logic needed (asking different follow-up questions based on replies to previous questions).
Once programmed, the survey needs sample, relevant respondents. The survey vendor may have that themselves, or they engage other vendors. Here’s where it gets really funky: all survey suppliers buy sample from each other, and from exchanges like Cint. There’s a constant asking and quoting of prices, to get sufficient sample at the most time- and cost-effective terms.
When the respondent panels have been selected, the survey is fielded (sent out for answering). As replies come in, these are aggregated and cleaned for bad data (e.g. unqualified or duplicate respondents).
Once you’ve collected the data, it’s time to analyze it. Survey vendors have different capabilities to do this: some do it well, some do it poorly, and some leave it entirely to the end-customer themselves (which can be desirable!).

The typical action flow and parties involved in a survey.

How do I launch a survey?

The easiest way to launch a survey is on Inex One. You get access to the best survey providers in one portal, and help with scoping and designing your survey. This helps you to get an optimal survey quality, price, and speed of delivery.

Launch your survey here, or click here to discuss your research needs with our team.

Expert networks: Power by the Hour

Max Friberg — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 10:08:00 GMT

I like British stuff. And few brands are as iconically British as Rolls Royce.

Started back in 1906 by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, the firm has moved people worldwide with cars, airplanes, and naval engines. You could fill libraries with business insights from their history, but my favorite is the “Power-by-the-hour” concept.

Three blokes and a 1937 Rolls Royce Phantom III.

This is the perfect example of how everybody wins when incentives align. Here’s the story:

Aviation: the good old days

In the early days of aviation, airlines managed everything from ground operations to airplane ownership and flight operations. Airplane engines are a surprisingly large part of the total cost, and airlines shouldered the burden of maintaining, monitoring and replacing their engines.

As engines approached the end of their expected lifetime, an airline would buy new ones from a vendor like Rolls Royce. In addition to replacement costs, airlines had to contend with a joker in the pack: unforeseen engine failure. Events like this could - and did - cost airlines millions in lost revenue and reputational damage.

Airlines thus faced a tradeoff between buying expensive new engines more often, or risking sudden engine failure. Neither option is very attractive.

A meal being served on a 1955 SAS flight. No engines in sight.

Rolls to the rescue: power-by-the-hour

Rolls Royce solved this problem with a subscription approach to jet engines. Airlines would pay just one predictable fee. And the important part: they’d pay only per hour of flight time. This completely changed the aviation service business by aligning incentives between Rolls Royce and the airlines they supplied.

This “Power-by-the-hour” concept gave airlines their dream exit from the jet engine owning business. Instead, they could focus on perfecting their core business: taking passengers comfortably from A to B.

Conversely, Rolls Royce specialized in building and owning jet engines. They leveraged their vast new subscriber base to invest in ever-better engines. This modernized global aviation and paved the way to the near-seamless international travel we enjoy today.

Great.

What’s this got to do with expert networks?

Why expert networks want you to prepay for credits

Traditionally, clients pay expert networks in advance to get “call credits”. These credits are then deducted throughout the year as expert interviews are made. Expert networks may bill multiple credits per call, adding extra for “premium experts”, transcripts, a few minutes over the hour etc. But you’ve agreed on a price, right?

Turns out that expert networks routinely charge more than one credit per call. The client ends up paying a higher actual cost/call than expected. Early findings from our new survey indicate this expert markup is often 1.2-1.4. This means clients pay 20-40% more for calls than they had expected to do.

This markup is notoriously difficult to notice, as it happens in the exchange between associates, beyond the structured annual contract negotiations. So here’s how to calculate it:

Inex One: Power-by-the-hour

With Inex One, you get pay-as-you-go access to 25 excellent expert networks. For consultants and private equity firms, this is a dream exit out of the call credit owning business. Instead, you can focus on your core: making smart business decisions.

Conversely, Inex One specializes in collaborating with the best expert networks. We leverage our tech and vast user base to help expert networks get ever-better operations. This has paved the way to the efficient knowledge-exchange that our clients enjoy today.

The incentives align:

Expert networks on the Inex One marketplace are incentivized to offer affordable interview prices. They only make money if you like their experts, as does Inex One.
Clients get access to the best expert networks, and insights-by-the-hour. Get yours today.

Inex One's Directors of Research Webinar 2022

Mudit Makheja — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 09:06:00 GMT

Inex One runs a Directors of Research webinar series dedicated to the research needs of investment and strategy consulting firms. In this webinar, research leaders from the most prominent private equity, strategy consulting, and asset management firms discuss trends in the Expert Network industry.

Last week, we organized two 25-minute panels followed by break-out rooms where participants exchange insights with their colleagues and friends in the industry.

The panelists included senior leaders with backgrounds at GLG, Bain & Company, General Atlantic, and McKinsey & Company. Below are a few highlights from the discussions:

Trends in Expert Networks for Investment Firms

Less PE deal-making in 2022 has meant lower spend on expert networks
Speed, quality, and compliance are the most important purchasing criteria
The number of expert networks continues to grow, with sector-specialists emerging
Specialization, automation, and aggregation are logical next steps for expert networks

Trends in Expert Networks for Strategy Consultants

Expert calls have become a top spend item over the last decade
Surveys are increasingly being used alongside expert calls
Managing expert networks takes a lot of time from consulting teams
As PE clients grow more sophisticated, consultants need to bring ever more specialized insights

Thank you to everyone who participated in these events, we look forward to seeing you at the next one.

Crunch time for Private Equity Consulting

Max Friberg — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 02:06:00 GMT

For years, private equity has kept strategy consulting firms bustling with activity. Ever-larger generations of consultants have passed through the private equity “ringfences” at firms like Bain, BCG, McKinsey, Oliver Wyman, LEK, Kearney, and EY-Parthenon. In addition, firms like CIL Consultants and Stax have emerged as CDD specialists. I did a lot of PE work as a consultant, and I even quite enjoyed it!

However, lately we’ve been hearing that PE investors are pausing projects and taking longer to make investment decisions. Generally, people pin the deal-market slowdown on inflation and rising interest rates. In the short run, it means private equity consultants will get home in time for dinner.. but should we be concerned about the industry at large?

Rising interest rates, what does that even mean?

Idk, I was a PE consultant, not a trader, so here’s my simplistic explainer. Any productive asset (a company or a stock etc.) is worth the sum of its future cash flows. As interest rates rise, far-out cash flows become worth less, so asset prices fall.

Nobody knows how far valuations will fall, or if they might rebound soon. This uncertainty makes both sellers and buyers hesitant to transact, each waiting for a better - or at least a stable - price.

Does this mean that PE deals are over?

I won’t pretend to know these things, so let’s have a look at what we know about private equity. Unlike publicly traded stocks where the value is apparent to anyone, the value of private equity funds is sort of decided by… the private equity fund. This makes sense in a way: nobody really knows the value of a company when it is not being bought or sold.

Looking at historical data, private equity has performed better than pretty much everything. Bain & Company’s new PE report (p.25) says: ”Buyout fund returns continue to outpace public equities across all time periods and around the world”.

Now some finance people say:

I don’t say much here. This all is being debated by scholars of course. Meanwhile, money keeps flowing into private equity and other so-called alternative assets.

This image is a bit old, but a recent survey (of mostly family offices and consultants) seems to confirm the trend in 2021.

As more money is allocated to private equity, more deals can be made. And oh boy have there been deals. Bain & Company (p.13) says the global M&A market hit a record high last year.

What could stop the deals?

According to Bain (again, p.2), that would be (1) inflation and (2) global disruptions partly triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It's already here

Turns out PE deal activity has already begun falling. Here are some slides that I made for my Board meeting this week. Check out the correlation of the two charts on p1 btw - is PE activity a leading indicator for expert network recruitment?

OK but how big of a deal is PE?

Private Equity is roughly 15-25% of global M&A value, according to Bain/Dealogic, and McKinsey. The rest is mostly corporates - with some companies doing lots of deals. Corporate M&A teams engage consultants of many sorts (banks, lawyers and financial advisors), but they typically have less of a need for commercial due diligence - the services typically done by strategy consulting firms.

Corporates typically understand the industry they operate in well, lest they go out of business. Conversely, private equity teams frequently engage CDD consultants to get smart on companies in many different industries. PE deal activity, therefore, is the main driver of the CDD consulting industry, and - in extension - of the expert network industry.

Note: I simplified the original Bain chart a bit. Private Equity is largely what Bain calls “Financial investors” in this graph, plus part of VC/Corporate VC.

Choppy seas ahead

We cannot say for certain “how bad it will be”, if at all. In BCG’s recent survey of 150 investors (p.10), two thirds said they expect a recession in the US during this year or next. 60% of them expect inflation to remain above 3.5% in 2023 and 2024. What that might mean for deal volumes, I’ll leave to the experts.

On the positive side for the industry, capital continues to be allocated to private markets. As for deal volumes, 2021 was an exceptional year. What we see now might be a reversal to a long-term trend of growth in deals.

In the short term, I think it’s prudent to plan for some volatility. Towards the end of this year, investors will hopefully be more confident in valuations and have adjusted to higher interest rates. They’ll need to deploy all that dry powder eventually, and when that time comes - they need their trusted advisors.

Until then, private equity consultants - and their expert network partners - will likely get to enjoy those dinners-at-home for just a little while longer.

The Expert Network Industry’s ‘Zen Mode’ - Simplify Your Expert Network Use

Mudit Makheja — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 10:06:00 GMT

“Smartphones are our tools; not our shackles” was the main idea when One Plus launched the Zen Mode feature on its phones. Users are spending more-and-more time on their phones, and on not so important things, with the constant diversion of notifications, pings, or rings. One Plus introduced Zen Mode to assist users in making better use of their time by avoiding getting distracted by their smartphones' continual buzzing.

We see a similar theme in the expert network industry. Clients spend hours of their day juggling expert calls, a task that often becomes a full-time job. Like smartphones, expert calls are your tools and should not be your shackles!

So my question is: “Does the expert network industry need a custom Zen Mode?”

The expert network industry is under-optimized for user experience. Clients, experts, and expert networks all have to put up with clunky workflows and email overload. Let's take a look at each of these groups separately:

Clients: “A Tom & Jerry relationship.”

Though expert calls are a vital component of investment research for management consultants and investment professionals, the main frustrations are relevance, quality, speed, and administrative hassle.

Source: https://bit.ly/3ovTMcZ

Administrative Hassle: Most clients engage multiple expert networks to cast a wide net for getting experts, which leads to added administrative and coordination costs with each additional expert network.

Identifying relevant experts and quality of experts: Expert networks all have different communication channels and formats. This makes it difficult for clients to identify the most relevant experts, as comparing expert profiles from various networks against each other is like comparing apples to oranges. Also, with different communication channels and no standard format, it is challenging to benchmark one expert network against another in terms of effectiveness and service quality across specific industries or countries.

Expert Network Employees: Uncertainty in the “black box” of emails

Expert networks recruit talented young professionals to support their clients. But in terms of employee satisfaction, there is potential for improvement, as seen in their Glassdoor reviews for leading expert network companies.

Feedback on Glassdoor

Let's take a closer look into the life of an expert network employee.

Aggressive targets: For recruiting experts and booking calls
Uncertainty: You're dependent on getting the expert's approval to be recruited before you can present them to the client.
Prioritization challenges: You cannot prioritize your time for different projects as it’s a “black box” where you work hard on everything because you don’t know:
1. How many other expert networks are competing with you on each project.
2. If the client is doing all their calls with another network.
3. If the client has stopped the project altogether (but forgot to tell you).

Relatively inefficient and frustrating, right?

The expert networks might be doing well on the top line, but their transactional nature has made the industry a little complex. With more expert networks entering the market, the pressure is increasing.

So is there a solution to all the woes of this industry? The answer is Yes. But How?

Activating Zen Mode

The Zen Mode improves the user experience for all stakeholders. Inex One lets clients work with multiple specialized expert networks in one dashboard. This value chain is more efficient than the old email-based value chain.

The expert network industry with Zen Mode

Clients win

With Inex One, clients can access multiple expert networks through a single platform, which improves:

Quality: Get unique experts when projects are matched with the most relevant expert networks from a pool of 25+ specialized networks.
Workflow: The whole expert engagement process on one platform.
Comparability: Differentiate prices, expert profiles, and timelines showcased by different expert networks.
Costs: Reduced admin & transparency costs with significant efficiency gains (>40% cost savings for some).

Expert networks win

Qualified clients: Access to clients without any acquisition costs
Costs: Reduced operational costs with Inex One’s productivity tools
Efficiency: Optimal allocation of resources across all projects with real-time market share and progress updates.

Expert network employees win

Employees get valued as knowledge partners, which incentivizes them to specialize. Evolving into a connected industry specialist enhances their job satisfaction, position, and future career opportunities.

Inex One provides access to expertise for investors, strategy, and M&A professionals worldwide. Inex One's many specialized expert networks provide you with exceptional specialists quickly and at a competitive price.

Do you want to join 300+ companies using “Zen Mode” with Inex One?

Try it out here.

Podcast: Expert Network Intelligence with Inex One CEO, Max Friberg

Mudit Makheja — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 10:06:00 GMT

Inex One has been featured in the podcast PEERSPECTRUM | Journeys in Medicine by Keith Mankin, MD & Colin Miller. The Journeys in Medicine podcast explores the world of medicine with renowned physicians, economists, researchers, businessmen, and more. We are excited to have been invited to one of their podcasts.

Listen to the show on their website or on iTunes.

This podcast deep dives into the expert network industry with our CEO Max Friberg and explores more about how expert networks actually work, what can be gained from these highly specialized conversations, and about Inex One.

Case Study: Investment bank reduced ENS cost by >40% with Inex One

Max Friberg — Wed, 18 May 2022 13:09:00 GMT

The investment banking division of DNB, a leading Nordic bank, began using Inex One in late 2018 to replace the services of a large expert network.

DNB quickly saw the benefits in our service. We have learned a lot from serving this leading investment bank and will continue to develop our service to meet their needs.

In addition to cost savings, DNB now gets service from specialized expert networks around the globe. High service means teams get access to the best experts – quickly. The cost savings were achieved through a combination of fewer call credits, and lower costs per call.

At Inex One, our clients need the best access to insights for their work. The Inex One system makes sure they get it, fast and efficiently. Expert network costs are increasingly in focus, as the cost and usage is rising. The Inex One system supports the healthy growth of the expert network industry. Contact us to learn more.

My Tryst With Expert Networks: From Problems to Solution

Mudit Makheja — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 11:04:00 GMT

Ever since I was a child, I have had a knack for finding Broken things. And when I find something broken, I have an irresistible urge to fix it. Maybe that’s one motivation for doing a bachelor's in Engineering.

Fast forward a few years, and I was working for a firm trying to fix the broken US Healthcare industry, assisting them with Marketing and Market research.

Blast from the Past

Part of my role required me to gather relevant, precise insights and analyze market trends/opportunities. This constant search for “relevant insights” introduced me to a new industry - the industry for expert insights. Giant Expert Networks dominated it.

These conventional expert networks ask their clients for their requirements and connect them with an industry professional/expert within that field.

Sounds Interesting?

House of Mirrors

Well, it did. No more having to beat your head around endless google searches for information that is not even there. That information is within the heads of people who have spent years in that field. Now, I get an Expert Network, send them my requirements, and BAMM!

I have my insights.

Felt like I Found OIL!

Error 404 - Expert Networks

But, as we’ve come to realize about oil, so did I discover about Expert Networks. The grass is NOT so green on the other side.

Like oil, expert networks got the job done—massive Expert Networks like GLG, Third Bridge, Guidepoint, and AlphaSights with different specialties. But just like oil, they created other problems.

AN OPERATIONAL NIGHTMARE!!

Email mayhem, internal roadblocks to information sharing, managing multiple team calendars, working with various expert networks, all simultaneously and with Deadlines. It was Drowning, to say the least.

And then, my knack kicked in. I saw something broken, the Broken Expert Network industry.

The Mayhem in the Broken Expert Network Industry

My Knight in the Shining Armour

I tried to find a fix and make my life easier. Cut down all the emails, reduce challenges with team collaboration, and make it easy for me to manage my multiple Expert Networks. That's when I found my lone warrior, trying to fix what's broken. Inex One, a cloud-based marketplace of multiple expert networks that helps clients manage their expert networks and interact with experts more efficiently. One dashboard to manage it all, with access to numerous Expert Networks.

The Inex One Platform

I knew we had to work with them when I first heard about their offering. So we decided to sign Inex One, and use them for getting our expert calls. We got going with just a few clicks and started doing projects from Day 1.

And Boy, Inex One did make my life easy!! With easy-to-use dashboards for project management, communication, and Zero emails in my inbox from Expert Networks.

The Opportune Present and the Promising Future

Shortly after, I took a break to pursue my Master in Business with a dual degree from MDI Gurgaon and ESCP Business School. Though busy with all the studies, projects, and submissions, I still remembered the opportunity and potential I had seen—the chance to fix a broken industry. A work still left unfinished.

My knack and urges kicked in again. I dropped a message to the disruptors at Inex, looking for an opportunity to be a part of their journey. Today, I am heading Growth Marketing at Inex One, to help more clients do efficient market research.

If you want to try it out get started here.

Expert networks in 2022

Max Friberg — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 17:04:00 GMT

What's happening in the expert network industry in 2022? I often get this question from people in and around the industry - entrepreneurs, operators, investors, and clients. These are the main topics that I hear about:

Continued growth. We’re coming out of a year of explosive growth for expert networks. We expect the expert network industry market to surpass $2 Bn in 2022, driven by (1) the build-up of private equity capital to be deployed, and (2) corporate strategy/M&A teams adopting the use of expert networks. Also, some headwinds are mounting, and we'll discuss them later in this article.
To IPO or not to IPO. GLG made a big splash when filing for an IPO in October 2021. However, end-March they withdrew the filing and every expert networker is guessing why. VisasQ went public in Tokyo at the start of the pandemic, Capvision is preparing an IPO in Hong Kong, and Alphasights may also be considering it.
So much dough. Expert networks have record amounts of cash at hand, after raising record amounts of venture money in 2021. Some of the more notable fundraises were Third Bridge, Atheneum, and VisasQ’s public fundraising as they acquired Coleman. Get the full list of all expert network financing events here.

Funds raised by expert networks, 2004-2021

New product innovation. While the talk of A.I. in expert networks has been dialed down in recent years, ENs keep investing in tech and new product innovation. The main themes here are:
A. Specialization. Expert networks set up dedicated sector and geo teams, to better serve specific expert audiences and client groups. E.g. FirstThought, Techspert, and Atheneum specialize in healthcare; VisasQ, Six Degrees, Nodes, and NetworksX in Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and Australia respectively. Many expert networks have struggled with retaining employees beyond year 1. I think that a career path to specialization is more fulfilling for expert network employees, than being forever generalist. Becoming a well-connected industry expert yourself improves your work enjoyment, job status and future career prospects. For comparison, large consulting firms like Bain expect people to specialize as they advance in the firm.
B. Improving expert databases and “knowledge graphs”. Acknowledging the limited value of traditional expert databases, some expert networks are enriching expert profiles with more information to improve searchability. Examples here include Third Bridge asking its experts which vendors & clients they’ve had in recent roles, and networks adding experts’ survey replies to their database profiles.
C. Aggregation. Users manage multiple expert networks in one portal. Inex One is the market leader, supporting more than 250 organizations and 25+ expert networks. Three years after launching, our users already include seven of the top-10 strategy consulting firms, Fortune-500, and global private equity firms. They get the benefit of multiple smart expert networks, in one portal, under one contract. Prosapient and Lynk Global are two expert networks that also offer aggregator solutions, although they've struggled with being both player and referee. Besides Inex One, the only other independent aggregator solution is Consverge, launched in 2020.
D. Content libraries. Pioneered by Third Bridge, now also Guidepoint, GLG, Stream and notably Tegus have an attractive proposition, where they interview experts and sell the transcript to multiple clients. Clients are typically charged $10-25k/user, and get access to all transcripts in the library. This offering appeals primarily to public-market investors. The reason? Most public-market analysts track a large number of stocks, meaning every stock is being followed by multiple analysts. Lots of analysts will care about e.g. the recent thoughts of some senior dude at Evolution Gaming. I expect content libraries to depress expert network call volumes and margins in the hedge fund/ asset management segment, as "reading a transcript" replaces some 1-on-1 expert calls.
On the contrary, private equity-owned companies trade just twice per decade at most, and investors (or operators) have more defined investment focuses. Also, most expert interviews cover "hot trends in the market", which evidently doesn't have a long shelf-life. Consequently, content libraries are less attractive to PEs, corporates, and strategy consultants, who instead prefer doing their own expert interviews. Many of these firms use Inex One to build their proprietary content libraries, getting free transcripts of all interviews they do themselves.

What's next for expert networks? My predictions.

Continued growth, driven by underlying growth in the private equity industry and corporate M&A volumes. Additionally, more firms beyond the financial services industry begin to use expert networks for their market research. However, mounting headwinds include geopolitical conflict, interest rates, and regulation. We hear of some decreased deal activity for European private equity and strategy consulting firms. One bellwether might be the number of new IPOs, which in Q1 were down to pre-pandemic levels. Expert networks still post many new jobs, although the numbers plateaued in the last quarter.

Number of job posts at 15 large expert networks, from March 2020-April 2022

At the end of 2022, at least three of the top-10 strategy consulting firms will have implemented an aggregator as the default way to access expert networks. These firms have the most to gain, ranging from getting experts faster, better control of data/ compliance, and simplifying billing.
I think that GLG will transact, whether in the public or private markets. That would be the first major exit for an expert network and a boost of confidence in the industry.
I expect Capvision to go public and, flush with cash, seek to acquire a mid-sized expert network that complements its strong Chinese operations. Capvision mentions (prospectus p152) that they’d be looking at firms in Southeast Asia (excl. China) and the United States with 100k+ experts in their databases. Looking at the expert network market map, relevant candidates might include e.g. Lynk Global, Prosapient, Primary Insight, or even Atheneum.

Lots of excitement in the sector - let's see where this year takes us. We'll revisit this post next year, to see if our predictions were correct. If you want to do your own research - get started here!

Expert networks and lemons

Max Friberg — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 15:10:00 GMT

My college Economics textbook described the lemon problem like this:

In the market for used cars, some cars are premium, while others are scrappy with hidden defects (called "lemons"). If buyers can't see which cars are premium and which are lemons, they won't pay more than an average price for any one car.

This benefits the sellers of lemons, while putting sellers of premium used cars at a disadvantage. In the long run, premium car sellers might leave the market altogether. With only the lemons left, the entire market breaks down.

Expert network lemons

The expert network industry suffers from a classic lemon problem. Expert networks don't know which clients are premium (those who communicate well and book expert calls) and which are lemons (ghosting, not booking calls). Consequently, the premium clients and the lemons get the same average service level. That is suboptimal.

Click to enlarge the image

Premium service for premium clients

The solution to the lemon problem is better information. The new EN Score ("ENS") provides this by showing past activity on the platform.

Your ENS goes up when you're active and do the calls you ask for. The expert networks see that you are a premium client and can therefore commit premium service to your project. It triggers one of my favorite concepts: a virtuous cycle. Clients get ever-better service.

This is a win-win, created by an efficient marketplace.

When life gives you lemons...

Did you get a poor ENS by accident? It can happen to everybody - and we'll help you. The ENS shows expert networks that you are committed to them, as they are committed to you.

Inviting peers to Inex One also shows your commitment to the networks and is a proxy for booking calls. Invite 3 new users to the platform, to get a 10% boost to your ENS.

See your ENS here.

The Expert Network Aggregator

Max Friberg — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:09:00 GMT

Inex One - the Expert Network Aggregator

We coined the term "expert network aggregator" when launching in 2018. Our idea back then was for clients to implement Inex One "onto" their expert networks, whether those firms liked it or not.

Having worked at both client and expert network firms ourselves, we thought an expert network aggregator as a great solution for the industry's woes. Clients agreed and started using Inex One. However, the largest expert networks did not want to collaborate. They turned down their own clients and reverted to an email jambalaya that nobody enjoyed.

Consequently, Inex One evolved. In 2019, we shifted focus from a one-sided "expert network aggregator" to a two-sided marketplace. Today, both clients and expert networks benefit from Inex One, saving hours of time and material costs on each interaction.

Evolving to the Expert Network Marketplace

The result is far better than what we had ever imagined back in 2018. When all parties benefit, the exchange is voluntary, energized and value-adding. Inex One is short for 'Insights Exchange' - that is an efficient platform where independent actors freely exchange insights. The expert network value chain with Inex One is more efficient than the legacy value chain based on emails. Plus, it's more fun to work with expert networks than against them.

Clients win

With Inex One, you have all expert networks in one portal. This improves:

Quality - White-glove service by expert networks specialized on your project topic.
Speed - Good experts faster, by casting a wide net.
Costs - Efficiency gains translate into >40% cost savings for some.
Workflow - Everything is better, trust me. 😏

Expert networks win

Great clients - You get a direct, personal interaction with clients, who are incentivized to be transparent and fair.
Transparency - You can allocate your efforts optimally across all projects, as you get real-time market share data and progress updates.
Costs - Reduce your OpEx with our productivity tools, and focus on your core business, being an excellent expert network.

Investors, strategy and M&A professionals from all over the world use Inex One to access expertise. The many specialized expert networks on Inex One give you great experts fast, and at a compelling price point.

Do you want all expert networks in one platform?
Try it out here.

Our vision, mission and purpose

Max Friberg — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 13:09:00 GMT

Early 2021, the team sat down to nail our mission/vision statements. After 3+ years in business, we all knew roughly what we were doing.
Most of us said something like this:

“Expert networks are great, but also a pain to work with. They’re expensive and opaque. The market is inefficient, which frustrates clients, experts, and employees at the networks.

Inex One will partner with smart expert networks to improve the industry, and the user experience will be amazing.”

That definition was all good, and if you work in finance, “you get it”.

But our target group isn’t just finance and strategy professionals, but also software devs, UX designers and salespeople. We needed something more crisp: a one-liner that we could print on our office wall or pitch in an elevator.

So we learned that mission-vision-statements should go like this:

Our vision, mission and purpose (copy: https://davidburkus.com/2020/05/whats-the-difference-between-vision-mission-and-purpose/)

After some wordsmithing back-and-forth, we arrived at:

Our purpose: To improve the exchange of expertise around the globe.
Our mission: To build an efficient marketplace for expertise.
Our vision: A world without barriers to knowledge, where decisions are informed by humanity's best expertise.

These are in turn represented by goals set by each of our teams: Tech, Sales/CSM, Product and Admin/Operations.

A goal needs a number in it, and it should be bold, like:

“From January to December 2021, we will increase our client Net promoter score (NPS) from very good (40) to world class (70)”
"Referrals and SEO will generate 20 relevant inbound client firms each month”

Six months in, the statements still hold, and we are growing faster than ever. That’s great because it means we are on track to achieve our purpose. Inex One helps the entire expert network industry work better. That’s important because:

Why expert networks matter

Expert networks are brokers of knowledge – all the stuff that is too niche, quirky, timely or contextual for anyone to put it in writing or audio. Expert networks are the Google of niche information, like this:

For a double-click on this graph, check out How consultants and PEs use expert networks (link)

Knowledge is something where more is always better, but it needs help spreading. Our society has some big bad problems that we must solve in the coming decades.

And [more efficient] expert networks help disseminate possible solutions [faster].

Therefore, our mission is to build an efficient marketplace for expertise.

Cool – how’s it going?

Inex One takes out the waste from the expert network value chain. Thanks to this, expert networks operate more efficiently on Inex One, spending less OPEX per revenue unit.

Consequently, expert networks operating on Inex One enjoy a sustainable competitive advantage versus other networks. This translates into efficiency gains for expert networks and cost savings for clients, with some clients saving >40% of expert network cost.

To see it for yourself, sign up here or book a demo.

How do I use expert networks?

Max Friberg — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 16:08:00 GMT

Expert networks give you access to industry experts. Interviewing experts is one of the most effective ways to get deep market insights.

People typically engage expert networks to learn about a new market, product line, or investment opportunity. This article tells you who uses expert networks, and best practices for using them.

Who uses expert networks?

Strategy and leadership teams, when facing a strategic decision.
Private equity teams analyzing an investment opportunity.
Consulting firms doing research for client projects, often due diligences.
Portfolio managers at asset managers and hedge funds, analyzing a stock.
And many others, including teams in marketing, investor access, product development. Speaking with an expert is a versatile way to get insights, fast.

Here's an example:

How strategy professionals use expert networks

Linda, the Strategy manager at Acme Inc. runs a profitable business selling widgets across the US. Acme has an ambitious growth target and considers both M&A and organic growth options. Linda sees two options as particularly attractive:

Establish a sales team in Germany, to sell Acme’s widgets in an entirely new market.
Acquire Virtucon Inc., a Canadian widget supplier.

Linda logs onto Inex One and launches a project. She asks for experts who can help her understand the local markets in both Germany and Canada. The expert networks on Inex One present her with 10 experts each from Germany and Canada. These experts include:

The former CEO and former salespeople at Virtucon and other widget suppliers.
Purchasing managers at widget-buying companies.

All experts come in one list - on Inex One

Not sure what questions to ask the experts? Use our best-practice expert network interview guide – available on Inex One.

Linda schedules interviews with four experts, both in Germany and Canada. The experts have each spent 20+ years in their markets and are happy to share their perspectives. Linda learns about strong Canadian competitors that she wasn’t aware of, and the unexpected dynamics of selling widgets in Europe.

After a full day of interviews, she takes a few days to consider what she has heard. Eventually, she decides to pause the Virtucon idea. She schedules a few more interviews in Germany and – following an impulse – also a few interviews in France and Italy.

Linda discovers that the European markets seem like a good fit for Acme's widgets. She also discovers that a French widget producer is up for sale, being divested from conglomerate LeGrosCo. The company has a well-regarded brand in Europe, but it has lately struggled with employee churn. The regulators stopped a local widget competitor from acquiring it, leaving the company in lack of a direction.

Sensing an opportunity to get a flying start in Europe, Linda begins preparing a deck for Acme’s management...

Use expert networks to get a flying start in your research.

Discover how thousands of professionals use Inex One for expert interviews. Sign up to the platform or book a platform demo.

LinkedIn - a threat to Expert networks?

Max Friberg — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 11:08:00 GMT

Is LinkedIn a threat to expert networks? This question comes up regularly: At times from clients, and surprisingly often when speaking with former GLG executives.

Curiously, our friends at Integrity Research looked into this question already back in 2008. At the time, LinkedIn had some 30 million CVs and struck a deal with DeMatteo for some privileged access. While not much came out of that deal - could this time be different?

During the spring, LinkedIn launched Marketplaces to facilitate gig services (payments) on top of its Profinder service (search and find freelancers). Over the last few years, LinkedIn has hired 30 former expert network professionals from GLG, AlphaSights and Guidepoint. Will the big behemoth try to replace expert networks altogether?

LinkedIn Marketplaces and the 80/20 market

So far, the services offered on LinkedIn Marketplaces are similar to those on other large freelancing sites: pieces of design, copywriting, research or coding that may be provided by a sizeable subset of the population of freelancers. Over time, LinkedIn plans to expand further. The Marketplaces Product Leader says:

Building the vertical marketplace model honed by the UpCounsel team into LinkedIn’s platform and social graph, and then replicating it across 100 different industries […] Of course, one of the verticals we will be developing and broadening is Legal.

When doing so, they will inevitably step further into the territory of large freelancing platforms such as Upwork, Freelancer.com and Fiverr (collectively at ~$1 Bn in 2020 revenues; with a TAM of perhaps >$500 Bn). Will LinkedIn go beyond them?

LinkedIn - the platform company

LinkedIn has about 750 million profiles, a digital treasure trove of career data. As a repository of profiles, LinkedIn has become a platform that other firms build their businesses on. For example, recruitment firms, marketers and salespeople have built businesses that mostly or entirely rely on LinkedIn data.

LinkedIn's growth fundamentally changed how recruiting firms work, just as it did to expert networks. In parallel, it created new business opportunities for itself and for others.

With the addition of Marketplaces, LinkedIn now forward-integrates: it will start doing some of the stuff done by these other businesses. I think they approach it like this:

4 categories of on-demand services

The global on-demand service market is vast and complex. There are innumerable types of services, and billions of potential candidates to perform them. Let's illustrate it with a graph: there are many candidates available to perform more generic services; fewer candidates available for more unique services.

There are fewer candidates available, the more unique service is needed

Furthermore, let's split "on-demand services" into four broad categories:

A. Generic, low-qualified tasks
B. Generic, qualified tasks
C. Complex knowledge services
D. Long-tail knowledge services

The five jobs of a matchmaker

In theory, LinkedIn could try to automate access to all candidates across all service categories. This means it acts as a matchmaker, between employers who need services, and candidates willing to perform them. Sprinkle some jazzy AI on LinkedIn's dataset and you're good to go? Sounds like a cakewalk.

As always, however, the truth lies in the details. Having run an expert network myself, I think there are five broad "jobs" that such a matchmaker should do. Your success as a matchmaker depends on your excellence at each of these jobs. Neither is easy - they require skill and expertise, which sets the good firms apart from the rest. The five jobs are:

Identifying candidates that are most relevant to perform a service.
Vetting candidates to make sure they are indeed willing and able to perform the service.
Ensuring compliance throughout the process.
Ensuring confidentiality throughout the process.
Administering logistics around the service performed and payments for it.

Matching these jobs against the four service categories from above, we get a matrix 🤩. The traffic lights show how difficult it would be to automate the matchmaker-job, for a given service category.

Generic, low-qualified services (e.g. manual web scraping, or Uber Eats), have plenty of candidates, standardized services and straight-forward compliance rules. These services are easy to automate for an automated matchmaker.
Generic, qualified services (e.g. logo design, copywriting), has relatively many candidates and straight-forward services. This is where LinkedIn Marketplaces goes head-on with services like Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Fiverr.
Complex knowledge services (e.g. accounting services, multi-stakeholder strategy projects) and long-tail knowledge services are two steps further on the uniqueness axis. Here, automated matchmakers run into three types of challenges:

Three challenges for automated matchmakers

Long-tail challenges: Finding relevant candidates gets more difficult in the long-tail (finding a needle in a haystack). Automating super-granular matching either requires datasets that don't exist, or risks creating lots of noise from false positives.
Agency challenges: Both compliance and confidentiality are challenging to maintain in an automated platform, once you start dealing in complex services or when there are only a few relevant candidates.
Automation challenge: Service and payment exchange is difficult to automate and get right for complex, multi-stakeholder projects.

Will LinkedIn Marketplaces compete with expert networks?

As in all of my posts, there's an expert network angle. These fascinating companies operate at the cutting edge of the global on-demand knowledge market. LinkedIn may eventually venture into the longer-tail of knowledge services, but I believe it would take ages, if at all.

LinkedIn Marketplaces will be limited for the same reason that other freelance platforms, expert network DIY Marketplaces, or "AI" expert networks do not pose a competitive threat to regular expert networks. The value-added services provided by expert networks are too distinct and specialized to be replaced by DIY services or automation - at least for the foreseeable future.

The automation opportunity in expert networks

While the matchmaking jobs will remain with skilled expert network professionals, that doesn't mean the industry won't change. The way that clients interact with expert networks is inefficient, driving up OpEx for all parties. Inex One's platform solves those challenges, while leaving the matchmaking jobs in the hands of the specialized expert network.

To see Inex One in action, sign up here or contact sales.

-----------------------

For further reading and discussion, I recommend:

The LinkedIn bear case: the great unbundling
The initial Forum post on this topic
How expert networks win in the 2020's

Podcast: Inex One and the expert network ecosystem

Max Friberg — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 09:06:00 GMT

Inex One is featured on the Unleashed podcast by Will Bachman. The Unleashed podcast covers all aspects of the life and workflows of independent consultants, with stories from people in the industry. Unleashed features lots of interesting episodes, almost as an expert network in its own right. We are excited to have been invited to the show!

Listen to the show on the Umbrex site here, or on Spotify.

Key points discussed:

07:13: How Inex One improves the expert network process and experience
15:54: How the idea of Inex One was born
18:39: How the expert network industry is evolving
26:00: Who’s using Inex One

Part 3: How expert networks win in the 2020’s

Max Friberg — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 17:06:00 GMT

Part 3: Resolution.

When the first expert networks started, 20+ years ago, they were knowledge partners to their clients and to their experts. As we saw in part one, LinkedIn eroded the entry barriers to the expert network industry, driving growth – and opportunity for new entrants. Part two describes how the industry grew transactional in the last decade, as expert networks focused on the top PE and consulting clients. Today, large teams of expert network associates do high-level searches across all industries and geographies. They are all a part of:

Our world of knowledge

The global knowledge economy is massive. Expert networks are only beginning to map it out. Of some 8 billion people on Earth, LinkedIn alone has about 800m profiles (10%), while a big expert network like GLG has about 800k profiles (0.01%) in its database.

Expert network size matters - or does it?

Let's double-click the LinkedIn bubble

We can think of the 800m LinkedIn profiles as a sizeable sample of the world’s knowledge workers. To understand them further, let's segment these 800m profiles along two axes: their home country (e.g. Germany) and their job industry (e.g. Telecom). In each intersection of country and industry (e.g. Germany + Telecom), there are experts with unique skillsets. Using high-level LinkedIn data, here’s how global expertise is distributed:

The Global Expertise map - LinkedIn profiles by country and industry.

I make two observations here:

The knowledge economy is incredibly sophisticated and granular (each of these industry tags could easily fit hundreds of specialty areas), and
LinkedIn is heavily skewed towards US and UK profiles, with other large countries being wildly underrepresented. These are two good reasons to use specialized expert networks.

Traditionally, expert networks have been all over, picking a couple thousand people from each of the bubbles pictured. Mathematically, they are barely scratching the surface. In aggregate, this is a reason for the expert network industry's woes.

Jack of all trades - master of none?

With more than 100 expert networks, the industry is getting crowded. However, most clients - myself included when at McK - see no difference between different networks. By sending a request to many expert networks, I would inadvertently optimize for the short-term (access to experts now), but suboptimize for the long-term (access to experts and quality of service in the future). This forces expert networks to become "jacks of all trades", and do a bit in every bubble on the Global Expertise map.

Having 100 expert networks do more or less the same thing drives client indifference, expert fatigue, employee churn and eroding profit margins.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Clients are clearly willing to pay for white-glove service from top-quality expert networks. Expert networks gladly focus on their strong segments of the Global Expertise map. Doing so, the expert network develops an expertise in its own right. It becomes ever better at serving those segments. This lets them evolve into true knowledge partners to their clients, allow employees to become experts in their own right, and build a sustainable economic moat versus other expert networks.

Inex One enables this specialization, by automatically matching client projects with only the expert network teams that are best for their research topic. When fewer but better expert networks are invited, the service quality goes up - increasing the user experience for all parties involved.

Expert networks win as high value-add knowledge partners

The industry goes full circle. Having started out as knowledge partners to their clients, expert networks grew increasingly commoditized in the eyes of the customers. Inex One enables expert networks to specialize, which helps the industry to optimize both short- and long-term. This solves the UX for all parties involved:

Clients: Get better service from true knowledge partners. A specialized expert network becomes your river guide to the industry, helping you advance your research.
When I (Max) was a clueless 20-something in consulting, I found myself emailing with equally clueless 20-somethings at my main expert networks. It was “the blind leading the blind”, as both of us had to learn every new industry at the same time. Access to specialized networks would have saved me many hours in the team room. 😅
Experts: Experts are more likely to enjoy the interaction when engaged by a knowledgeable peer, than when feeling spammed with irrelevant requests. "Protecting the asset", improving UX for experts must be a top priority for the expert network industry.
Expert network employees: Being appreciated as a knowledge partner makes the work more meaningful and gives an opportunity to specialize. Developing into a well-connected industry expert improves your work enjoyment, job status and future career prospects.
Expert network firms: By specializing, expert networks build a sustainable competitive moat, compounding value over time. When your employees become knowledge partners to clients and experts on a part of the Expertise map, you raise entry barriers towards competitors from entering it. Becoming really good at a topic, your operating costs (and employee churn costs) go down, enabling sustainable profits.

The future of professional learning

Inex One collaborates with some of the best expert networks in the world, building tech for an efficient industry. We're only getting started on the journey to improve the expert network industry and professional learning at large.

Do you want to be part of shaping the bright future of the expert network industry? Check out our open positions.
Do you want access to the best expert networks? Sign up as a client here.

Part 2: The expert network industry is broken

Max Friberg — Thu, 27 May 2021 16:05:00 GMT

The entry barriers to the expert network industry have eroded. As we saw in Part 1: The Bright Future of Expert Networks, online databases like LinkedIn, Xing and ResearchGate replaced the old "in-house rolodex". Today, the industry is booming - and fragmenting. In this second part, we look at the effects of this development.

Part 2: Complication

The expert network industry of today is suboptimized for user experience. This is unfortunate for clients, for experts, and for expert networks themselves. Let's dig in to these categories, one by one:

2.1. Clients: “it’s a love-hate relationship”

Most clients have an ambiguous relationship with their expert network providers. While acknowledging expert networks as important suppliers, clients tend to complain about the quality of experts, workflow hassle, and opaque pricing. In addition, consulting firms are getting concerned about some expert networks stepping on their turf.

Clients engage multiple expert networks to cast a wider net. This comes with added admin and coordination costs. Getting lots of emails in reply is a bummer, but even more so...

2.2. Expert fatigue is real

Without the experts, there would be no expert network industry. Experts are the imperative of our industry, but they are typically taken for granted. "Expert fatigue” is the elephant in the room for the expert network industry. Experts who feel spammed by expert networks risk going off the market altogether.

Experts get overloaded by requests in two forms:

Expert networks probing them about too many projects, many of which are not relevant.
Too many different expert networks probing them about projects, each with a new set of T&Cs, trainings, and payment practices.

Recent tweets from experts who felt spammed by expert networks

At Inex One, we think of this as a user experience ("UX") problem. An expert is a user who is willing and able to exchange knowledge for compensation. Unfortunately, she often gets put off by the hurdles and inconveniences involved.

The ideal expert UX is to be thoughtfully engaged by a peer at an expert network focused on your sector, building a relationship and trust over time. The mechanics of the transaction (T&Cs, trainings, conferencing and payments) should work smoothly and as expected. This goes well with the fact that...

2.3. Expert networks can do better for their employees

Expert networks traditionally recruit from the same talent pools as consulting firms, but do they offer the same career opportunities? When reading the expert network Glassdoor reviews, we find a few recurring themes:

Common feedback from expert network employees

There is immense potential here. Expert networks employ great talent, providing an interesting service to interesting clients. But how do we solve the pain points? Can we provide more meaningful work, an environment for employees to thrive, and improve future career prospects? What is the ideal UX for an ambitious expert network employee?

Improving the UX for expert network employees

Let's consider the work of an expert network associate. I've been one myself, and found it quite inefficient and frustrating at times. You have ambitious sales targets, but how to reach them is a bit random, not entirely in your hands. New projects come daily over email, but you cannot prioritize your time between them because:

You do not know how many other expert networks are invited to the same project, and if you got it first - or last.
The client can go schedule all their calls with another network, without you hearing about it.
Worst of all: you can be delivering on a project, only to learn that the client stopped working on it a week ago (but didn't bother to tell you)!

Survival of the fittest

The transactional nature of modern expert networks is bad for clients, for experts, and for employees at the expert network firms. The firms themselves are doing well, but only for as long as the industry keeps growing. Should the industry enter a mature life cycle stage, we might see a race to the bottom also on prices and profits. All of this feels weird for an industry that is so valuable to its clients.

What is the end-game for expert networks? Is there a resilient steady-state for the industry? And if so, how do we get there?

We answer this and more in our next post: Part 3: How expert networks win in the 2020's.

The future of professional learning

Inex One collaborates with some of the best expert networks in the world, building tech for an efficient industry.

Do you want to be part of shaping the bright future of the expert network industry? Check out our open positions.
Do you want access to the best expert networks? Sign up as a client here.

Icons made by Freepik and Pixel perfect from Flaticon.

The bright future of expert networks

Max Friberg — Mon, 17 May 2021 11:05:00 GMT

Expert networks have become commoditized. That is bad for all parties involved: the clients, the experts and the employees at expert network firms. On the flip side, this is a unique chance for networks to become the specialized thought-partners that their clients need and their employees deserve to work at.

In this three-part series, we assess how to optimize for user experience in our industry, improving value for clients, experts and expert networks themselves.

Once upon a time, in a skyscraper far away...

2000s - The first expert networks started out some 20+ years ago, as specialized thought partners to mostly US-based hedge funds. The experts were taken care of as, well, real experts would expect to be treated.
2010s - Over the next decade, expert network usage exploded. Far beyond niche hedge funds, now private equity consulting and corporate strategy teams are using them to access expertise. To keep up, expert networks recruited armies of young graduates to serve as generalist recruiters.
2020s - We cover the expert network industry of today in a three-part series:
- Part 1: Situation. LinkedIn eroded the entry barriers. The industry is booming - and fragmenting.
- Part 2: Complication. The expert network industry is suboptimized for user experience.
- Part 3: Resolution. There’s a way for expert networks to add more value to their clients, while developing defensible moats.

We analyze all components below and share our thoughts on what comes next.

Part 1: Situation

1.1. LinkedIn eroded the value of internal expert databases

Size of GLG's profile database compared with LinkedIn's database

In the early 2000s, the first expert networks built internal databases of experts.
In the 2020s, modern expert networks recruit bespoke experts on the web.
The largest expert networks today (firms like GLG, Guidepoint), have databases of some 800k profiles, accumulated over 20 years. (This means some of those 800k experts were relevant back when people still had flip phones and watched Mission Impossible III in cinemas 🙃).
At the same time, LinkedIn alone has grown to 800 million profiles

This means that the database isn't worth much any longer. As we've seen before, nothing is older than yesterday's news: internal expert databases quickly grow stale, while profiles on the internet stay fresh. That, in turn, explains why...

1.2. The industry is booming - and fragmenting

The expert network industry is booming and fragmenting

The expert network industry is increasingly fragmenting, as new players enter the market with specialized offerings. Since we discussed fragmentation v. consolidation in 2019, the industry fragmentation has continued. This is best illustrated by the >$50m of venture money going into young expert networks, in the last year alone! 🤯

Now, there are apparent risks in flooding the market with expert networks. We cover this and more in the next part of our series, published in the next few weeks.

Part 2: Complication. The expert network industry is suboptimized for user experience.

Part 3: Resolution. There’s a way for expert networks to add more value to their clients, while developing defensible moats.

In the meantime, take a sneak-peek into the future here.

Have expert networks recovered from the Covid pandemic?

Gediminas Goda — Tue, 11 May 2021 11:05:00 GMT

Let me spoil the intrigue immediately: we believe that the expert network industry is back on track - and booming. It is hard to be 100% certain without seeing the newest financials, but expert networks’ hiring trends suggest that the industry has largely recovered after a short-term blow dealt by the Covid pandemic.

Our new hobby: monitoring expert network job ads

What makes us think so? When the pandemic broke out last year, we began tracking the number of job advertisements from 16 large expert network firms, on LinkedIn and careers websites. Check out our findings here:

Expert network job ads: way above the pre-pandemic levels

March 2020 saw an immediate drop in the number of jobs advertised, which continued through July. However, at the end of the summer the hiring seems to have picked up. Today it is back to the pre-pandemic levels (and even seems to have exceeded them!).

How did different expert networks behave?

The changes in hiring patterns during the first wave of the pandemic differed quite a bit across the large expert network firms. GLG's hiring curve has a convex shape. It hit the bottom in the summer months of 2020 and rebounded gradually towards the end of August.

Atheneum's hiring dipped between May and September 2020, but not as dramatically as GLG's. At the beginning of November, Atheneum increased its hiring above the pre-pandemic levels, but reduced it shortly afterwards.

Lynk Global, an up-and-coming Hong Kong-based expert network, appears to have been in a complete hiring freeze until the end of the summer. However, their hiring picked up in relation to their January-21 funding round.

The numbers in aggregate

Clients use Inex One to aggregate insights from multiple smart expert networks. Correspondingly, the aggregate hiring data of multiple expert networks is the best indicator of the industry health. Here are the aggregate job posts from 17 expert networks since the early phase of the pandemic.

Expert network job posts aggregated

An illustration of why the combined picture is better than the isolated: some expert networks were growing healthily without publishing many job posts. A few examples are Dialectica and Techspert (both doubling in size last year), and Capvision (adding 100+ employees).

What does the shape of the expert network hiring curve resemble?

Expert networks earn the major share of their daily bread by supporting PE houses and consulting firms in deals and due diligences. Therefore, it is not unexpected that hiring has been closely following the deal trends (with a lag of approximately 2 months).

Global M&A Market Index in 2020

Data from Factset Flashwire Advisor Quarterly data

The Global M&A Market Index dipped in April-May, before recovering in June. Seeing this rebound in M&A activity and in demand for their services, expert networks went back to the job market seeking new talent.

Today the expert networks are again recruiting healthily. This is a clear sign that expectations about the future of the industry are quite positive. If you've been looking to work for an expert network, now is a good time to make it happen! 😉

Pon the replay

As the expert network industry rebounds, let's make it stable for the long run. A negative (albeit temporary) demand shock called for productivity increases in expert networks, and investors seek efficient remote due diligences. Inex One tech helps great expert networks work efficiently with smart clients.

Get started here!

How Do Expert Networks Manage Compliance?

James Dougherty — Tue, 04 May 2021 15:05:00 GMT

Compliance in the expert network industry

Compliance has been a major focus for expert networks and their clients for 10+ years.
Understanding what is truly important and how to achieve compliance can be a daunting task.
Ultimately, the main requirement of compliance is an error proof process with limited manual review - current processes are mostly manual and prone to errors.
By leveraging software, compliance standards can be scaled across networks, while providing more security than even the most developed compliance processes at large expert networks.

Expert Network Compliance

Expert network compliance has been front and center for firms over the last 10+ years.

Starting in the late 2000’s with high profile insider trading cases - the risks associated with unfettered expert access were laid bare.

Expert networks began expanding internal compliance teams to act as an interface with client compliance teams and implement their controls. An expert network lacking an internal compliance team could be cut off from serving entire client groups - such as hedge funds and mutual funds.

Full fledged compliance programs at the expert networks became a standard and bare minimum requirement to play in the arena.

And of course, networks soon began competing on who had the “best” and most reliable compliance programs. This kicked off a period in which compliance began to take on a mystical quality - a mysterious force that only certain firms can summon the full power of.

What Does Compliance Actually Mean?

Compliance is a very serious matter and deserves buy-in from the highest levels of both clients and expert networks. Although despite the high-minded talk, expert network compliance is quite simple and should not be a mystery.

Here are the key objectives of compliance for pretty much every firm:

Do not access material non-public information (MNPI) that could lead to insider trading.
Do not speak with anyone that has a conflict of interest, or with blacklisted companies/individuals.
Keep a record of all calls and individuals involved - the expert’s signed terms and conditions as well as affirmations that they understand the requirements before a call takes place.
Ensure that an expert is who they say they are.

Above all else, a reliable compliance program requires a standardized process that eliminates the chance of human error or mistakes.

That’s it. There are some outlier situations, but this covers 99% of scenarios.

How Do You Achieve Compliance Standards?

Now the way that firms - especially those trading public equities - protect against this risk is by requiring certain restrictions to be employed during expert recruitment in order for an expert call to take place. Here are the most common ones:

Do not speak to experts currently work at a public company, or have within the last six months - sometimes longer.
Do not speak to experts currently employed by the government or a governmental/regulatory agency.
Do not speak to experts actively involved in clinical trials - or in trials whose results have not yet been released.
Limitations on the # of calls with an individual expert each year - for example maximum of 5 calls with an expert in any given year.

If these rules are followed and the expert’s sign the T&C’s - the risk of a damaging compliance breach is at it’s absolute minimum.

As you can see, it all comes down to execution.

Common expert network compliance rules

What Comes Next?

The biggest risk in compliance is the introduction of manual processes that create the potential for oversights, errors or documentation gaps.

If you are a hedge fund, then you are likely working with 2-5 different expert networks and their compliance teams. Keeping track of the separate compliance processes in email or separate compliance portals across the firms is a pain and requires chasing down and confirming information constantly.

Inex One has seen our hedge fund clients simplify and derisk their compliance process by implementing a single interface solution that enforces a standardization of compliance and a central data node across all their networks.

By employing software that forms to their specific compliance process, all networks comply as part of their standard workflow. Experts' bios, signed terms and conditions and approval history are in ONE place for the hedge fund compliance officer to review and approve in real time.

If any network does not follow the process or skips a step, it is flagged and raised to the compliance officer immediately.

Inex One has fully a customizable compliance software to give teams a real time view of activity - approve calls, audit and drop in on live calls to ensure they are up to standard.

A new era in compliance controls has arrived - reach out to give the tool a try at your firm.

A Tale of Two Consultants (and their adventures in the expert network wonderland)

Gediminas Goda — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 15:04:00 GMT

Miguel and Angelica are associates at a top consulting firm. On a Monday morning, they both start working on new due diligence projects which will involve expert interviews. Miguel and Angelica are colleagues but have different habits when it comes to working with expert networks. Miguel relies on three legacy networks: GJG, LeadPoint and BetaSights. Angelica prefers using Inex One, the Expert Network Marketplace.

Launching the request and inviting the expert networks

Miguel and Angelica have a free moment after their "time-efficient" lunch break 🥪. They sit down at their desks to activate the expert networks.

Miguel writes a project brief and sends it in three separate emails to his account managers at the legacy networks. He realizes that he forgot to include an example company into the brief and sends three more emails with an update. After half an hour Miguel receives three calls from the expert networks – they are all asking the same questions. After the third call, Miguel already wants to take a nap… but (as you might know from experience), consultants usually don’t have time for napping! 🥱

In the meantime, Angelica logs onto the Inex One platform and writes her project brief. Based on the project details, Inex One recommends Angelica the best networks to work with. She publishes the project, and all the networks receive the brief immediately.

Expert network selection on Inex One

Over the platform chat, one expert network asks her to clarify a tricky aspect of the project. Angelica quickly updates the project brief and all the expert networks are notified about it immediately. The search for experts has started, Angelica has time for a quick cup of coffee. She can hear Miguel angrily talking on the phone in his team room. He is explaining it to the third expert network in a row that he is only interested in former employees of focus companies.

Receiving the expert profiles

At 7pm Miguel starts receiving the expert profiles from the legacy networks. He gets three Excel spreadsheets, each with a different format. He is trying to somehow merge them into one spreadsheet to make the expert bios comparable. He emails his Excel origami to Jessica and George, his team members. They both add comments and send the spreadsheet back to Miguel. Miguel slaps himself in the face and starts merging the comments, when all of a sudden LeadPoint sends him an updated spreadsheet, where half of their experts have changed...

Angelica receives the experts from all the networks in one dashboard on Inex One. She can easily compare the bios, flag duplicates, add priority ratings and comments.

List of published expert profiles on Inex One

She invites her teammates Xi and Abhijeet to collaborate on the project. They comment directly on the expert bios, group the duplicates, and download a list with all the expert profiles which they will present to their client tomorrow. It’s 8:30pm and Angelica calls her boyfriend to tell him that they can have a late dinner together. He says he would get their favourite Vietnamese take-away and meet her at home at 9 o’clock.🥡

Miguel sighs loudly and opens Uber Eats on his iPhone…📱

Scheduling the calls

By Tuesday afternoon, both Miguel and Angelica have selected the experts they would like to interview. Miguel emails all the three networks and asks them to schedule calls with the experts. He told GJG that he would like to schedule a call with a former VP at Rio Punto but then realized that this expert was in fact provided by BetaSights. A few more emails follow to fix this mess. One network calls him to ask if they could schedule a call for 3pm on Thursday. Miguel says yes, but then notices that a client meeting just got scheduled for that time. He calls the network and reschedules. Miguel starts developing a certain antipathy towards his work phone 😐.

Angelica goes onto Inex One and requests calls with the experts her team has selected. She provides her availabilities for the upcoming days and sees whether they overlap with expert availabilities. The expert networks quickly schedule the calls for the times when Angelica’s and experts’ free time slots overlap. Angelica and her team receive standardized system-generated invites for all the calls 📅.

Interview scheduling on Inex One

Post-call adventures

By Friday, both Miguel and Angelica are done with their expert calls. Miguel is now chasing the expert networks to get call transcripts. One of them is providing the transcripts for free but the other two ask for a supplementary fee. Miguel agrees to pay but now one of the account managers is not getting back to Miguel with the transcripts. Miguel’s colleagues start getting ready for afterwork beers 🍺, but Miguel is still stuck at his desk dialing the phone numbers of the different networks. The firm has also received three different invoices for expert calls in Miguel’s project and Miguel must now review them all.

Angelica is already on her way to the pub together with her team. Inex One provides transcripts automatically right after the call, so she didn’t have to worry about those. Even though Angelica had engaged several expert networks, she gets one consolidated invoice from Inex One with the internal billing code details, allowing the accounting department to process it without bothering her.

Transcripts on Inex One

Two hours later Miguel finally joins Angelica and the other colleagues at the pub. Exhausted, he gets a gin tonic at the bar and grabs a chair next to Angelica. He asks her what her secret is when it comes to managing all the hassle related to the expert networks. She smiles secretively and recommends Miguel to try out Inex One on his next project to find it out for himself 😉.

Want to be like Angelica? Get started with Inex One!

Choose expert networks

Max Friberg — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 09:03:00 GMT

Clients struggle to choose expert networks. They get "a new expert network every week" reaching out to offer their services. There are now more than 100 expert networks in the world. How should you know which one to use?

Inex One helps you select the best expert network for your project. The Inex One project wizard automatically suggests the best expert networks, based on their industry specialization, location, and past projects.

We've automated how to compare expert networks. When you launch a project on Inex One, our algorithm matches your project to the most relevant expert networks. This ensures that you get the best possible service, from specialized expert networks.

Expert network recommendation engine, with fictive logos

How do I choose expert networks?

The best expert network depends on the focus of your research. When we asked 120+ consultants and investment professionals, they pointed to Dialectica as being the best expert network in general terms. We now take it one step further. We find that the best expert network depends on your research topic. As you switch between topics, different expert networks will meet your needs best.

My personal experience (i.e. how not do do it)

When I was a consultant, my GLG account manager used to send me a huge dump of semi-relevant experts. It felt like she had "downloaded half the internet", leaving me to figure out which ones were the best fit. This was clearly suboptimal.

I was a fairly clueless 20-something, getting "help" from an equally clueless 20-something. It was the blind leading the blind, as we fumbled our way across different projects in different industries.

So much better if my expert network on each case was instead a true thought-partner, helping me avoid spending time & money on irrelevant calls.

There's an app for that

With Inex One, you can access all the specialized expert networks in one place. Manage the entire workflow from project start to scheduling and automated transcripts.

Expert dashboard on Inex One

For example, Candour Energy focuses on Energy & industrials, IDR on Healthcare/ Life Sciences, whereas SixDegrees specializes geographically in China. Work with them all in one place - on Inex One.

Access specialized expert networks on Inex One

The secret behind great transcripts

Josefine Vinberg — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 16:11:00 GMT

“I don’t use transcripts that much, the quality is always bad and it’s difficult to make sense of them”. This comment came up in a client conversation recently, and it’s not the first time I hear it. I pushed a bit, and the client elaborated. “There’s always so much noise in the raw transcript, stuff that’s not relevant to the topic. I usually just rely on my notes.”

Transcribed expert calls can be extremely powerful. Knowing that a call is recorded and transcribed gives you the chance to focus on the conversation with the expert instead of note taking.

Transcribing calls is also a great way of safeguarding and sharing knowledge internally within your firm. The project that you’re working on now might later become relevant to one of your colleagues. Studying transcripts from past calls is a great way to kick off the research process, and can save your firm a lot of time and money.

But why are automated transcripts often so difficult to make sense of? Do you really need to pay for an expensive service that “fixes” the transcript for you? Well, luckily, there’s a lot you can do yourself to improve the quality.

1. Get rid of the echo

For the best sound quality, conduct the call in a sound booth or silent room. This might sound obvious, but a surprisingly large number of expert calls are conducted in noisy environments. The best place to record audio is in a small room with textiles (carpet, curtains etc). The textiles swallow harsh sounds and reduce echo.

2. Slow down

Simple but efficient. If you go slower and make sure to articulate every word it will be easier for the computer to figure out what you’re saying. As a bonus, the expert is more likely to understand you, and you reduce the risk of misunderstandings and having to repeat yourself.

3. Avoid interrupting

An expert call is as much a conversation as it is an interview. Treating it as a conversation is a good way to make the expert feel comfortable, but it’s not ideal for the purpose of transcription. A lot of the “noise” that the client described in our conversation is actually sounds we make to keep a conversation going, like “hrm”, “ah”, and “ok”. The problem is that each time you make these humming sounds, the transcription engine will treat it as a sound track and transcribe it. This doesn’t only create unnecessary noise, it will also interrupt the expert in the transcript.

4. Use the web link

Are you like most people, prone to sticking to old habits? The next time you join an expert call from an office or another location with strong and stable wifi, try joining through the web link instead of dialing in from your phone. You’d be surprised by the sound quality. Another advantage is that by joining with the web link you can easily mute your microphone when you don’t speak, reducing the frequency of the “hrm”, “ah”, and “ok”.

Are you curious about how you can use transcripts to improve your research process? Inex One offers free transcripts with every call, and a Knowledge Management Platform with a searchable transcript library. Get in touch or sign up here!

Inex One launches Advisory Board

Max Friberg — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 11:09:00 GMT

Today we announce the launch of the Inex One Advisory Board. The advisory board consists of four senior leaders in their respective industries. It acts as a strategic committee to Inex One on business development, compliance and product innovation.

The advisory board members are:

Anders Fahlander - Former Senior Partner and Global Head of Technology Sector at BCG, San Francisco (board chair)
Cornelia Andersson - Former Senior VP, Global Head of Research and Market Data at Blackstone, London
Sara Dillon - Former Chief Research Officer, VP Global Research at General Atlantic, New York
John Woyton - Former Partner and leader of the TMT sector team at Advent International, London

The board members represent the main client groups of expert network services, including consulting, private equity and asset management.

“I am honored to welcome these highly respected and experienced individuals to the Inex One advisory board,” says Max Friberg, CEO of Inex One. “They join Inex One at an exciting time as we continue our global expansion. Each advisory board member brings a unique perspective and a deep knowledge about this industry, and they will provide valuable guidance to help us on our mission to make expert calls better, smoother, and more efficient”.

Recruited based on their extensive experience in their respective field, the advisory board members will complement Inex One’s Board of Directors, led by Johan Lundgren (Advisory Partner at Bain & Company), and Peter Hovstadius (Head of Innovation Office at Novartis Nordics).

The Inex One Advisory board: Anders Fahlander, Cornelia Andersson, Sara Dillon, and John Woyton

About Inex One

Inex One makes the expert network industry efficient. Our digital platform streamlines the workflow between strategy and investment professionals and expert networks around the globe. Join the mission to make expert calls better, smoother and more efficient.

Research on the Horizon

Max Friberg — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 12:08:00 GMT

Investors pour money into expert networks to get insights. However, they often end up speaking with the same set of experts through a few “plain vanilla” expert networks. These investors risk to limit their own perspectives and get info no different from their competitors.

Instead, a growing set of investors use Inex One to access specialized expert networks. They get unique insights – far beyond what their competitors do.

A similar approach is used in astronomy: the Event Horizon Telescope is a combination of major global telescopes. Combined, these telescopes collect data that they couldn't get separately.

It's about who you know

Expert networks have been around for two decades. The first expert networks built their own databases of experts that they would introduce clients to. This proved lucrative: once recruited, each expert could be introduced to multiple clients. GLG has built the largest such database of 700,000 experts, over more than two decades.

However, in recent years its database has been dwarfed by the growth of those publicly available. For example, LinkedIn now counts almost 700 million users, growing quickly.

Nothing is older than yesterday's news

GLG has been around for 20 years, which means that some of its 700,000 profiles are no longer relevant as experts. Data ages quickly and most experts are just relevant for 2-5 years (the "sweet spot" between an expiring non-compete and having too outdated information).

Conversely, LinkedIn profiles are kept accurate and fresh by the users themselves. This shows the most relevant expert today, not who used to be relevant for your research.

Need insight? Go above and beyond.

So how do you access the most relevant experts? You work with the most relevant expert networks.

This is the reason we built Inex One: a one-stop-shop for expert network services. You use it to access the expert networks specialized on the topics that you care about.

Are you researching healthcare/ life sciences? We partner with three expert network firms focused on this covering all parts of the globe. Care about TMT? We have the right firms for you. Because in a world of abundant data, the right expert can make all the difference.

Ready to launch?

Inex One has no subscription fees or hidden fees. You pay only for calls made. Get started here.

References/ photo credit:

ESO/O. Furtak - https://www.eso.org/public/images/ann17015a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57580702

ESO/S. Guisard - http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1217a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24729315

Expert networks and Covid-19

Max Friberg — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 10:04:00 GMT

How are expert networks affected?

The coronavirus pandemic is a shock for individuals, workplaces and communities. After a historic bull market, global equity markets are down 20-30% in a month, and the threat of a recession looms. Here’s what Covid-19 could mean to expert networks:

Demand-side shock, particularly for networks focused on Consulting and Corporate clients.
Reduced hiring among expert networks.
Increased competition on remaining projects.
Increased focus on productivity within expert networks.

Expert networks and demand-side shocks

Expert Networks are high-end service providers. Their clients come in five broad categories: Banks and asset managers, Corporates, Private equity firms, Hedge funds and Strategy consulting firms.

Although each segment reacts differently to the current conditions, there are three broad themes:

Private equity firms refocus on saving their portfolio companies, reducing time spent assessing new deals. The US’ initial relief schemes excluded most PE portfolio companies. This means more relief funding work for the PE owners.
Hedge funds (in particular credit and special situations) are busy assessing opportunities in the volatile markets. Both hedge funds and other asset managers will reassess long-term theses and strategies.
Consulting firms reduce their spend on expert networks drastically. This is driven by a general cost-focus, and a drop in corporate M&A and private equity deal volumes. Most corporates and banks also limit external spending (pharma/life science corporates being an exception).

Expert networks primarily serve the financial sector. See detail in our article on the expert network market size.

Consequently, expert networks are affected differently, based on which client segments they serve. Expert networks highly dependent on consulting firms (e.g. Alphasights, Dialectica and Prosapient) will likely see a steeper demand drop than firms more focused on hedge funds/ asset managers (e.g. Coleman, Primary Insight, Ridgetop and Silverlight).

Illustrating a demand drop for expert network services. We assume supply is constant in the short term.

How can expert networks respond?

Expert networks have eight main levers to pull, to improve their operating profit (pictured below). The demand-side shock hits project volume. It makes revenue-side levers less potent, as current and prospective clients seek to reduce their expenses rather than increasing them. Correspondingly, the cost-side levers are more relevant to act on.

The expert network value driver tree, showing the development of expert networks and Covid-19

Looking closely at the cost levers:

Variable costs: Expert fees (COGS) and Variable salaries (bonuses) drop automatically as fewer calls take place. This acts as a cushion, reducing total costs when business volumes are down, offsetting part of the reduction in operating profit. Interestingly, expert networks with a high share of prepaid contracts (as opposed to pay-as-you-go) might see their operating profit increase in the short term. Their revenues remain fixed in the short term while expert fees and variable salaries drop.
Fixed costs in expert networks are mostly base salaries and offices. Many expert networks froze new recruitment at the onset of the crisis. Some have even had to let go of employees.
Improving productivity means working more efficiently and generating more business per employee. In the short term, productivity is likely to decrease as people adapt to working from home, or due to illness. In the medium- to long-term, here’s a golden opportunity for our industry.

Improving productivity

Reduced project volumes cause increased competition on the remaining projects. Understanding where to focus your time and resources is critical to success, for both small and large expert network firms. You only have so many hours in a day – how should you allocate them?

When we speak with expert network staff, their most common pain point is not knowing which projects they should prioritize. The Inex One project analytics is part of our ambition to improve productivity in our industry. Optional to switch on for clients, it gives expert networks transparency on the projects they work on. Networks can thus allocate their time to the most important and valuable projects. This reduces wasted efforts and improves the likelihood of arranging expert calls. Increased productivity for expert networks means improved service quality for their clients.

Inex One project analytics screenshot

For example – an expert network manager receiving a project email from a client doesn’t know if she’s the first to receive it, or if the project has already been running for weeks. Most likely, other networks were invited, but it’s hard to know if there are 2, 4 or 8 others.

The Inex One project analytics improves productivity in the expert network industry, to the benefit of both clients and expert networks. Due to the impact of Covid-19, Inex One is offering an extended 90-day free trial for clients. Sign in here or contact sales.

This piece is written in collaboration with Tyrone Croome-Carroll, a former Vice President and leader at AlphaSights APAC.

Do you work in an expert network, or have some market insight to share? Please contact Max here.

Efficient remote due diligences

Max Friberg — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:04:00 GMT

Working from home can be tricky. If you are a deal team using expert networks, you may now access Inex One for free. No more emailing of spreadsheets of experts, swamped inboxes or offline call notes. Streamline your team’s primary research in one platform.

Work efficiently with expert networks using Inex One.

What is Inex One?

One platform for all your expert network interactions:

Collaborate with your team and manage all expert networks in one place.
No more emails; Review and schedule experts from multiple networks in one dashboard, one format.
Share call transcripts and notes with colleagues.

What is included in the offer?

Use Inex One free of system fees for 3 months (April-June 2020). Manage your existing expert network interactions, or access the many expert networks already available on the platform. You pay only the per-call fees per expert interaction, as shown in the platform.

How does Inex One improve my workflow?

Access the best experts, faster.
Minimize the admin and coordination hassle around expert networks.
Reduce total costs for expert networks.
Collaborate on call notes and transcripts in one secure dashboard.

Ready to get started? Sign up here, or contact sales.

Collaborate with your team, manage all expert networks in one place.

Inex One – The efficient way for (remote) teams to collaborate on expert calls

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 21:03:00 GMT

The new normal

As the coronavirus spreads across the world, more and more companies advise their employees to work from home. In North America, tech giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon have encouraged remote work, while others have gone one step further, and closed down entire offices.

And it’s not only the tech companies that prepare their pandemic response. At JPMorgan Chase, 10% of employees were asked to work from home for a day to test the company’s remote access capabilities. Global banks like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp and Danske Bank are dividing their sales and trading workers, sending some people to back-up locations to create social distancing between employees. At the global consulting firm BCG, consultants at client sites have been asked not to travel to BCG offices or in some cases pick a “home base” and only work from that location.

For many companies, the sudden urge to promote remote work goes beyond societal responsibility and the concern of employees’ wellbeing, and also aims at upholding productivity. Just the thought of having a pandemic virus spread freely across the workforce is enough for the most stubborn skeptic to reconsider prejudices around remote work.

Remote work brings new challenges

A majority of tech companies have a cloud based infrastructure and already give their employees the freedom to work remotely, so for these companies the transition should not be too cumbersome. For companies in more traditional industries such as finance and consulting, readjusting to telecommuting can become a challenge. Not only are employees not used to working remotely, but there are also other operational challenges.

Many of these firms use on-premise software and apps, some installed on local servers and others hosted on the cloud. The most common way to access these on-premise networks externally is through a VPN (virtual private network).

With a VPN connection, it’s possible for team members working remotely to route their online activity through a server that connects them directly into their company’s network. Unfortunately the granularity and specificity of such access is often far too coarse, and unless these systems are configured meticulously and monitored carefully, VPNs risk granting much too broad and unintended access. As a consequence, this risks exposing sensitive data and increase vulnerabilities. VPNs were made with traditional on-premises security in mind, and not designed for mobile devices, and fully remote teams with varying privileges and access rights.

The other challenge is around information sharing. Email is one of the least secure means of communication in today’s digital world, and despite that it’s widely used to send confidential information and file attachments.

The business case for working with cloud based solutions is strong. The data remains on the cloud, and is not stored on the local device. There’s also evidence that cloud computing can enable innovation, reduce operating costs, increase agility and reduce time to market for new products.

Smarter collaboration, increased productivity

Inex One is a platform and marketplace that connects businesses with the world’s best expert networks. Our cloud based solution makes it easier than ever before to collaborate with your team around expert calls, wherever you are. Teams can use the built in chat to communicate with expert networks, and smart collaborative features to make the selection process of experts more efficient. Administrators and research managers can access usage analytics and build a database with internal knowledge. With Inex One, you have a central place for all files, messages and information, all while being protected by enterprise-grade security.

Mitigation efforts like social distancing through remote work are important to fight the coronavirus. They help reduce the risk of spreading the virus, and will contribute to flatten the coronavirus curve. Protecting vulnerable high-risk groups and reducing the caseload for a healthcare system under increased strain is everyone’s shared responsibility. Thanks to the internet, many of us are fortunate to be able to work remotely. And with smart collaborative tools, your teams can stay productive without compromising security.

Get in touch here if you want to know more about how Inex One can help your (remote) team collaborate on expert calls. We’d love to hear from you.

Stay safe,

The team at Inex One

Photo by Patchanu Noree from Burst

Forbes article on Inex One

Max Friberg — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:02:00 GMT

Inex One is a SaaS tool used by leading investment firms, to access and manage expert networks. As part of our mission, we bring transparency to the expert network industry. Our work on the expert network industry was recently covered by Forbes: The Global Expert Network Business is Growing Fast: Meet Inex One

See our piece on the total expert network market here, or contact sales to start using Inex One.

Expert networks reinvented

Max Friberg — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 09:11:00 GMT

Confessions of a finance consultant

When I was in business school, I focused on the math-heavy courses. However, during my time in strategy consulting, we applied just as many of the concepts from marketing. I recently revisited a few of them. As it turns out, the best concepts are the simplest, anchored in real life. In particular three marketing concepts are relevant to the expert network industry.

1. Marketing myopia

The concept was first published by Theodore Levitt in a 1960 HBR article. I quote freely from Wikipedia below:

Firms do better if they concentrate on meeting <u>customers’ needs</u> rather than on selling products. The Myopic cultures would pave the way for a firm to fail, due to the short-sighted mindset and illusion that a firm is in a so-called ‘growth industry’. This belief leads to complacency and a loss of sight of what customers want. These firms focus more on the original product and refuse to adapt directly to the needs of the customers.

A Facit räknemaskin, a common example of marketing myopia.

A classic example is the Swedish company Facit which in the 1970’s focused on ever-better “räknemaskiner“. Facit eventually got totally whopped by the Japanese pocket calculators, who met the need to calculate stuff better. (The curious should check out this 70-page deck – it’s quite entertaining!)

For years, the largest expert network firms have focused on selling hours on the phone. Still, as a customer I was astonished at how unhelpful many large expert networks were. This included everything from emailing expert profiles to charging for missed calls, extra hours and clunky survey solutions.

Now, the <u>customer need</u> is really getting access to insights. Inex One creates access to insights at low transaction costs.

Because the customer is king.

2. Transaction costs

Skiing on grass – another high-friction business.

Of the many academic angles to transaction costs, I prefer the simplest: the friction involved in an exchange. Transaction costs are a hindrance to free exchange and prevent resources from being allocated where they could be most useful. Consequently, lowering transaction costs enables more people to exchange.

A marketplace is the archetype for lowering transaction costs. Both customers and sellers benefit from the transparency that it creates, and the total market size gets bigger.

There are three inherent transaction costs in the traditional expert network model, which we described in this article. Inex One resolves these costs, enabling all parties to transact better. Consequently, Inex One makes the total market pie grow, and makes global knowledge better allocated.

Because the world needs more well-informed decisions.

3. The industry life cycle

Beautiful in its simplicity, this model plots four phases of any industry’s evolution. Initially coined by Mr. Levitt in 1965, it goes like this:

In the early days, volumes and profits are low.
The growth phase sees volumes pick up drastically.
As you reach maturity, both volumes and profits stabilize.
In the eventual decline, both volumes and profits drop, as new industries better meet the needs of customers.

The industry life cycle model. Expert networks reinvented through Inex One could lead to a new wave of growth.

Today, the expert network industry is emerging from a decade-long growth phase, entering maturity. Now, two things could happen: (a) cut-throat competition intensifies until all profits evaporate, or (b) the industry reinvents itself and enters a new growth phase.

Expert networks reinvented

To summarize, let’s take what we know about marketing myopia, transaction costs and industry life cycles. The expert network industry should focus on what the customer needs: access to insights at low transaction costs, to catch the next wave of customer-friendly growth. This might well include reaching new uses and new users, who are currently excluded due to high transaction costs.

Inex One provides the marketplace for a better expert network industry – expert networks reinvented. This is beneficial to both customers and the expert networks that deliver top quality. Consequently, we may see the emergence of a handful generalist expert networks, or multiple specialized ones – whichever solution best meets the customers’ needs.

More than 100 expert networks

Max Friberg — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 17:11:00 GMT

In cooperation with Integrity Research, Inex One identified more than 100 expert networks around the globe. 110 expert networks are active, and an additional 29 are inactive.

There are expert networks on six continents, ranging from generalists to highly specialized firms. In a previous article, we discussed whether the expert network industry would see more specialization or consolidation. Since then, we’ve seen expert networks both starting and shutting down – but the net growth is distinct.

Read the full article on Integrity Research, or check out individual firms in the Expert Network Directory.

More than 100 expert networks generating >$1.3 Bn

>100 expert networks and $1.3B sales

Counting all the expert networks is a first step to sizing the market. The expert network market size surpassed $1.3 Bn in 2019, much of it coming from new market entrants with innovative delivery models.

Inex One celebrates high-performing expert networks. We expect high-performing networks to thrive in the years going forward, as both competitive pressure and volumes increase.

Leading firms use Inex One to access specialized expertise from multiple networks. Contact us to learn how.

How GDPR Data Subject Access Requests can become a nightmare for clients of expert calls

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 15:10:00 GMT

Legal disclaimer: All information in this article is general information only. It is not intended to constitute legal advice, nor is it intended to address your specific requirements. Organizations should take independent legal advice regarding their own provisions for data protection.

Imagine that an expert in one of your past projects sends an email asking to get access to all the personal data that your organization holds on her. A much dreaded Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) under GDPR.

That doesn’t sound too bad, one might think*.* Well, think again. Personal data under GDPR is much more than just name, address and phone number. In fact, it’s any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. Information such as work history, biography and biometric information all classify as personal data, even if the person’s name has been removed from the record.

As soon as you download an excel file with expert profiles, add comments to it or email it to your colleagues, your company will become a data controller of that data. And as a data controller, your company is required to respond to DSAR:s from individuals within one month of receipt.

The DSAR process
In order to respond to the DSAR within the given timeframe, you need to have a structured workflow in place. Preparation is key, and organizations that are ready and aware of what steps that need to be taken will save a lot of time and resources.

Identity verification
The first thing you need to do when you receive a DSAR is to verify the identity of the requestor, making sure that the individual behind the claim is really the person he or she claims to be. This can be done in several ways, for example by requesting a copy of the requestor’s ID.

Data identification
The next step is to identify which data that is covered by the DSAR. At this stage, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

Which information is requested, all information that mentions the individuals, or only certain records?
Are all of the requested files readily available?
Where are they available? Emails, databases, cloud storage, hard drives, local storage, removable media, hard copies, phone recordings?
What departments and/or personnel have access to these sources?
Do we have backups? Who in the team might have a local backup?
Are any of the documents classified or intellectual property of the company?

Collection
The collection phase encompasses gathering all of the potential sources within scope into one central repository. The IT department will play a significant role in the collection exercise, but they will need cooperation from other departments and personnel. All steps and decisions made should be documented, as they may be required if the completeness of the DSAR is queried by the requestor or the authorities.

Handover
Once the data is collected, the next step is to review it and eventually hand it over to the requestor. Some of the things that you need to take into account in this step are:

Who is responsible for reviewing the data before it is sent over?
Does the review team have an adequate level of knowledge in the privacy domain?
Who will make the final decisions on privileged or confidential documents?

How Inex One can support your DSAR process
Inex One allows you to manage all your expert network contacts within one platform. You can review expert profiles, add internal team notes, and schedule calls, all without having to download one single spreadsheet. All data is processed within a closed and encrypted ecosystem, meeting the highest international standards.

In case of a DSAR, the Inex One Information Security Team is there to give you the support you need to identify and collect the requestor’s personal data. A DSAR can cause significant costs and administrative burdens on an organization. Having a structured plan and smart technology in place will help significantly, and reduce the risk of non-compliance. Contact us to learn more.

Inex One makes it easier to manage DSAR requests

*The GDPR impacts organizations in the EU/EEA, and any organization that processes data of EU residents (such as holding personal data of an individual engaged in an expert call).

SOC 2 – a different ball game

Max Friberg — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 10:09:00 GMT

Inex One has passed a SOC 2 audit. A gold standard in SaaS information security, SOC 2 has been a major focus for our company over the last months. The SOC 2 certification confirms our ongoing commitment to protecting our customers’ data so that they can focus on their businesses.

The Champions League of IT Security

Our clients are investment firms, consultancies and banks – information security is at the top of their agenda.

Traditionally, clients have sent emails to expert networks. Those emails contain confidential information on investment targets.

In return, clients get emails and spreadsheets with expert profiles. Some networks offer websites where you can view experts, creating an “Alt-tab nightmare” in the words of one PE investor. Client confidential data and expert personal data end up across multiple devices, files and platforms. In addition, each expert network stores your confidential data on its systems, which may or may not be secure.

Information security and data privacy is more important than ever. Are you comfortable with emailing confidential data? After all, your investment research is among the most sensitive information in your organization. Clients using Inex One have all their data in one secure dashboard. This is efficient and helps protect your organization’s goals, just like Oliver Kahn or Hope Solo would do.

Why SOC 2 matters

Information security and data privacy is more important than ever. Over the last year, hackers have compromised hotels, medical research firms, Facebook and even entire countries. In addition, legislators are sharpening privacy laws, encouraged by big tech firms like Microsoft and Apple. Fines are stacking up both in the US and in Europe.

Professional organizations that handle confidential or sensitive data are taking note. Already in 2017, some 55% of private equity limited partners (LPs) expected a serious cyber attack on their firm in the next five years. GPs that we’ve spoken to mention cybersecurity being increasingly in focus when raising new funds. The Inex One EMS secures one of your key sources of information – your expert networks.

The Inex One Expert Management System Successfully Completes a SOC 2 Audit

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:08:00 GMT

Inex One has successfully completed a SOC 2 audit. A gold standard in SaaS information security, the SOC 2 certification confirms our ongoing commitment to protect our customers’ data, so that they can focus on their core businesses.

Read the press release here or contact us here.

Advice for experts in expert networks

Max Friberg — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 03:07:00 GMT

We've had some great conversations with experts who sought our opinion on the expert network industry. We combined our best replies in this article, to share with a wider audience. It offers advice for experts in expert networks, and concludes with an introduction to the role of Inex One.

There are about 120 expert networks globally in 2021. These include GLG, Third Bridge, Alphasights, Atheneum, Guidepoint, Capvision, Coleman and VisasQ and many more. You can be part of multiple networks at the same time.

How to join an expert network

As a general rule, the expert networks will find you. After all, it's their job. But you can help them to find you, by getting familiar and comfortable with the concept of expert networks, and making yourself seen.

Some expert networks also offer you to sign up directly to them. Check out the Expert Network Directory for the complete list.

Advice for experts in expert networks

1. Identify your expertise

There are innumerable reasons to why a client wants to do an expert call. Most commonly, however, they want to assess the state and development of an industry. This includes assessing the value chain of suppliers/customers, and competitors in each.

Think through what insights/ experiences you have from different companies' products/services. Have you evaluated them as a customer, or competed with them as a salesperson? What brand names in your industry are you familiar with? Most people don't consider themselves "experts" of something before getting recruited by an expert network. However, any work experience can count as expertise for the right client.

2. Make yourself seen

Once you have identified your main areas of expertise, make yourself seen. Update your profile on professional networking sites (e.g. Xing, LinkedIn, Maimai and Viadeo) with an informative description of what you did.

Describe what type of widgets you worked with or evaluated, what regions you covered, and what tools you have used. Write content-rich descriptions of your experiences, mentioning brands and keywords. However, be conscious to not mention anything confidential.

3. Think through compliance boundaries

Your interviewers tend to have strict compliance requirements, often working for the world's most prominent financial services firms. They cannot use sensitive or confidential information. Furthermore, hearing something confidential may prompt them to quit the call without notice. Sharing confidential information can have very negative effects on many stakeholders. As a general rule, you should err on the side of caution and rather not disclose borderline information.

Identify what information you may share and what is off-limits.
Read and adhere to the compliance terms that expert networks ask you to sign.
If in doubt of whether the information shared is confidential, pause to think. Raise your concerns with the client or simply hang up. Most serious expert networks - including all networks in the Approved Network Program - have a dedicated compliance person that you should alert.

4. Choose an appropriate compensation

The compensations vary greatly between different projects. It depends on the scarcity of your expertise and the urgency of the project, among other things.

Multiple sources indicate that compensation levels vary from $0 to $800 per hour of phone call. Some experts choose not to charge anything for their time, since they just enjoy the conversation. Others can take significantly higher compensation. Most experts seem to charge between $100 to $500 per hour (Quora, Cadence Translate and Quora again).

Choose an appropriate rate (a high rate might lead to fewer expert calls), and remember that it's easy to change down the line.

Additional resources for experts

Below is a selection of the most helpful resources from different parts of the web. If you have further suggestions, let us know!

What is an expert network?- An introduction to expert networks and who they serve.
How do expert networks operate? - A description of different expert network business models, and the firms employing them.
The Beginner's Guide to Due Diligence - An introduction to the investment due diligence process. Although written for professional translators, it's a great overview for any reader.
How do consultants and investors use expert networks? - Insights from the users of expert networks (the type of people you'll end up speaking with).
From Michelin stars to Burger joints - our interview with Ian Wood, a seasoned expert.
The Expert Network Directory - Our overview of all expert networks in the world, complete with comments on their history and business models.
A step-by-step guide to more business - How to get more business as an expert.

The role of Inex One - improving the expert network industry

Inex One is not an expert network, but a marketplace and aggregator. We cannot connect you as an expert directly with a client. Instead, we provide the infrastructure for clients to work more efficiently with expert networks. This means that you cannot register your profile with us or promote yourself to clients on our system. But you may register as an expert centrally with us, and be made available to our expert network partners.
Please use this form to register your professional expertise: https://forms.gle/NcvgM5xkJjzaHjiA6

Inex One will store your data for the purpose of expert engagements. This information may be shared with Inex One clients and partners, for the designated purpose, and you may be contacted by Inex One or any of our partners. Registering is not a guarantee to get any projects.

Inex One improves the expert network industry for all parties. We saw that the expert network industry was inefficient and opaque and decided to do something about it. Because of these inefficiencies, clients are paying high costs and make fewer expert calls than they could have.

Inex One improves communication between expert networks and their clients. Since this reduces inefficiencies and costs, it's good for all parties and allows more expert calls to take place. As a result, more well-informed decisions can be made across the globe (and this makes us excited!).

Expert Network Usage Survey 2019

Max Friberg — Tue, 28 May 2019 11:05:00 GMT

In January 2019, we asked major investment and consulting firms how they use expert networks. The questions covered how companies procure expert network services, how their usage develops, how they pay for calls, and how they handle GDPR compliance.

We now make parts of the findings available to a wider audience, in the Expert Network Usage Survey 2019.

We will run additional surveys later in the coming years. If your firm wants to take part in the next edition – and access pricing benchmarks – let us know.

New eBook – GDPR for the investment research industry

Max Friberg — Wed, 15 May 2019 17:05:00 GMT

25 May 2019 marks the first anniversary for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This had extensive impacts on the investment research industry.

Whereas many firms have robust processes in place for recruitment, sales and marketing, fewer have addressed more niche cases of processing personal data, such as expert network usage. This applies also to firms in which processing expert data is at the core of their business models: Expert networks identify different responsibilities (e.g. Guidepoint considers itself a Data Processor; GLG considers itself a Data Controller when processing the expert’s personal data), and a majority of users had not yet defined their own role when we surveyed them in January 2019.

Inex One is committed to supporting an efficient and secure knowledge economy. To drive awareness and understanding of the GDPR for the investment research industry, we publish our perspectives in this eBook. Welcome to download it here.

3 predictions for the future of expert networks

Max Friberg — Mon, 06 May 2019 17:05:00 GMT

The future of expert networks contains efficiency, transparency and lower transaction costs.

The Economist has long been one of my favorite reads, with its globalist mindset and quirky British humor. I recently revisited one of its most memorable pieces, on how shipping containers turbocharged international trade.

The key concept is this: A standardization of the means of trade improved trade efficiency and reduced transaction costs. All parties emerged as winners.

A ship full of insights

Just like containers were a catalyst to trade in goods, Inex One facilitates the exchange of expert knowledge.

The expert network industry, for all its benefits, is still constrained by high transaction costs. Roughly 75% of the value is captured by the middlemen; just a quarter by the expert. It involves much manual, repetitive work for analysts, while data integrity and GDPR are rising concerns.

Such transaction costs impede the industry’s growth and keeps it from reaching its full potential. Ultimately, it means that expert knowledge that could have been exchanged is not, and that decisions are made based on less insight than they could have been.

Speeding ahead.

The future of expert networks is efficient

Inex One offers SaaS solutions to clients and to expert networks. The Expert Management System (EMS) helps parties transact in an efficient, transparent and secure dataroom. This creates three attractive outcomes for the future of expert networks:

The cost of an expert call will come down, as transparency puts downward pressure on the middlemen’s margins.
The volume of expert calls will increase, generating more business for strong experts. Larger volumes offsets the lower margins for expert networks.
High-quality networks will thrive, as their superior service is quantified and shown. This may mean a few global networks, or multiple specialist networks.

If you are a user of expert networks, you can try the EMS here. If you run or consider starting an expert network, contact us to hear about our solutions for you.

Footnote: The biggest shipping company by far is Maersk, from Denmark. I find it curious that the country that gave the world LEGO bricks also excels in stacking containers. I guess that’s what they call ‘constructive play’!

History of expert networks – the only Constant thing is Change

Max Friberg — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 10:04:00 GMT

‘Expert networks’ is probably the most impactful industry that most people have never heard of. Here’s the history of expert networks, how they started and what will happen next. This is the first in a 3-part series on expert networks and their economics.

An expert network is typically working on behalf of an investment firm. It finds industry experts that the investment firm can discuss M&A deals and strategic opportunities with. When the expert network sources experts to a project, it presents only the most relevant ones to their client.

NB: This funnel for sourcing experts was introduced back in Nov-18.

Expert networks scour the web for relevant experts, screening hundreds of profiles for each request. They try to get as many experts as possible through the funnel and onto the phone with their client.

The history of expert networks

The history of expert networks starts in the late 1990’s. Most people at the time collected their contacts in a Rolodex (pictured). Expert networks built the biggest Rolodexes in town and were thereby very valuable to their clients. Here’s their value proposition in 1997:

Value of expert networks: High

Uniqueness of internal database: Medium

Fast-forward to 2007, when expert networks had built databases of 100,000+ expert profiles. They still mostly recruited experts at industry fairs and via referrals. Their databases were unique and proprietary, which meant networks could charge their clients a mark-up of 3-4 times what they paid to experts. Economists call these excess profits “economic rent” (we will examine that closer in the next part of this series).

The history of expert networks has seen a large share of economic rent being fairly stable over time

Value of expert networks: High

Uniqueness of internal database: High

Over the next decade, LinkedIn grew rapidly. This enabled a new generation of expert networks that focused on custom-recruiting experts for each new project.

Today, the largest networks boast 600,000 experts in their internal databases, but most of those experts were recruited years ago. In comparison, LinkedIn has 1000x as many profiles, which are regularly updated by the users themselves.

Expert networks have remained very valuable to analysts. The big difference is they no longer derive this value from internal databases, but from having smart associates who are good at custom-recruiting experts on the internet.

Value of expert networks: High

Uniqueness of internal database: Low

The “Alt-tab nightmare”

Now, the expert network sourcing funnel has remained the same. An expert network associate is still limited to screening a few hundred experts for each project. This means that adding more associates means the client will receive more unique experts.

Clients have figured this out: the average firm now has 4 expert networks on contract, to make them compete against each other (some have as many as 15!). Each of these networks supplies experts and project updates in a stream of emails and phone calls.

For clients, this means that one of the analysts must compile experts into a consolidated list. That person updates and distributes the latest list with the team every other day. This work includes a lot of switching between browser tabs, a bit of Copy+Paste, manual formatting, and answering the same questions multiple times. One PE investor called this the “Alt-tab nightmare”.

Because of this administrative hassle, the average Private Equity analyst uses just 2 expert networks, which effectively cuts the yield of experts and service time by 50%. In addition, the analyst and her firm lack a proper overview of the costs for the expert calls.

“No wonder expert calls always run over budget.”

– MBB consulting partner

The future of expert networks – there’s an app for that

Inex One offers the solution to these challenges: a single dashboard to manage all expert networks and experts. The entire team have real-time overview of experts and costs, and keep their confidential/ sensitive data secure. And all that usage data gets shared with Compliance and Research managers, to help them protect the firm and analyze its service providers.

Rocking the boat

Interviewing experts is as valuable as ever: when global value chains extend and specialize, so does the need to explain them clearly. The expert network industry is growing at a healthy 15–20%, and maintains mouthwatering 60–80% gross profit margins. This is despite no longer having the unique databases that historically motivated such margins.

When Inex One began pointing this out in early 2018, this was a contrarian view. Most users agreed that dealing with expert networks is cumbersome, but only a few had started to question the established paradigm (the idea that expert network value is derived from an internal database of experts).

Be the change

Great investors tend to develop contrarian views. They see opportunities and trends before others do. If you use expert networks today, you can act on this insight and bring efficiency and savings to your firm. Ask your networks to support your transition to an efficient workflow. Try out the Expert Management System today.

Unlocking value: Expert networks in corporate M&A, by David (ex-BCG, ex-McKinsey)

Max Friberg — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 10:03:00 GMT

– “We’ve bought 200+ companies since our foundation 25 years ago. Last year it was close to 20.”

In his role as Director of Strategy and Business Development at ASSA ABLOY, David Elofsson oversees strategy & new growth opportunities around the globe.

– “We use expert networks to gain deep market insights fast”, says David.

In his previous roles at BCG and McKinsey, David led projects with hundreds of expert calls. As an industry professional, he sees DD reports from consulting and research firms, but rarely the underlying data.

“Deal sourcing for an industrial player differs from that of an industry-agnostic PE player: we know our industry in and out. We’d never need to do the same volumes of expert calls, since we know the industry and have many experts in-house. Having said that, I still see a clear benefit in adding perspectives from customers across markets, and from former competitors in markets where we are not yet operating. We also look for growth opportunities in adjacent industries, where external perspectives can really add value to what we have in-house.”

ASSA ABLOY is a global leader in door opening solutions.

David contrasts the use of expert networks in the industry, to how consulting firms use them:

“The big consulting or investment firms use multiple expert networks and will definitely benefit from using Inex One. I think the main benefit for them is to save time and get a better selection of experts. Project leaders will also be happy to see the overview of all experts in one place.“

At Inex One, we speak to many corporates that use expert networks. Some rely on one sole expert network to serve all their needs. They are typically locked into expensive prepaid contracts, with poor firm-wide oversight of the usage. In contrast, we met with one major German firm that was using 5 different networks across different parts of their business, each one locally procured(!).

The Inex One EMS offers a single dashboard to manage multiple specialized expert networks. This means access to more relevant experts, without losing oversight of costs and usage. Contact us for a trial.

Previous posts in this series:

Demystifying AI for expert networks

Max Friberg — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 10:02:00 GMT

I didn’t notice anything strange about the email. Written in a colloquial tone, it even mentioned Inex One and my job title at the company. The sender, Robin, was a sales person from Qualifier.ai, promising me smart tools for reaching new customers. Charmed by the personal, friendly tone and curious about their technology, I agreed to a meeting, conveniently scheduled through Robin’s automated calendar.

It wasn’t until a few days later, when I greeted Robin for our meeting that it dawned on me: he had used his own software to get to this meeting. He probably didn’t even do much other than show up, since his bots handled both lead generation, emailing and scheduling. Robin didn’t need to do much more – he “got me at hello” and left with a promise of a paid trial. Genius.

Genius. Or is it?

Our exchange helped further my insight into the expert networks applying AI or machine learning to expert sourcing (if you want a short overview of different business models for expert networks, see this article).

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a handful of these “machine-driven” expert networks establish, claiming high growth and efficient operations. In the Expert Network Directory, we list all that we come across. As of Feb 2019, the five are Techspert, NewtonX, Chime Advisors, ProSapient and Monocl. They have together raised more than $7 million of VC funding, so they should be on to something. To understand what this something is, let’s revisit the funnel originally shown back in November.

Expert Networks sift through large numbers of expert profiles and try to get as many as possible through the funnel and on the phone with their client. A human might screen a few hundred profiles for a request, before she gets tired or distracted. Now let’s say this human lives in the 1990’s when a state-of-the-art CRM looked like this:

Screenshot of ‘Anatomy of a Scene ‘, American Psycho/The New York Times

Let’s say you collect 10,000 business cards, by meeting four interesting persons each day for seven years. Your Rolodex would be loaded, but from a population of 6 bn potential experts, it’s still a very small (and rather biased) sample.

Yes, this beast is a desktop computer running on Windows XP.

Fast-forward to 2007, when GLG raised $200 million to monetize their computerized rolodex. Their associates could wiz through an internal database that contained more than 175,000 expert profiles. At the time, GLG recruited experts through referrals and at industry fairs, as told by a senior expert in this interview.

2007 happens to be the year that LinkedIn turned profitable. Another decade onwards, its growth allowed firms like AlphaSights, Third Bridge, Atheneum, Dialectica and Guidepoint to outcompete GLG by focusing strictly on custom recruiting over the Internet.

The funnel presented above remains the same for all years, since there is always a need to double-check relevance, availability, compliance, and the expert’s interest in doing a call with the client. It is instead what goes into the funnel that changes:

The Available Universe of Experts

In the past millennium, the available universe was limited (S). It grew significantly when digitized (M) and significantly more when experts were sourced on the open web (L). Logging onto LinkedIn, Xing etc., the analyst meets a random sample of potential experts, and then runs queries to generate her gross list of the most relevant ones.

Now, what is interesting about the machine-driven expert networks is the potential to run queries in multiple databases in parallel (XL). Instead of having an analyst manually search for it, an “AI” could theoretically compile a gross list of the most relevant experts, according to certain criteria. The analyst would then apply her human intelligence to this list, selecting which experts to proceed with. If this machine-generated gross list is any better than random, the expected value and relevance of presented experts is higher. It’s beautiful in theory.

A side note
When I co-founded the expert network Previro, we planned to be machine-driven. We never did, however, partially due to new personal data legislation (see our GDPR series) and the unclear lawfulness of scraping proprietary databases. The other reason, I must admit, was that I hadn’t yet banded with my 1337 colleagues Mehdi and Filip.

The beautiful machine

Let’s now go one step further and answer a few questions:

Are Machine-driven better than regular expert networks?
If yes, then what is the source of this advantage?
By the way, what is AI and machine learning, really?

We will approach these questions one by one, starting from the bottom:

Question 1: What is AI and machine learning?

This segment has been fact-checked by AI expert Björn Hovstadius, co-Director at RISE Artificial Intelligence, board member of the Big Value Data Association, co-founder of SaaS platform Pagero, and an investor in Inex One.

These two terms are often used interchangeably, although they are quite different. Machine Learning is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI), specifically aimed at optimizing algorithms for prediction (regression), classification, clustering or anomaly detection. Improving capacity for data storage and computation allows data analysts to train their algorithms on ever larger data sets, thus developing them further.

There are numerous business applications for these algorithms, but here’s a simple example: predicting whether a person can configure a home Wi-Fi or not.

The data analyst will need two things to start

A dataset: Let’s assume we download LinkedIn’s data
A few success cases to “train on”: We highlight 100 persons in the dataset, who are all great at configuring Wi-Fi’s.

We’ll then run the algorithm on our dataset, asking it to identify common attributes among the Wi-Fi masters, and suggest similar profiles. So far, it’s all simple regression: Machine learning is the concept of adding a feedback loop, to tell the algorithm when its predictions are correct or incorrect. This allows the machine to update its algorithms dynamically.

Side note: great pieces on AI and ML:
– A bit more technical: Using ML to predict the quality of wines
– Most common ML algorithms: A tour of the top 10 algos for ML newbies
– A really cool example of generalization error, from the quants at Quantopian who backtested 888 trading strategies

The richer the data your algorithm can train on, the more accurate your algorithms will be when applied to new cases. If your training data is limited, you are exposed to the common “generalization error” where the algorithm simply hasn’t learned what factors really correlate with success (in our case, Wi-Fi skills).

Artificial intelligence is the overarching concept of having machines that can act in ways that match human intelligence. In that sense, the concept of AI is elusive: my cell phone can perform calculations that required human brains only a few decades ago; however today, no one would claim that it has artificial intelligence.

Most AI companies are thus in fact applying statistical methods with a feedback loop, i.e. different types of machine learning (ML), so I’ll use the latter term going forward. It’s not magic, but still pretty interesting.

Question 2: What is the source of advantage for machine-driven networks?

Since ML businesses are about applying regression models to data, there are two things that can make them successful:

Great data that is rich and proprietary
Great algorithms that are proprietary and trained on rich data

Great Data: rich and proprietary

Great datasets are rich in content. Think of an excel spreadsheet with multiple rows that each have multiple attributes registered in the columns. Whereas Rolodexes were limited, today’s professional career databases are very rich. Figure out how to copy them all and combine them, and you will have a great dataset – especially if you can resolve duplicates and overlaps.

Here is a first problem: how do you obtain this data? Companies like LinkedIn make a living off of selling access to tranches of their data*, they don’t want you to just take it all (see Terms or this court case). These machine-driven expert networks seem to have found a workaround. NewtonX and ProSapient didn’t reply when asked about the details, but their privacy policies (all retrieved 5 feb 2019) make it clear that they do some crawling/scraping of multiple databases, giving them rich data:

“We may collect or obtain your Personal Data that you manifestly choose to make public, including via social media (e.g., we may collect information from your social media or business networking profile(s)).” – NewtonX Privacy Policy
“It will also crawl other public sources of information about you to further learn about your background […] sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU.” – ProSapient Privacy Policy
“[…] through publicly available sources including: Professional social media and networking sites; Corporate websites; Academic journals; Clinical trial websites; Research laboratory websites; and Other online sources.” – Techspert Privacy Policy

That takes us to the second attribute of great data: whether it is proprietary or not. Scraping other companies’ databases does not lead to a proprietary dataset. Although the combination of multiple scraped datasets could lead to a richer final dataset, your ownership of it is likely questioned. Also, GDPR will be a challenge.

Great Algorithms: proprietary and trained on rich data

If you manage to obtain a rich dataset, you’re well underway to create a great algorithm. Today there are many DIY tools where you plug in your data and target variable and get back the attributes with the highest correlation as an output. Over time and multiple iterations, you should establish certain formulae that are generally applicable. For example, your algorithm might say that experts knowledgeable about Wi-Fi tend to have the following attributes:

Age: <45 years
Education: Technical diploma
Interests: Video games
Keywords: “Wi-Fi”, “Router”

This can be cool, especially if your data is very rich and contains many success cases, where your client confirms that “indeed, this person is great at Wi-Fi configuration”. Such success cases are also most likely proprietary, making your algorithms more unique and proprietary.

I’ll summarize the above in a matrix:

If I were to start a new machine-driven expert network today, here is what I will get:

If I were to instead use the database of one of the larger expert networks as training data, I would get:

Now this is interesting, and leads to an obvious recommendation to Atheneum, Third Bridge, GLG, Guidepoint, AlphaSights, Capvision and Coleman: Hire a couple data scientists to work on the data you have lawfully collected. This is your database of experts matched to client projects, and clients’ feedback on the calls. Some networks claim to have databases of 500,000 experts. It’s only 0.1% of the total profiles on LinkedIn, but it is a good start – it’s proprietary (experts have given consent), and client feedback gives you valuable “success cases”.

Qualifier.ai registered their company only 12 months before selling their solution to me, so it cannot be too hard with the right people onboard.

Now back to our question: What is the source of advantage for machine-driven networks? The answer is: none, unless you can lawfully obtain great data, in which case you still need “success” cases to train your algorithms on. This also answers the final question: Are machine-driven networks better?

Business is great for Robin at Qualifier.ai, since his algorithm is pretty simple and effective. His business works even with broad attributes – meaning he would have found me and other relevant leads with something like this:

Title: “CEO” or “Sales Manager”
Company: “Any”
Country: “Sweden”

These attributes are tangible and easy to optimize for. Also, LinkedIn makes this data available on Google for most profiles, so Robin isn’t breaking any user agreement. Now try to find the expert at assessing the industrial vacuum cleaner market in India, as discussed here. This is significantly more differentiated, unstructured, and difficult to train an algorithm on.

Search engines v. feedback loops
When I showed this article to our CTO Mehdi, he pointed out the difference between a good search engine and ML with feedback loops.

– A good search engine is capable of natural language processing (meaning it adjusts for the fact that some people use “hoover” instead of “vacuum cleaner”). This is available plug-and-play from e.g. https://www.algolia.com/
– A good feedback loop requires frequent replications of similar queries. When Google guesses what kind of display ads might be relevant to you, they do so because they have an amazing feedback loop. It’s the millions of people actually clicking the ad or not – that’s the success data that the machine is “learning” from.

For a machine-driven expert network, the “learning” part would be either:
– whether the analyst got interested in a profile or not
– whether the client got interested in the profile afterwards (a bit harder to collect)

Both events are comparably infrequent, and each client project is somewhat unique (it’s subject matter experts, after all). This makes it difficult to collect helpful success cases to learn from – especially if you go after every geography and industry niche at the same time.

So, it’s all good for Robin – but is it Game Over for machine-driven networks?

Not at all, there is ample space for specializing. In recent years, the expert network industry has seen a boom, with high growth for both incumbents and new entrants (see article). A year ago, we initially raised the question about fragmentation versus consolidation. Since then, we’ve found specialized networks such as Candour in the energy sector, visasQ for Japan, Bioexpert Network for biotech, and – curiously – CognitionX for AI topics.

Inex One believes that this development is good. Specialization will lead to more efficient and faster identification of relevant experts, reducing transaction costs caused by inefficient operations. Specialized networks can thrive by developing rich, proprietary databases and algorithms in their respective niches, where they are unbeatable. Inex One facilitates the match-making between these specialized networks and the organizations who seek their services.

Click here to try Inex One for your organization.

PS. Do look out for my automated emails over the coming weeks. If you receive one and tell it apart from a “human email”, you’ll get 3 months free usage of Inex One.

Footnotes:

* That is what LinkedIn does when charging $800/year for Sales Navigator, which is popular among headhunters and expert networks.

Robin is a fictive name

Why using email to send confidential information is a bad idea

Max Friberg — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:01:00 GMT

Email is widely used by clients to communicate with expert networks, and by expert networks to communicate with experts. Ironically, it’s also one of the least secure means of communication in today’s digital world. It compares to sending a postcard – basically anyone along the way who’s interested can read the contents of a message.

Emails go through several intermediaries: Emails are not as direct as they might come across. On its way to the recipient, an email will pass through multiple servers, including the ISPs involved, with copies of the emails stored at each server.
You can’t affect how long the recipient stores the information: According to GDPR and other privacy legislations, personal data in emails should not be saved longer than necessary. But even if you have processes in place to follow the principles of storage limitation, you will never know how long the recipient saves the email for (or for how long third party servers will save copies of it).
You have no control of which security measures the recipient takes: You might be cautious enough to use an email program that supports encryption, but that caution is wasted if your recipient uses a non-secure service.
The human factor: Haven’t we all accidentally replied all, included the wrong attachment or sent an email to the wrong person? The human factor is well worth considering when deciding which steps to take to protect sensitive information. Once an email is sent it can not be changed or taken back.

So what has this to do with Inex One? Inex One is an Expert Management System used by clients to manage expert networks and expert calls. We replace the need of using an email program to communicate with expert networks, and the need of using spreadsheets to compile and administer expert profiles. Inex One’s product suite was built according to the principles of Privacy by Design, and the security and privacy of our clients’ data are our highest priority.

Part 3: Which role does Inex One take in the processing of expert personal data?

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 09:01:00 GMT

This blog post is written for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, and should not be used as such.

In our previous blog posts on GDPR and expert calls, we have looked at the roles and responsibilities of the expert networks and clients when processing expert personal data. To recap, we landed in that when processing expert personal data in relation to expert calls, the expert is a data subject, and the expert network and the client act as separate and independent data controllers.

But the supply chain is rarely this clean. What happens if one or several of the parties engage with a data processor? Which responsibilities do data processors have, and to which extent is the controller responsible for the processing performed by its processors?

Most expert networks use some sort of Recruitment Management System in which they handle expert profiles. Email is used as the primary tool for communication between the expert network and the expert, as well as between the expert network and the client. The client team often compiles expert profiles in an excel sheet to distribute to colleagues in the internal team. All of these services ‘process personal data on behalf of the controller’ and hence act as data processors.

Inex One replaces the need of using an email program to communicate with expert networks, and the need of using MS Excel or other softwares to compile and administer expert profiles. We act as a data processor in relation to both the expert network and the client, just as an email program or a Recruitment Management System.

A data processor has several responsibilities to the data controller that it’s acting on behalf of.

Amongst other things, it should:

– only act on behalf of, and as instructed by, the data controller.

– implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in such a manner that processing will meet the requirements of the GDPR and ensure the protection of the rights of the data subject.

– not engage another processor (sub-processor) without prior authorisation of the controller.

The processing performed by a data processor shall be governed by a contract that sets out the subject-matter and duration of the processing, the nature and purpose of the processing, the type of personal data and categories of data subjects and the obligations and rights of the controller. Such a contract is referred to as a Data Processing Agreement (DPA). The DPA is part of Inex One’s legal documentation for clients and partners.

How can Inex One support clients in their GDPR Compliance efforts?

As a data controller, the client has several responsibilities towards the data subject whose personal data it’s processing. One of them is to follow the principle about storage limitation. A data controller should not store personal data “longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed”. In practice this means that when a project has ended and the expert data is not needed anymore, it should be deleted or anonymised. And this is not only true for directly identifiable personal data like name and phone number, but also indirectly identifiable data like career history.

Most clients today find it hard to live up to this requirement. The way that the sourcing of experts is handled, personal data quickly spreads from email servers to excel sheets, and then on to notepads, word documents and other systems. Even if there are internal processes in place around how to handle personal data, they are not always followed by individual employees whose focus is on the project.

Inex One was built according to the principles of privacy by design, and has a built-in functionality for storage limitation. We automatically anonymise any personal data related to experts 12 months after a project has ended, or at the client’s request. When using Inex One, there is no need to compile and distribute information about experts in excel sheets to colleagues, or to use email to communicate, instead all data is processed within the closed ecosystem of the platform.

The GDPR has given individuals certain rights to empower them to take control of how their personal data is being processed. It provides individuals with eight different rights, out of which the “right to erasure” or “right to be forgotten” is probably the most well known. Individuals have the right to have their personal data erased if it’s no longer necessary for the purpose it was originally collected or processed for (e.g. when a project has finished), if the original consent is withdrawn, or if you as the data controller are relying on legitimate interest as your basis for processing and the individual objects to the processing.

If a request for erasure is made by an expert to a client that has processed that expert’s personal data, the client has one month to respond and act upon the request. This means that within one month, the client must identify and delete all personal data related to that individual expert in email systems, on hard drives, on local servers, cloud services etc. These kind of requests can easily become an administrative nightmare, as many companies still don’t have appropriate processes and methods in place to identify and delete personal data related to expert calls. With Inex One, this will no longer be a problem. Our strict data retention schedule ensures that you do not hold expert personal data longer than necessary, and if you would receive a request for erasure for data that has not already been anonymised, we have robust processes in place to have it deleted for you.

Do you want to know more about Inex One and how we can support your organization’s GDPR efforts? Read more in our eBook “Conducting Expert Calls under GPDR” or contact us here.

Part 2: Conducting expert calls under GDPR – the responsibilities of the client

Josefine Vinberg — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 14:01:00 GMT

This blog post is written for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, and should not be used as such.

In our first blog post about expert calls and GDPR, we looked at which responsibilities expert networks have when processing personal data related to expert calls. Today we will discuss the role and the responsibilities of the client.

Expert networks generally determine the purposes and means of processing of the expert’s personal data when recruiting individuals for expert calls, and hence act as a Data Controllers (if you need a recap on the definitions under GDPR, please read our first blog post). The expert, on the other hand, is the natural person whose data is being processed, and hence takes the role of a Data Subject.

But where does this leave the client?

From a first look at the definitions, it’s easy to think that the client is just a recipient. But is it true that it’s only the expert network that processes expert data, and that the client merely receives anonymized expert profiles?

Well, reality is a bit more complex than that. As soon as the client accesses the data and starts processing it for its own purposes, it actually becomes a data controller in its own right. Processing is a wide concept under GDPR, and everything from saving a CV on a hard drive to compiling expert profiles in excel sheets counts as processing. So what makes the client a controller and not a processor? Is it fair that the client has the same level of responsibility for its handling of the expert personal data as the expert network does?

Let’s revisit the definitions. A data processor is “a natural or legal person which processes personal data on behalf of the controller”. In order for the client to act as a data processor, it would need to process the data on behalf of and as instructed by the expert network. As soon as the client makes its own decisions regarding the processing, it becomes a data controller. (Theoretically, a client could of course receive a fully anonymized expert profile or conduct a call with the expert without receiving any personal data, and in those cases the processing would not be restricted by the GDPR).

GDPR introduces the concept of joint-controllers, when two controllers jointly determine the purpose of the processing. That is not the case in this situation though: instead the parties act as separate and independent controllers and each party is responsible for its own processing of the data.

So what does this mean in practice? Well, it actually means that the client is bound to the same set of responsibilities as the expert network. Just as the expert network, the client needs to define a legal basis for its processing, as well as set up processes around data retention and storage limitation.

So now we know that the expert is a data subject, and that both the expert network and the client act as data controllers. But where does this leave Inex One? What responsibility do we have for the processing of personal data, and how can we help our clients comply with GDPR? Read more about this in part three of our GDPR blog series, or in our eBook “Conducting Expert Calls under GPDR”.

Part 1: Personal data and expert calls – What’s the state of GDPR compliance for expert networks?

Josefine Vinberg — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:01:00 GMT

This blog post is written for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, and should not be used as such.

Based on a quick search on Google, not a lot has been written on the topic of expert networks and GDPR. In an industry that has been plagued by insider trading scandals, and where robust compliance processes are a primary selling point, this is a bit surprising.

We at Inex One decided to do a bit of digging and look closer at the state of GDPR compliance for expert calls. We will introduce our findings in a series of blog posts throughout January, starting today by looking at expert networks and GDPR.

Part 1: What responsibilities do expert networks have under the GDPR?

We will look at the responsibilities of the expert networks in a minute, but let’s first take a step back and decode some of the definitions under the GDPR (definitions are simplified for the purpose of this article):

Personal data: any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

Data Subject: a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly.

Data Controller: the natural or legal person which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data.

Data Processor: a natural or legal person which processes personal data on behalf of the controller.

Sub-processor: a third party data processor engaged by a processor.

Recipient: a natural or legal person, to which the personal data are disclosed, whether a third party or not (depending on the circumstances, the recipient may also be a controller or processor).

As we’ve already established, not a lot has been written on the topic of GDPR and expert calls. But don’t despair. There’s another closely related industry that can be used as an analogy; headhunting and recruitment. After all, expert networks are acting as headhunting firms, chasing the best candidates for very short job assignments.

When it comes to recruitment, most sources seem to agree; the job candidate is a data subject, and the recruitment firm is a data controller in relation to the processing of the candidate’s personal data.

Is this also true for expert calls? Let’s look at a basic scenario: A client uses an expert network to engage with an expert. For simplicity, all parties are based in the EU. Remember that the definition of personal data is rather broad, and that it includes any information that can be used to identify a natural person, even if it needs to be combined with other data. Career history for example qualifies as personal data, even if a person’s name has been removed from the resumé.

If we map how the personal data related to experts would flow in this scenario, it would look like this:

In this scenario, the expert is the data subject. The expert network determines the purpose and the means of the processing of the personal data, and hence acts as data controller.

The role of the data controller is connected to a list of obligations and responsibilities. We will take a closer look at two of them: legal basis for processing and data storage limitation.

What does ‘legal basis for processing’ mean?

No matter if the expert network is processing personal data in the sourcing stage of a project or after an expert has been contracted, it needs to define a legal basis for each processing activity it’s undertaking. While the GDPR defines six different legal bases that organizations can gather personal data under, consent and legitimate interest are the ones most often discussed in relation to recruitment.

Consent vs. legitimate interest

Consent means that the data subject has agreed to the processing. Under the GDPR, a consent must be freely given, and specific to each processing activity. General consent that covers multiple processing activities or implied consent by pre-ticked boxes are no longer sufficient.

Legitimate interest means that the organization can prove that it has a legitimate interest to perform the processing (except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights of the data subject). Legitimate interest is the most flexible of the legal bases, but it can’t mechanistically be used to motivate just any kind of processing. The expert network needs to be able to demonstrate that it’s using the expert’s personal data in a way that he or she would reasonably expect, and where there is a valid justification for the data being processed.

No matter if the expert network relies on consent, legitimate interest or one of the other legal bases, it should be clearly stated in its privacy statement or privacy policy.

What about when expert networks source experts online?

Anyone who has worked with recruiting experts for expert calls knows that it’s a task performed under constant time pressure. Deadlines are tight, and you want to get to the expert before any of your competitors do. Time pressure combined with the detailed information about individuals’ professional history that’s publicly available online opens up for shortcuts. Every now and then, an expert network will introduce an expert profile to a client before the expert has been contracted. Or the recruiter will come across an interesting profile and save it on a hard drive or in an internal system just in case it becomes relevant later on.

In these cases, the expert network will collect personal data from publicly available sources, but process it for its own purposes. As soon as the processing starts, the expert network gets the status (and responsibilities) of a data controller.

Where personal data have not been obtained directly from the data subject, the controller is responsible to get in touch with the data subject and inform him or her about the processing. The information should contain details about which purposes the data is processed for, the legal basis for the processing, the data retention period, and other relevant information. The expert network must contact the (prospective) expert in a reasonable period after obtaining the personal data, but at the latest within one month.

What does ‘storage limitation’ mean?

A principle under GDPR that clearly affects the expert networks is data retention and storage limitation. GDPR states that data should be stored “no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed”. This means that a data controller cannot motivate that it’s storing data for another purpose than it was first collected for. The principle on storage limitation can be interpreted differently, but it’s clear that databases with hundreds of thousands of candidates can become a liability rather than an asset under the new stricter privacy legislation.

The GDPR also puts an emphasis on data minimisation. Not only should the retention time be kept short, a data controller should also refrain from collecting any data points that are not needed to fulfil the purpose of the processing.

So how well do the expert networks live up to the requirements of the GDPR?

We have looked closely at the privacy documentation of the leading expert networks, and it turns out they interpret the law quite differently. Most of the expert networks identify themselves as data controllers, whereas a few put that responsibility on the expert and reduce their own role to that of a data processor. By doing so they put the expert in a very peculiar position. Very few individuals realise that they by taking the role as data controller let the expert network off the hook when it comes to a lot of the responsibilities related to data processing.

It’s highly doubtful that arrangements in which the expert acts as data controller and the expert network acts as data processor (for the processing of the expert’s personal data) would hold up in a court of law. The legal relationship between two parties is defined by the processing activities that take place, and not by contract.

As a client of expert calls, it’s crucial to work with partners that comply with the GDPR. A data breach or a lawsuit where an expert network is found to misuse personal data can severely damage the brand of its clients. Our general advice is to ask your expert network how they handle the requirements of the GDPR, and which responsibility they take in the processing of expert personal data. Which processes do they have in place to keep expert database up to date, and which legal basis are they relying on when processing personal data?

Hopefully this post has cleared out some of the question marks related to the GDPR and expert networks. In the next part of our blog series, we will look at the role and responsibilities of the client.

Official launch of the Approved Network Program (ANP)

Max Friberg — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:12:00 GMT

This text is part of a press release published on 18 December 2018. Inex One, the global Expert Management System (EMS), today announces the launch of its Approved Network Program (ANP) and for selected expert networks.

The Approved Network Program (ANP) is a partnership program between Inex One and selected expert networks. The program allows clients to access specialized, high-quality experts from multiple networks in different niche industries and geographies, in one digital platform.

The ANP is an extension of the Inex One EMS, launched earlier this year. The EMS is a SaaS platform for procurement and administration of expert network services, allowing clients to manage all of their expert network suppliers within one closed ecosystem. Clients can now work with both their existing vendors, and ANP members, jointly in one place. Clients may also skip their existing vendors altogether, as the ANP members represent expertise from around the globe at attractive rates.

The ANP will further strengthen Inex One’s position as a digital aggregator, providing clients with a wider selection of suppliers, and expert networks with access to new demand. The ANP members get business from clients they did not work with previously, and can thus grow their business.

Over the last decade, expert calls have become a top source of information for investment research. One million calls are estimated to be conducted annually, resulting in a global market size for expert networks of $1bn.

If you are an expert network and would like to join the Approved Network Programme, contact us. If you are looking for expert insights and would like to work with ANP networks, get started here.

Read our primer on Expert Networks here, or see the FAQ about the EMS here.

Read the full press release here.

Avoid biases in expert interviews. Pieter van Eck (ex-ATK)

Max Friberg — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 13:12:00 GMT

Expert interviews are a great source of insights for due diligence and market assessment cases. They give you multiple individual perspectives on an industry, which you combine to superior market insights.

You must however be cautious not to introduce your personal biases in the process, and thereby adversely influencing your findings. During your case, there are four stages in which biases can creep in:

Scoping the project/market definition
Selecting experts
Structuring the interview
Summarizing the findings

By carefully planning each stage and using best practices, you can largely avoid biasing your findings.

Scoping the project/market definition

Sending out the request for experts is one of the first things that you do when starting a consulting project. You typically do not have a detailed view of the project at this stage, so you should allow for a wide industry definition. Share multiple examples of relevant companies and experts’ titles to help guide the expert networks (and make clear whether they should look for other similar companies or only the ones provided). If you do not correctly scope the project for the expert networks, you might end up with unequipped experts who will give you insufficient knowledge and prejudices instead of clear data points and well-founded expert advice.

Selecting experts

The project proceeds and you receive your first experts. Doing multiple expert interviews helps you triangulate the data points. Therefore, make sure to schedule calls with many experts relevant to each of your key questions. Your key questions obviously vary greatly between each case. They could relate to customers’ key buying factors, or sales persons’ thoughts on future sales channel strategies. You should also ensure to add a couple of unconventional interviewees: maybe former employees at an organization ensuring industry standards, regulatory bodies or even industry associations. This way, you are sure to get different perspectives and a holistic overview of the industry.

Structuring the interview

Be aware of the situation and tone of your conversation. You will typically be under time pressure, but you must not fall into the temptation of asking leading questions. You might otherwise push the interviewee to merely confirm your assumptions.

A good solution is to clearly state your objectives with the interview at the start, without presenting any of your data points or assumptions. Expert networks typically don’t charge if you cancel the call within 10 minutes – take that time to assess whether the expert really is knowledgeable! However, make sure that you stay humble and polite during the whole process. A good introduction for a qualified expert could be: “I want to understand the market for X, including its size, development trends as well as the characteristics and behavior of different suppliers and customers within the market. I want to hear your thoughts on this for the first half hour, and then we can spend the remaining time on some specific questions that I have prepared”. Allow the expert to speak freely, but feel free to nudge lightly in case you get clearly off topic.

So for the first part, go semi-structured with open questions. Be attentive to nuances or descriptions that contradict your assumptions and hypotheses and ask follow-ups accordingly. For the second part, run through all the shorter quantitative questions that are needed for your modelling.

After the first few interviews, you can revise your hypotheses, refine your quantitative part, and let it take a larger part of the interview hour.

Summarizing the findings

After you have completed your interviews you will frequently find that you have obtained some opposing views of some experts. In this case, it is crucial to separate the noise from the relevant data points. To form your own opinion, use some of the following procedures: First, check how many experts have stated the opposing view. Is it only one, or is it many? Second, check the profiles of the opposing experts. How many years of industry experience do they have? Who seems the more trustworthy and reliable expert to you? Third, if you are still undecided, call some of your top ranked experts from previous calls and ask them for their view on the issue at hand. This way you make sure that you will have an unbiased and differentiated view at the end of the case!

Why don’t all Expert Networks have the same experts?

Max Friberg — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 05:11:00 GMT

In your office, who is the best at table tennis? At McKinsey Stockholm, this was easy to say (although I managed to beat him every once in a while 😉).

Now that was easy, how about this one: Who is the best at assessing the market size, growth and key purchasing criteria of industrial vacuum cleaners* (“IVCs”) in China, Japan, Germany, the US and India? A bit more difficult.

A quick search on Google shows at least 20 companies selling IVCs in Germany alone (by the name “Industriestaubsauger”). These range from diversified giants such as Bosch and Hitachi to a long tail of specialized IVC and powertools companies such as Einhell, Kärcher and Nilfisk. Just these five companies have in between them ~70,000 alumni registered on LinkedIn. Each of these people may have a great perspective on the IVC market – at least in some geography or function.

As an analyst/manager/director considering an investment in the IVC industry, you wish to understand the market in detail. I listed some common questions below, and matched them to the type of person best placed to answer it.

Example questions and interviewees in a CDD.

Let’s assume that just 5% of the alumni of the IVC companies have relevant and recent experience of the market. Still just looking at these 5 randomly selected companies, we get (70,000 * 5%) = 3,500 potentially highly relevant experts. Then we assume that we have about the same number of experts from customer companies, bringing our total to 7,000 experts.

The needle in the expert network

Now imagine that you are a research associate at an expert network. Fresh out of college, your job is to find experts to your clients. You are staffed on the IVC project and your manager asks you to find 15-20 experts by Thursday. In parallel, you run 4 other projects, so you decide to allocate 2 hours per day to this one. You open a browser tab, type in a few keywords, and you’re off. After screening several hundreds of online profiles, you contact about 100 of them. Over the next few days you follow up with these experts, to explain the benefits of doing an expert call and why they should accept your confidentiality agreement. Thursday comes, and your pipeline looks like this:

Nice job, you made it! You now have 15 relevant experts to present to your client.

But wait a minute. Didn’t we say there were 7,000 relevant experts? You met your target, but isn’t that just 0.2% of the total? How would you know whether you got the best ones?

Stacking up on expert networks

Now you’re the investment analyst again. You were proactive and reached out to four expert networks when you got started on your project. At the end of the week, you now have about 4 x 15 = 60 available, top-rated experts. From your perspective, you’re looking at this:

Now, there is typically an overlap with 20-30% showing up at multiple expert networks, according to our research. The reason is that some experts have significantly better fit for each case than others, and that some experts are more active and visible online than others (making them easier to recruit). So you’re down to 60 * (1 – 25%) = 45 unique and top-rated experts, thanks to you engaging multiple networks.

Inex One helps you turbocharge your expert sourcing. Almost like turning an IVC on the expert market.

However, most users refrain from engaging multiple expert networks, just because it is challenging (we know, because they told us). The Inex One EMS helps you engage as many networks as you like, without any incremental effort. All Q&A from networks is managed in one place, and all experts are compiled in a single list where duplicates are removed automatically. This is almost like turning an industrial vacuum cleaner (IVC) on the expert market itself. This saves your time and helps you to be great at investment research. Contact us to learn more.

Icons made by Flat Icons, Surang and Freepik from Flaticon under Creative Commons 3.0.

* NB: I chose the IVC industry arbitrarily. I have no prior experience in researching it.

The future of expert networks: from Michelin stars to Burger joints?

Max Friberg — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 07:10:00 GMT

Background

If you would seek an expert on expert networks, Ian Wood would be a good starting point. He has worked as an expert for years with multiple networks and seen the evolution of the industry. Here’s his story on the past, present and future of expert networks. It all started in 2004, when a founding member of GLG’s European operations approached him at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress. At the time, Ian was working as an independent consultant to the telecom industry. He got GLG explained to him and agreed to join as an advisor.

Expert networks – the years of plenty

The telecom industry saw major investments and transformational mergers, and Ian’s knowledge was in high demand. Within the first year, he would do 1-2 calls each week and was included in the GLG “Leaders’ Group” of the top 5% of consultants in the network. Things were looking bright, and the pay was good. Ian referred more than 40 other independent consultants to join GLG, being awarded a small referral bonus. Over time, the product range evolved from phone calls to also include meetings, roundtables, workshops and consulting arrangements to write industry reports.

GLG had skilled research managers who were motivated by learning about the industry. They kept in touch with experts also when not scheduling expert calls, and regularly invited the experts to events at their office.

Some fund managers would have standing quarterly 90-minute phone calls with Ian, to get his comments on the Telecom companies’ quarterly reports.

However, first came the 2007 financial crisis, followed by tighter compliance requirements after the incidents in 2010-11. Clients no longer asked to meet face-to-face, and screening discussions prior to each call took significantly longer. Overall, the business volume declined at the same time as new networks entered the space: Coleman Research, AlphaSights, Third Bridge and others.

Increasing competition in recent years

In the old days, they’d tell me it didn’t matter what I charged. Today, many networks seem to be selecting experts primarily based on the price that the expert charges, not on his or her relevance. Now it has become a race to the bottom on cost and quality.

Ian thinks that the expert networks have become “Uberized” in recent years, seeking to sell calls with only minimal interaction between research managers and experts. He mentions how some of the younger networks started off with a more low-cost model than what GLG had traditionally offered. Their success made other networks follow suit: “Now it has become a race to the bottom”, says Ian.

He has seen some networks unilaterally reducing the fees they pay to experts, while also becoming less specific when inviting experts to projects. Ian thinks that such a strategy might work in the short term but be detrimental in the longer term, if it makes the service quality go down.

It seems to me that the expert networks try to operate like a Byron Burger joint, when in fact they should be run as a 2- or 3-star Michelin restaurant.

Can Expert Networks be run like Michelin star restaurants?

But today the client – who expects to get the Michelin-star experience he is paying for – ends up getting a 9-quid burger. On the other end is the expert who does the job for a 9-quid burger, but only gets paid for a 2-quid burger.

There must be a point where people turn around and say that ‘This burger that you’re trying to charge me 20 quid for isn’t even as good as what I can get for 3 quid at McDonalds. They’ll say ‘bye-bye expert networks’. Then someone might turn around and make a real high-quality service, with only the top experts.”

Shaken – but not stirred?

Thinking of the future development, Ian mentions private intelligence firms as an interesting niche.

These private intelligence firms deliver well-researched reports for $200-500k that can be used as a proper investment report. The last one I participated in, we did an afternoon of face-to-face interviews.

He mentions companies such as Kroll and Hakluyt, employing many former senior intelligence officers and writing extensive reports modeled on classic spy dossiers. Their reports are often used within investment research, where they can be particularly valuable to understand the preferences and motives of key individuals (e.g. business leaders or major shareholders).

However, despite the recent issues, Ian still sees great value in the work and the future of expert networks. He continues to do regular expert calls with clients, many of them are recurring each quarter. Knowing the industry inside and out, Ian offers some advice to networks that wish to maintain a high-quality service:

“To some extent, the business model that the expert networks should follow should be that of Egon Zehnder – not that of Manpower, which is too common today. What’s the staff turnover now at these expert networks – 2 years? Employ senior research managers who actually know something about their industry vertical, and let them be thought leaders in their field. Go back to what it says on the tin: ’Expert Networks’, and you will do great.”

My best practices for expert calls. Klas (HBS ’20) from Bain&Company, Hellman & Friedman

Max Friberg — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 06:09:00 GMT

Expert calls have been used a lot at both of my latest employers, in particular during investment research/ due diligence processes. I’ve learned about current industry standards from colleagues in large professional services and investment firms. My comments are hence on industry averages, not on specific processes at individual companies.

Expert calls are used in all kinds of strategy and benchmarking projects, but the heavy usage is within investment research. Investment firms do calls all along the investment funnel: deal sourcing, early outside-in analysis, and the due diligence. Also after making an investment, it is common to do expert calls to benchmark management plans and estimates.

“It is not uncommon to do more than 20 expert calls in a single project, and in many cases much more.”

Expert calls in due diligence – Investment Professionals vs. Consultants

From my experience working within the investment world, both as a consultant and as an investment professional, the bulk of expert calls are used to gain insights into an industry, be it the basics of a complicated process, understanding stakeholder relationships, or benchmarking competing firms.

Investment firms often use expert calls to learn about industries, not necessarily with a specific target company in mind, but more for the purpose of building knowledge and to understand if a sector is interesting to invest in. This process often starts out with a broad range of calls, but quickly narrows down to a few “true experts” in the field, with whom the investment firm sometimes set up longer projects in order to learn as much as possible, with as much depth as possible.

Consultants use expert calls slightly differently during a “Commercial Due Diligence” (CDD), where there is often a target in mind, and clear questions that the investors are looking to answer. This often has to do with pin-pointing industry growth rates, understanding (in detail) competitive advantages and relative positions of firms, as well as other questions that the investment firm needs answered before they are ready to pull the trigger on a deal. Many times this means speaking to a larger number of people, to avoid sample bias and come up with the “true north” answer.

Both as an investor and as a consultant, it is not uncommon to more than 20 expert calls in a single project, and in many cases much more.

My preferences and best practices for expert calls

“I always make sure to use multiple providers, at least three, for every project”

I always make sure to use multiple providers, at least three, for every project. This makes me fairly comfortable that between them, they will find everyone I need to speak to within an industry. Most of the times there will be some overlap in terms of the experts they bring in, but surprisingly little.

The problem with working with multiple networks is that they all have different approaches and back-ends, meaning I have to manually go through the names and resumes of each expert to check for overlap, and I need to create my own methodology for tracking the experts. I often do this through a simple Excel spreadsheet where I note down the name, resume, and which network provided the expert – and once I have contacted an expert or talked to them I make a note of it.

When working with expert networks the one thing I look for is someone who tries to understand the industry, and therefore understands which people are actually important to speak to. The opposite of this, just sending a laundry-list of the experts that are already “in the network”, is one of the more annoying things a network can do, since most of these people are unlikely to be of interest, and I will have to screen them out myself.

The future of expert calls

I think that expert calls will remain a top source of insights for due diligence work, as it is the quickest way to gain a deep understanding of an industry or a process, as an investor you need to understand the business you buy just as well as the people who are working in it. What has surprised me in my career so far, is that very few corporates use expert calls. If I was an incoming CEO, Head of Strategy or Corporate Development, I would immediately reach out to expert networks to learn from people outside of my company, and make sure I am fully on top of the industry. I think that Inex One is a very interesting tool, which will simplify the use of expert networks by reducing the administrative burden, leaving more time to spend speaking to the experts!

Contact the Inex One team here to learn how to make your expert network usage more efficient.

What is the market size, growth and margins of Expert Networks?

Max Friberg — Sun, 23 Sep 2018 18:09:00 GMT

At Inex One, we asked this question and realized that we would have to obtain the answer ourselves. The only reports available are behind paywalls and somewhat outdated. Now, we happen to be fond of investment research, so we took it on as if it were a due diligence project (minus the slide deck!). Let’s break down the question into smaller parts:

1. What is the market size for Expert Networks?

NB: For an updated answer to this, check out our latest expert network market sizing.
The publicly available answer to this is $1 Bn, from a research firm named Integrity Research. Their findings have been quoted many times (e.g. Bloomberg, and Civic), but no one offers details behind that number. Now we did the analysis ourselves, and here are the details:

What is the market size for Expert Networks? Approximately $1Bn in 2016. Green numbers from financial reports. 2020 update: The image shows an excerpt from the dataset we compiled for 2016. Our data has developed a lot in our 2020 market sizing (link).

The analysis requires approximation: most Expert Networks are private and smallish and do not publish detailed financial data. Consequently, we’ve added up financial reports with comparables, calculated CAGR trajectories, and the companies’ press/news statements on growth. As many numbers are approximated, it is reasonable to talk about the sizing with the range of 648-1254 MUSD in revenues for 2016. If the market continues to grow at the historical 20%, even the lower bound would reach the $1 Bn this year.

Sense-checking the $1 Bn

At $1,000 per expert call, that means that approx. 1 million expert calls are being made in a year. That’s 200 calls per year, arranged by each of the 5,000 people supposedly working in expert networks (according to Owler). 200 calls per year means arranging 4/week, or <1 call per workday. Now, everything isn’t calls as expert networks also offer surveys etc., but the $1 Bn market size still feels reasonable.

2. What is the growth of Expert Networks?

Recent growth was 20%. We get to the growth numbers in a way similar to the market sizing, only looking at it over time. The same limitations as above apply, meaning that also many of these numbers are approximate. GLG clearly is the behemoth in the market, and its recent growth numbers are only anecdotal:

– “GLG has grown fast and forecasts that its revenues will rise by 15 per cent this year to $400m” – Financial Times article, June 2016

– “The privately held New York company had revenues of about $500 million in 2017, according to published estimates.”
– Report financed by GLG, May 2018

What is the growth of Expert Networks? Approximately 20% in recent years (when also considering the many recently started networks).

3. What are the profit margins of Expert Networks?

Expert Networks enjoy 70% gross margins. We have access to recent financial reports of Third Bridge and Alphasights. Over the 4-year period 2013-17, Third Bridge’s average gross margin was 73%, and Alphasights’ was 60%, when adjusting for the salary costs (OpEx) that they report as part of their COGS. Put together, these two companies make up ~20% of total market revenue and had a 66% weighted average gross margin in 2013-17 (including the OpEx/COGS adjustment).

Now are these two companies representative of the market? They might be, given the similarity in operating models and services sold. I will leave that for you to assess.

All the other expert networks are either in jurisdictions where reports are not made public (e.g. GLG, Guidepoint), or too small to report their full P&L (e.g. Dialectica and NKP only publish abbreviated reports).

Reported profit margin (not adjusting for AlphaSight’s OpEx/COGS reporting)

So call me maybe

So what do you do when data is scarce? Call an expert. Over the last months, I’ve spoken to about 30 former executives at different expert networks. They collectively indicate that gross profits are rather 70-80%. Because of this, I apply a higher weight to Third Bridge’s reporting, and estimate that industry gross profits are 70% on average.

Now what does this all mean?

Expert networks are successful because they add value to their customers. They offer something tremendously helpful – expertise-on-demand – by setting up telephone conversations between experts and organizations that seek expertise. In many cases, expert networks recruit people that did not even know that they are experts at something.

The Inex One Expert Management System helps organizations capture more of the value on offer, by making it easier for you to work with expert networks.
Interested in a demo? Get started here.

How is it to work in an expert network?

Max Friberg — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 08:09:00 GMT

As part of our guest writer series, Patrik, Marc and Josef describe their experiences of work in an expert network. Patrik worked at Guidepoint during 2015-2016, and currently works at J.P. Morgan. Marc worked at AlphaSights in 2017 and is currently in network technology at Cisco. Josef was responsible for Atheneum’s European Business Development until 2017 and founded the online market research platform market DNA in 2018.

Expert Networks are fantastic! The market is growing rapidly, and customers are generally very happy with the experts that we would help them find. There are two types of customer-facing roles: Salespeople and Researchers. We’ve had experience or exposure to both roles.

Guidepoint has gained many new customers by presenting themselves as the main alternative to GLG.

Salespeople – generating new business

Salespeople visit new customers – typically hedge funds, PE funds and smaller management consulting firms – to pitch the network’s service offering. It is a competitive market, so it is important to get a good personal contact with the customer. In some expert networks the sales department also takes over key account management responsibilities to increase the share of wallet with the most relevant consulting accounts. Customers often request special conditions like a free trial to start using a new expert network. That said, there are also many funds, small consulting firms and corporations that are not yet familiar with expert network services. With these companies, it is important to explain the value proposition in detail and to gain their trust.

Atheneum has grown rapidly among corporate customers. This is a top focus for many networks.

Researchers – the core operations

Researchers or operational staff make up the vast majority of the employees in an expert network. They are the backbone of the organizations, and the direct link between customers and experts. A typical day for a researcher is like this:

Review any new and ongoing projects.
Plan your capacity on the team and decide how to allocate time to each project. The teams are set up towards the different segments of customers; Capital Markets, PE, Consultancies and Enterprise, where the largest accounts have their own team. You typically have 6-10 projects running in parallel, so you need to break down your day in bits.
Follow-up with customers for news on the projects, and with experts that are trying to recruit. This process is crucial in order to give the best customer experience as the project scope and direction often changes daily. The different segments of customers can behave very differently in how they engage in projects, and it is the team manager’s job to maintain a good and close relationship with the customers to find out how they work and better understand exactly what they are looking for.
Recruit experts to your projects and suggest them to the customers.

System search – these are experts already in the expert networks’ database. These are typically easy to convince to participate, since all of their contact data and additional information is saved on the platform and they already signed the relevant compliance documents. Most people start with a system search on new projects. The system search is an incredibly effective tool to quickly deliver relevant experts to the customers. A call between a client and an expert from the system can sometimes be set up within an hour.
Custom recruiting – when you run out of relevant experts in the system, you need to find new ones. Adding new experts is encouraged, and it is frequently part of the compensation structure. It can be quite tedious, though, and take a lot of time. Most expert networks use LinkedIn a lot, but there are many other databases to use. You search for keywords that the customer is interested in (such as companies in their niche, certain titles, and countries), and then send a short message to all those that seem relevant. They will get back to you randomly over the coming two weeks, so the more reach-outs you do, the more likely it is to get someone good that replies to you. When they reply, you explain what the expert call is about, agree on a payment, and make sure they sign the confidentiality and compliance agreement.

Schedule calls between customers and the experts that they request. This can be a bit of work, especially since a large part of the calls get rescheduled by either the customer or the expert. It becomes even more difficult when customers and experts are based in different time zones.
Follow-up after each call, to check that the customer is happy, and if the project scope has changed. You then decide if more calls are needed or if the project can be completed.
Follow-up with experts that have been interviewed, to arrange for their payment and to make sure that they too are satisfied with the call.
Follow-up with experts that were not chosen, to tell them there might be future opportunities.

When AlphaSights launched in 2008, they focused on their custom recruiting in all marketing [efforts], to stand out from other networks that already “had a database”. This was very successful.

The human aspect

Although you sit in front of a computer, it really is a people business. You really need to be good with people: don’t hesitate to cold-call someone, to push a little to confirm a call time, or to chase someone a little to get them to sign the confidentiality agreement.

Almost everyone (apart from admin staff) in the expert network performs research to some extent, sometimes even the most senior salespeople. Having strong teamwork and communicating between teams is also a crucial part of the daily operations as your colleagues might often know the perfect expert for your own project.

More reviews are available here:
Guidepoint (Glassdoor and Indeed)
AlphaSights (Glassdoor and Indeed)
Atheneum (Glassdoor and Indeed)
GLG (Glassdoor and Indeed)

What are the main challenges with expert networks?

Max Friberg — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 09:08:00 GMT

"It's sort of like a love-hate relationship."

– Management consultant on expert networks

‘Expert calls’ is an important source of insights for the 112 respondents

We recently surveyed more than 110 Management Consultants (MCs) and Investment Professionals (IPs) – power users of expert networks: “How important is Expert Calls, as a source of insights, to market and investment research at your company? (with 1 being “Not at all important source of insights” and 5 being “The top source of insights”)”.

Our respondents said that expert calls are important to their investment research, with MCs seeming to value them slightly more than IPs.

While expert calls are very valuable, managing expert networks comes with its own set of challenges. I had a chat with former MCs and IPs in the team, and they quickly cited ‘relevance’, ‘quality’ and ‘administrative hassle’ as some of their personal frustrations when engaging expert networks in the past.

So what exactly are the biggest challenges when engaging expert networks? The survey respondents cited multiple, and the top ones are showcased below.

Identifying relevant, high-quality experts

Both MCs and IPs have reflected that identifying the most relevant experts from those provided by the expert networks and the quality of experts engaged are the most challenging aspects of using expert calls. We have identified a few key contributory factors that lead to these challenges.

First of all, expert networks present their information in different formats and contents, and it may not be easy to make the most accurate selection. For instance, one network might provide you with an expert’s career history, while another network provides you with a brief summary of an expert’s experience instead. Choosing between two experts, especially those with similar profiles, might become frustrating and troublesome. It is also difficult to track the performances of expert networks with your company, or with specific industries, geographies and service lines. Such opacity and lack of information are elements that hinder MCs and IPs from making the most informed choices of networks and experts for different types of projects. With traditional methods of coordination with expert networks and sourcing of expert calls, it is indeed quite difficult to resolve these two major pains that our respondents are facing.

Administrative hassle

Administrative hassle is another challenge that caught our eye. While 40% of MCs indicate that administrative hassle is a major challenge, only 18% of IPs reflected the same sentiments. We think that this may have to do with the number of networks engaged and experts received. As shown in an earlier article we found that MCs engage 3 expert networks per project on average as compared to 2 by IPs. We also found out that MCs receive approximately 33% more experts per expert network as compared to IPs. Put together, this means they get twice as many experts suggested than IPs do. With more expert networks to coordinate and experts to manage, MCs experience more administrative inefficiencies when dealing with expert networks.

However, this does not mean that IPs can avoid administrative hassle completely. We’ve seen that MCs tend to engage more niche expert networks than IPs, for various reasons. In the event that IPs choose to broaden their research scope or source for more specialized expertise, they will inevitably come into contact with the same administrative pains.

Undoubtedly, expert calls are extremely valuable to investment research. Is there a way to avoid or minimize these associated challenges? The Inex One Expert Management System is specifically designed to mitigate these pains and improve the overall experience of managing expert networks and expert calls. With the Inex One EMS, users get access to more networks, get better visibility of networks’ performance and receive standardized information about experts recommended for a better comparison. With everything presented in one single dashboard, you are engaging more expert networks but with less administrative hassle. Interested to know more? Contact us.

How do investors use Expert Networks for due diligence work?

Max Friberg — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 19:08:00 GMT

Clients use expert networks to obtain deep content expertise, on demand.

When I was in consulting, I enjoyed doing commercial due diligence (“CDD”, or just “DD”) work, mapping out the attractiveness of an industry niche and the relative strengths of the companies operating in it. My affiliation with the Strategy & Corporate Finance (S&CF) service line meant that I got to do my fair share of this work. I think DDs have an unfairly poor reputation: managed right and with good leadership on the team, they can be rather satisfying with large components of fact-based research and analysis.

Expert Networks have become central to DD work. The experts that they supply provide deep content insights, especially helpful for forward-looking time perspectives like when you estimate future revenues and cash flows.

In a Due Diligence, you may or may not get data from the target company itself. You would typically get it when helping a company to get sold (i.e. a vendor due diligence, “VDD”) or in a later-stage buy-side DD, when the target company opens its books to a few select bidders.

In addition to this target-internal data, there are eight categories of data that I would always use (If there are any additional categories, please comment. That might explain why I’m not partner in a consulting firm by now… ;).

Eight categories of data used in a CDD

Categories of data used in a Commercial Due Diligence (CDD)

Macro- and sector economic indicators. These are used to describe underlying macro trends that might affect an industry.
Example: The demand for dishwashers depends partly on the amount of new homes built. Hence both demographic forecasts and construction data can help inform your market forecast for the dishwasher market.
Company financials. The hard numbers in financial reports from the target company, its competitors and customers (let’s call these “TCCs”) are central in all valuation exercises.
Example: You access financial reports for your dishwasher manufacturer, its competitors, key component suppliers and main customers (e.g. large property developers) to assess the relative strength and performance of players in the value chain.
Industry reports are published by research firms, industry associations and government agencies, some of which are even free to access. In addition to being a digest of relevant public information, they often include components of custom data collected for the report.
Press clippings. Considering all relevant press on the TCCs are a “hygiene factor” to every serious Due Diligence. There are multiple services that aggregate all published articles, by keywords.
Internal knowledge repositories. Certain consulting firms have over time accumulated significant internal databases. These will help you to approach different markets and industries, based on previous projects or original research that the firm has done. Although sanitized from confidential/client-specific data, these guides can be tremendously helpful in understanding e.g. value-chain dynamics or niche technical solutions.
Internal experts. Similar to the knowledge documented in internal repositories, firms also employ specialists that can be called upon to help in DD projects. This holds true for consulting firms, but also for larger investment firms and corporates.
Example: Our dishwasher manufacturer is expanding from Germany to Spain, Japan and the USA. You reach out to your colleagues in each country, to get a quick overview of the main competitors and trends in their respective market.
External experts via Expert Networks. Since it’s not feasible to employ an infinite number of experts of all trades around the world, leading investment research firms contact external experts for short consultations. These experts typically help with forward-looking insights, commenting on technical and regulatory trends, key purchasing criteria (KPCs) and trajectories of market competitors.
Example: You call 10 experts each in Spain, Japan and the USA, who have been working as either sales directors of dishwasher manufacturers, procurement managers at major customers. You ask these experts about the top players in each market, how they score on customers’ KPC:s, and what they think of trends affecting the market (topline and margins) in the next five years.
Other. Depending on the industry of the target company, you may use additional types of data from e.g. exit interviews, consumer surveys, social media comments etc. In my experience, these are most valuable when the target company is selling to consumers (“B2C”).

Below I plot all eight data categories based on how to obtain them (internal v. external sources) and whether they are primary or secondary sources. This illustrates how the categories differ – and that great internally curated data can be a source of competitive advantage in investment research.

Categories of data used in a Commercial Due Diligence, by type and source

Another way of looking at the categories is the collection method and time perspective, which I’ve plotted below.

Categories 1-5 will show you different angles of what has already happened. Since most valuation exercises include a component of discounting future cash flows, you’ll need a perspective on those too. I would extrapolate historic trends as a start, and then use data from categories 6 and 7 (expert calls) to add insight to my forecast. (Category 8 – “Other” – is a catch-all bucket here. In my experience it’s mostly historical and customized data, putting it mostly in the top left corner).

Categories of data used in a Commercial Due Diligence , by collection method and time perspective

This means that some data categories are “must-have basics”, whereas others are used to get an edge in investment research. In a DD, professional bidders will have access to the standardized/historical data categories. To get an edge in your investment research, you top up with insights with custom/forward-looking data. The main source for this is experts. If you happen to have them all internally – congratulations! – otherwise, turn to the expert networks.

How do I get the most out of Expert Networks?

As a consultant, I activated expert networks at the start of each Due Diligence project, often reaching out to 4-5 of them at once. Although it was a bit tedious to keep them all updated, the expert networks always came up with different experts. This meant that the more expert networks we engaged, the larger the pool of available experts that we could choose from.

Our recent survey on expert networks users yielded some interesting insights on this. Management consultants engaged on average 3 expert networks in a typical project, whereas investment analysts averaged 2. From each network, they would expect to receive anywhere between 0-40 experts suggested. On average, management consultants (MCs) expect to get 12 experts presented from each network that they engage, whereas the average Investment professional (IPs) would expect to get 9 experts suggested per network.

MCs get more experts per Expert Network than IPs do

This finding was consistent across the board: MCs seem to receive more experts from expert networks than IPs do. This may have to do with the nature of their projects, or their frame agreements, or their level of spending – I don’t know the answer.

Unique experts for alpha

We took it one step further, and asked respondents what share of expert profiles received were duplicates, meaning they were received from more than one expert network. MCs saw median 20% duplicates (22% avg.), whereas IPs saw median 30% duplicates (29% avg.). If the sample is representative, it means that MCs get way more unique experts for their projects than IPs do.

MCs get ~120% more unique experts than IPs do

Getting duplicate experts obviously requires that you use more than 1 expert network to start with. Therefore, respondents who reported only using one expert network have not been included in the above calculations. However, the share of duplicates does not seem to increase strictly with the number of expert networks engaged. Among the 91 respondents who reported engaging more than one expert network, there is no correlation between the number they engaged, and the share of duplicate experts received.

The number of Expert Networks engaged seems uncorrelated with % duplicate experts

How can I get more unique experts for my DD?

The short and obvious answer is: engage more expert networks. Given the low reported share of duplicates (the world is big!), each incremental expert network will add unique experts.

However if you’re already engaging a handful of expert networks, we do not know why some users seem to get more unique experts than others. It may however have to do with which expert networks they engage. MCs reported using niche expert networks to a larger extent than did IPs (who mostly reported using only the major networks). Back when we ran the niche expert network Previro, customers often mentioned that we suggested experts that were different from what the large networks had. Perhaps adding a couple of niche networks is the key to getting more unique experts for your Due Diligence?

Inex One helps clients engage as many Expert Networks as they desire, making it easy to coordinate the communication, lists of experts, and billing in one dashboard. Interested to know more? Contact us.

Icons from Flaticon, under the Creative Commons.

Which Expert Network is the best?

Max Friberg — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 09:07:00 GMT

Inex One helps professional investors use multiple expert networks – efficiently, cost-effective, and compliantly. Which is the best expert network for you?

We recently surveyed more than 120 professionals in management consulting and investment management on this question. We phrased it slightly differently: “How would you rate the service and quality of experts from the Expert Networks you’ve used? (leave blank for those that you have not used)”, and rating was made on a scale from “0 (very poor)” to “5 (very good)”.

The average scores are shown below for expert networks (ENs) that received more than 5 votes:

We asked 123 professionals worldwide: “How would you rate the service and quality of experts from the Expert Networks you’ve used? (leave blank for those that you have not used)” , and rating was made on a scale from “0 (very poor)” to “5 (very good)”.

Looks like Dialectica is the best expert network, according to our sample of users. They capture the top rank ahead of more than 100 expert networks.

But is that the correct answer? What do we actually mean by “the best”? Clearly, a more scientific and data-driven approach would be to measure the actual performance. One approach could be to measure how many experts the EN supplies on similar requests (1). It should probably also include some quality metric as well, such as how many experts are selected for an interview among those supplied (2), and the ratio between the two (3). To top it off, we could also ask the customer to rate the experts’ relevance after conducting an expert call (4).

The Inex One EMS (Expert Management System) does all of this, automatically, for entire customer organizations. High-performing ENs will be identified and rewarded, whereas complacent ENs will need to step up their game or be challenged by competitors. We will revisit this post in a year or two, to announce the Best Expert Network – based on actual performance metrics.

* Note: Not all respondents scored any EN and among those who did, many scored multiple ENs. November 2018 edit: The survey is intended as an indication of quality, not a statistically significant representation. The number of individuals’ responses, per company in the chart in descending order, is 8, 91, 105, 42, 48, 5, 15, 5, 5, 33, 7, and 5.

Indexone and Index One

Max Friberg — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 03:07:00 GMT

Clients often write Indexone when looking for Inex One. Sometimes they write Index One, but Indexone is surprisingly common.

You write Indexone for two reasons. Firstly, you think of "industry experts", which you can conveniently access through Inex One. Secondly, you think of indexing expertise. This is a feature of the Inex One Expert Management System where you combine all experts in one list.

Although these variations on the name are understandable, it is important that readers are guided to the information that they seek. Hence, we clarify the different ways our name is written here and share some detail on our real name: Inex One.

The Insights Exchange

Inex One is a combination of the words "Insights" and "Exchange". We offer an insights exchange for expert information. In the Expert Management System, clients manage expert networks efficiently. They save time and cost by working in a secure system.

Many clients struggle with expert networks. For instance, choosing an expert network is difficult when you only have biased marketing materials available. In addition, clients lack clear quality metrics standardized to compare expert networks. Finally, costs have become an increasingly important issue, as the spend on expert networks is growing ~10-20% at many firms.

Inex One is built to solve these challenges. Clients have great data on what expert networks are good at. They have full control and transparency on costs for expert networks. In addition, their confidential information is securely stored with state-of-the-art data protection. Contact us to learn more about how you can benefit from using the Expert Management System to manage your expert networks.

If you're looking for an indexing tool, check out our friends over at Indexone.io.

How many Expert Networks are there?

Max Friberg — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 06:07:00 GMT

Spoiler: There are about 120 expert networks, in our latest count. Read about them all in the Expert Network Directory)

How many expert networks exist?

Expert Networks are niche headhunting firms, specialized in recruiting people for short-term advisory engagements. Their customers include global investment funds, management consultants and strategy/M&A departments of major companies.

There is a handful of large Expert Networks (ENs), with offices around the globe. However, most ENs are focused on some certain region (by geography or language) or industry segment.

120 Expert Networks compete around the globe, although most of them are focused on a geography or industry niche.

Prior to Inex One, I co-founded the Nordic expert network Previro. It got strong traction from early on, as clients appreciated our reach into the Nordic countries. We also helped Nordic clients with “outbound” searches – finding experts from around the globe. This is the typical evolutionary path of ENs: start local and grow with your customer base.

From there, some find an attractive product-market fit to expand internationally (e.g. Dialectica serves most of Europe + Asia from a hub in Greece), whereas others double-down on their region (e.g. SpeakIn for India), get acquired (e.g. Innosquared, Vista Research, Epito, and a few others), or simply move along healthily (see our article on this).

The below section is from our original post in 2018 (the above has been updated since), left here for future reference.

How will the market for Expert Networks develop in the next 5 years?

The jury is out on this: there is a case for consolidation, and another one for continued or increased fragmentation.

The Consolidation case is typically expected from an industry, as it matures (see background here or here). For ENs, this may be caused by the need to invest in compliance infrastructure (IT systems and personnel), to meet demands by customers and regulators.

The Fragmentation case is built on the assumption that the EN market is yet in an emerging phase (e.g. Alphasights’ CEO interview) and that ENs have limited economies of scale. Personal data regulations and the sector-rotations of PE activity limit the extent to which experts can be reused over time (see our article on this). Specialization might come from customers demanding more niche experts, routing projects to multiple locally specialized networks.

Place your bets – we will revisit this article in a year or two, to see how things are playing out.

Expert network market exceeds $1 Bn

Max Friberg — Sat, 16 Jun 2018 10:06:00 GMT

A recent report by Civic Enterprises, funded by the expert network GLG, says that the market for expert networks exceeds $1 Bn in annual turnover. The report, titled “The Rise of the Expert Economy”, was released in conjunction with the Chatham House Future of Work conference in London on 24 May.

The report says that the market is growing rapidly, including about as many experts globally as Uber and Lyft have active U.S. drivers (1.5 million). GLG, the market leader, is said to represent half of the market at $500+ million in sales. The report also mentions the rapidly growing Alphasights, Guidepoint and Third Bridge. The latest financial filings of the UK-based Alphasights and Third Bridge are public, showing revenues of $100 million each in 2016.

These companies’ gross profits have consistently ranged from 50-75%, indicating their great value-add, and their customers’ willingness to pay for their services. Margins and customer demand is expected to stay high, partly driven by regulation. As the EU:s MiFID II regulation makes investment banks charge for their research separately (instead of bundling it with trading fees), investment funds are increasing their in-house research capacities. A recent top-story on Bloomberg quotes $1,300 as a new market-rate for expert calls.

The Expert Management System (EMS) from Inex One helps customers take full control of their costs for expert calls, and be great at investment research. Contact us to start using it.

Link to the report press release here.

Chatham House – The Royal Institute of International Affairs on Market of Expert Networks

My best practices for expert calls. Christian from McKinsey

Max Friberg — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 13:06:00 GMT

Inex One invites investment analysts to share their best practices on primary research and expert calls. First out is Christian from McKinsey & Company in München, Germany.

I’ve been using expert calls in more than 20 projects now. In one project we did almost 60 calls, because the company we researched was in such a small niche. There was not much secondary data to use: few financials statements and certainly no research reports.

Reaching out to expert networks is one of the first things that I do in a new project, if we think that we will need expert calls.

Here are my five best techniques:

Define the most important questions to check with experts. Tell the networks about these questions and make sure that they write whether each expert can answer them or not.

2. Be very transparent with the expert networks. Tell them what you need and by when, but also tell them when experts are bad or irrelevant. It saves me a lot of time. I often tell them that I will check all emails at a certain time. I expect them to send their latest expert list by then, and to not call and chase me about things – I’m busy :).

3. Develop a good notes tool. I take notes in excel and structure the data in two categories per question: the number that I’m after and the rationale for this. Then there’s a big “Other” category for other comments and quotes. I know some people use OneNote to collaborate on note-taking.

4. Ask the top questions first in the interview. Just hang up if you feel that the expert doesn’t have the right knowledge. It saves time for both you and for them.

5. Help the expert put words on their knowledge. If an expert can’t answer straight questions like “what is the market growth rate?”, I ask with examples: “Is the market decreasing, growing 3-5%, or more like 5-10%?”. From there, it is easier to drill down to more exact numbers.

Inex One Expert Management System (EMS) helps to facilitate interactions with expert networks. Contact us to learn more.

What is an Expert Network?

Max Friberg — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 16:06:00 GMT

The expert network model explained

An expert network finds and recruits knowledgeable individuals for short consultations with parties seeking expert insights. In many ways, an expert network is comparable to job recruitment firms: it identifies experts to recruit for short consultation sessions (instead of full-time jobs). Most expert networks started in the last 10 years. GLG, typically referred to as the oldest expert network, started already in 1998.

Inex One creates transparency and efficiency in the industry. See our overview of the industry here.

Expert networks are a top source of insights

Expert networks have emerged as an indispensable source of primary insights when doing investment research. Clients also increasingly use experts in regular strategy and business development work. With their services in great demand, expert networks have been very successful. Check out the market sizing and growth metrics here.

Expert networks are a favorite source in due diligence

Clients surveyed (investment professionals and management consultants) consider expert calls as one of the most important sources of insights in investment research. The typical use case for expert calls is when doing commercial due diligence (CDD) work, but reasons vary. Typical clients are investment funds, consulting firms and strategy divisions of large corporates. Read how others use expert networks here.

A couple kinks remain to be solved

Most large clients have contracts with multiple expert networks, to get a wide selection of experts. However, the use of multiple networks is limited by administrative costs and poor market transparency.

In addition, emailing with multiple networks risks exposing your project data, and it is difficult to reconcile with personal data legislation (e.g. the GDPR). Read about GDPR considerations and reported challenges****.

Inex One is the future of expert insights

Inex One logo

The Inex One Expert Management System (EMS) creates transparency, efficiency and compliance around expert calls. The EMS offers a “one-stop-shop”, where clients can coordinate multiple expert networks at once. The team collaborates on expert selection, with all data stored in a secure data room.

All parties stand to gain:

Current clients can engage additional expert networks at zero marginal cost. They get a wide selection of experts, great transparency on expert quality, and overall lower costs.
New clients – previously discouraged by high transaction costs – can access and benefit from a top source of insights.
High-performing expert networks get due appreciation and business volumes as ANP members, versus complacent incumbents.
Experts benefit from higher business volumes when their knowledge is in demand.

Do you want to know more about Inex One, or try a demo of the EMS? Contact us here.

How does GDPR shake up expert networks?

Max Friberg — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 20:06:00 GMT

The implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is forcing expert networks to change. Gone are the days of marketing your expert network with “how big your database of experts” is. These databases have been built up over decades and therefore include outdated experts, many who left their jobs years ago.

Networks must now ask for renewed permission to store data on EU citizens, and may not keep this data forever (the guideline is “the shortest time possible”, according to the EU).

“Fun fact: GLG and Guidepoint both claim to have ~500,000 experts each in their databases. Undoubtedly tedious to manually update, that is still just peanuts. LinkedIn has 500 million profiles – updating themselves.”

This matters, because expert networks have long touted large databases as a stamp of quality. In fact, it is rather the opposite – proven by the stellar growth of networks focused on custom recruiting. This category includes Alphasights and Third Bridge when they started, and more recently also Dialectica in Europe.

The change to expert networks will thus be two-fold: changing what they communicate in marketing messages, and in some cases also reducing their use of internal legacy databases. Both changes should be positive to the customers, who benefit from better service when more experts are custom-recruited. Our Expert Management System (EMS) helps you engage with multiple expert networks at once, turbocharging the custom-recruiting of experts.

According to the industry analyst Integrity Research, there were more than 50 expert networks operating already in 2010. The market has since exploded with expert networks reporting 20-40% annual growth rates. The Inex One EMS helps customer use the increasing specialization of expert networks to their advantage, engaging multiple expert networks at once.

The General Data Protection Regulation and Expert Networks

Triple wins for Inex One

Max Friberg — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 14:04:00 GMT

Last week, Inex One was admitted into two of Europe’s leading startup hubs: SUP46 and SSE Business Lab. The address to our new Stockholm office is A house, Östermalmsgatan 26A.

In addition, we were selected to the Audience award in Guldräven, a yearly business competition for alumni and students of the Stockholm School of Economics. Awards were handed out by J12 Ventures, a Nordic early-stage investor. Thanks to all participants!

About SUP46: http://sup46.com/about-us/members-infographic/

About SSE BL: https://www.hhs.se/en/outreach/sse-initiatives/sse-business-lab/

About J12 Ventures: http://j12ventures.com/

Blog | Inex One

How we counted the number of CDDs

How many Commercial Due Diligences (CDDs) are run each year?

What I think of when I think of CDDs

1. Who wants CDDs and why?

2. Sizing the PE CDD market: Top-down

3. The bottom-up estimate (aka checking LinkedIn)

Strategy majors

Diligence specialists

Multi-disciplinary advisory firms

What the consultants tell us

4. Bridging top-down and bottom-up

One million expert calls for CDDs

How do you manage all those expert calls?

The best expert networks in 2026

Which expert network is the best?

How do you measure expert network quality?

Different use cases by client segment

Which survey provider is the best?

How do you measure survey provider quality?

Get expert insights today

Will strategy consultants still do CDDs next year?

What do CDD consultants do all day?

So what’s the verdict - will AI replace consulting CDDs?

1. Accumulate data

2. Upskill the team: in productivity tools and content.

3. Eliminate donkey work

Expert Network Pricing - what does an expert network interview cost?

Expert calls: Paying for insights and service

Prepaying vs. pay-as-you-go

Why are some calls more expensive?

OK let's get started

M&A in the expert network industry (updated 2026)

2000's: The US-based industry gets organized

2010's: The international landgrab

The 2020's: Tech innovation and diversification

Who uses expert networks?

TL;DR

The heavy users: Sector-by-sector client breakdown

Strategy Consultants: ~1,020 firms

Financial/ Capital Markets: ~4,895 firms

Corporate Strategists: ~5,285 firms

Tracking the capital spend

How to use Expert Networks

Expert Networks, simplified

Expert Network Client Mapping: How we sized the market

TL;DR

How we mapped the Expert Network industry

Starting from the top

Bottom-up synthesis

Factoring the multi-source adjustment

Expert Networks - simplified

Appendix

Who uses Expert Networks: what changed in our estimates

Notes and limitations:

Expert network market size in 2025: The $3Bn Market Overview

TL;DR

The slump and the rebound

2025 retrospective: Top trends

The evolution of Expert Networks: From rolodexes to high-velocity recruitment

1st generation expert networks: The trailblazers

2nd generation expert networks: The market expansionists

3rd generation expert networks: The tech disruptors

4th generation expert networks: The new guard

The global landscape: Who plays where?

Expert networks specialized by region

Who are the customers of expert networks?

Growth engines

2026 and beyond: The next era of Expert Networks?

The pressure on 'legacy' players

The CDD sausage and Expert Network OpEx

The expert network black box

Real-time status and wallet share

How to use Expert Networks best: The EN Score

How to get optimal service from expert networks

The Lemon problem and the Nudge

Solving for optimal Expert Network service

Expert networks in Latin America

Latin American expert networks for market research

Access the best LATAM networks with Inex One

1^st generation expert networks: The trailblazers

2^nd generation expert networks: The market expansionists

3^rd generation expert networks: The tech disruptors

4^th generation expert networks: The new guard