You may have seen that communications giant Cisco is picking up personal data and relationship insight aggregator Accompany for a cool $270m. As Accompany CEO Amy Chang puts it – the product acts like a digital assistant which helps executives and other professionals better prepare for meetings, prep emails, etc.
Hmmm…sounds exactly like our first foray into relationship intelligence, our Hint offering.
What this deal says to me is that data and relationship insights are important, if not critical to driving the next wave of productive knowledge workers. And, it signals that this space is maturing, and in general we in the corporate world are getting serious about taking advantage of all the data and information floating about out there in the social web and other easily accessible public databases.
Knowing more about your business partners, prospects, customers etc. is just good business, and it looks like Cisco is taking the hint (pun intended) that making it simple to take advantage of this sea of information – and turn it into consumable insights for your team is a huge opportunity – nearly a third of a billion dollars kind of opportunity.
The good news for your business? You don’t have to spend big bucks like Cisco to get access to valuable information about millions of people and business – Hint is only $15 per user ?