By Carol Tice – Entrepreneur.com
Today’s edition of Wednesday Web Resources wanders about the Internet, finding mind-stimulating information to help your business succeed. These three companies’ ideas touch every aspect of business operations, offering a new approach for vetting vendors, a creative way to envision your business, and new data on how to value your online social networks.
Cortera offers a new way to find information about potential customers or vendors–their growing database of crowdsourced information about companies. Marketing Vice President Alex Coté describes it as “Yelp meets credit bureau,” where companies with small-business customers and vendors will be encouraged to weigh in if their payment habits change. Cortera databases this information and makes it available to its customers. As the concept grows, Cortera hopes the crowdsourced data will become more current and detailed than that offered by top competitor Dun & Bradstreet, which gets small-biz intelligence by asking major corporations to reveal how timely their suppliers pay.
In the meanwhile, it might be an interesting place to check if you’re suspicious about a vendor or customer that wants you to extend them a bit more time on their bill. Prices are low, with individual company reports starting at $3.
"Cortera has the potential to reinvent the credit reporting industry by bringing the credit community approach to the Web and thus delivering the kind of insight not possible with traditional credit bureau approaches alone."
"eCredit by Cortera created efficiencies for Xerox by centralizing credit information, shortening approval cycles and standardizing polices & reporting. The investment in Cortera's eCredit software has significantly improved customer relations & productivity. It's a great fit for our business."
