Dear DACIS Subscribers:
It's been three and a half years since we rolled out our FPDS Pro service. At the time I predicted that the launch would be "our most important ever—our iPhone™, if you will."
Since that October 2016 launch, sales of FPDS Pro have met those expectations. Our product cycles tend to run long—it can take a decade or more before a module begins to "plateau". But FPDS Pro is already poised to overtake DoD Budget and DM&A to become our second-most-valuable service, behind only our mighty Professional service. And that's without any significant upgrades having been made to the service since its launch. It's been a great ride, and we thank you. We love this service too.
So today I couldn't be more pleased to announce a terrific new upgrade to FPDS Pro. Today we're announcing the availability of Parent search—the ability to rank companies based on the aggregate performance of parent companies—all of a company's cost centers and joint ventures (yes, JVs—more on that below). If you've ever yearned for a simple way to find all the businesses that comprise a Raytheon Technologies… or all the subsidiaries which comprise a sprawling tribally-owned company like Arctic Slope Regional Corporation… or struggled to keep up with all the acquisitions of a serial acquirer like CACI International—this single search field is going to change your life.
It's definitely been a big part of ours, going back to 2016. We have tens of thousands of man-hours sunk into the content underlying this field, because it's unique research, not reliant upon any third-party providers of such data. Today we're covering more than 7,000 parent companies—and more than 5,000 joint ventures. This is unglamorous, grind-it-out research. The JV information in particular is notoriously difficult to obtain, but highly prized: it provides valuable insights into corporation affiliations, business development strategies, and to customer relationships.  (If a joint venture is supporting a customer, you can bet that both its parents will be touting that credibility in their BD approaches to that customer.)
We cover those 7,000 companies—the industry's most important—like nobody ever has. But of course that leaves tens of thousands of companies which haven't received this level of attention. Not to worry—we've set up our Parent search as a single, elegant portal which seamlessly integrates both types of companies, providing you with the value of our analysis while never depriving you of the complete picture. Companies which haven't been analyzed are identified with an asterisk, so you'll always know what you're looking at.
In closing, I'm going to make a prediction which may be as bold as the iPhone prediction mentioned above. Over the years we've invited you to attend many a webinar devoted to a product launch. But we've never set a special date to invite you to a discussion of a single field in one of our modules. But there's a lot to say about FPDS Pro Parent search, and some intriguing scenarios to run through. My audacious prediction is that you'll consider it time well spent. As a bonus, there'll be a discussion of next steps for FPDS Pro. We have more exciting features in store over the next year, a couple of them to debut in the next 30 days. We'll be previewing one of them in this session. You'll come away able to use it as well.
Please look for an email from Bill Burton inviting you to a special webinar on Wedn., April 22nd. I'll be on the call, and I look forward to welcoming many of you. In the meantime, everyone be safe out there.
Best regards,

Stuart McCutchan
President
InfoBase Publishers, Inc.
April 16, 2020