LibGuides: Strategic and Business Consulting: Home

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We’ve done our best to select the most pertinent materials for these Course Resources pages, but if these are not helping with your topic/project, we encourage you to use the Schedule an Appointment link in the Profile box on this page.

Resources for this class

Here are a few tips to for researching:

Google often isn't helpful. The best business information is not free. However, the library does subscribe to numerous resources.
When using these databases, adjust your search terms if you're not getting the results you hoped for--try synonyms and scour article titles, abstracts, and subject headings in your search results for likely search terms to use. Sometimes a thesaurus or encyclopedia come in handy when brainstorming search terms.
Use double quotes to search multiple words as a phrase (e.g. "new age" finds these terms in exact order).
Use an asterisk to substitute for letters at the end of a word (e.g. crit* finds critic, criticism, critique etc.).
If you can't find what you're looking for, schedule an appointment!

Association of Management Consulting Firms Member Directory
Thought this might be of interest to you (just on general principles! :)

PrivCo This link opens in a new window
Not specific to the consulting industry, but you can find consulting companies here, as well as data on venture capital funding, mergers and acquisitions, and private company financial data.Each user must create a login with a UR email address.
Yes – you CAN get financial data for private companies! Also very useful for creating lists of companies by geography, industry – with more granular detail than by NAICS or SIC, although those are available as well – rate of growth in revenue or employees, and whether or not the companies are PE/VC backed or not. Useful for career searches or entrepreneurial searches (who else makes this product? How many [x] are located within 50 miles of [place]? Etc.)
CB Insights This link opens in a new window
Another choice for private company and investor information: deals, financing, M&As. Search by funding round or amount, location, name, industry, etc. Covers more, smaller companies than PrivCo, but only provides VC-type financials, not balance sheet/income statement information. Each user must create a login using a UR email address.
OneSource This link opens in a new window
20M+ companies, US/int’l; financials, SWOT analysis, analyst reports, news articles. Search by region, sector, business size, more

The databases here are listed in order by how focused on the IT industry they are - from Gartner (devoted to IT) to Frost & Sullivan (good portion on tech/IT), to IBISWorld and MarketLine, which cover the whole range of industries (including IT).

Gartner This link opens in a new window
Contains reports on the IT industry and the impact of IT on businesses. Search by market, topic, or industry.
Frost & Sullivan This link opens in a new window
Includes both technical reports and market analysis on emerging, high-tech and industrial markets in 50 countries.
IBISWorld This link opens in a new window
Industry research reports; US & Global. Search by keyword or NAICS code. Market size, competitors, forecasts, valuation, & more. Includes Industry Wizard. The U.S. Spotlight Industry Report collection offers titles focused on ultra-niche industry categories that feature insights in condensed format focused on providing more charts, tables, and graphs
MarketLine GlobalData Intelligence Centers This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to Industry (reports by country), Company, and Country reports, plus Company News, Financial Deals, and Case Studies, Market size, segmentation, competition, and forecasts. MarketLine Explorer capitalizes on actionable intelligence spanning 22 global industries. Combining macroeconomic data and information on thousands of companies, Explorer offers detailed coverage of the global trends that are shaping industries, impacting companies, and driving innovation.
At the login screen, click on IP Access.
Additional modules within MarketLine:
Financial Deals Tracker: Track market activity with MarketLine's database of global mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity deals, venture finance deals, private placements, IPOs, and partnerships.
Company Prospector: Screen companies and build lists of potential business partners, clients, and investment targets in industries and countries of interest.
Investment & Advisory Prospector: Identify advisory & investment firms operating in specific industries, and gain insight into the investment and inorganic strategy of companies.
Company Report Generator: Generate fresh custom company reports featuring analytical text and charts which draw on MarketLine's company datasets. Example sections include company overview, history, SWOT analysis, M&A, partnerships and agreements, news and product information.

All Industry & Market Research Databases
Use this link to get to a complete list of all the databases available for industry and market research.

OneSource This link opens in a new window
If you are a Mac user or are having trouble accessing ThomsonOne, in a pinch, try OneSource: look up your company, and see if there is a link for "Analysts Reports" in the left panel. Not nearly as many as Thomson, but - SO much easier to use.

The following databases are good places to go for finding articles on computers and information systems from a business point of view:

ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles from academic business journals and business trade publications; plus industry reports, some market data, and company profiles from the Experian Commercial Risk database.
For alumni access, see link to Proquest Alumni Edition on the Alumni Library Gateway.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Contains articles, company and industry reports, marketing reports, and country reports. Includes Harvard Business Review.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Definitely try this for scholarly papers. Choose "Business, Management and Accounting" from the list of subjects on the left side of the homepage, then search. Ex: "process improvement" AND consult*
Includes the sciences, engineering, humanities, social sciences, and clinical medicine. Full text from 1995 on, except as indicated.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Contains articles on business, news, and companies worldwide, current and historical financial quotes, and company profiles.

Factiva Search Tips
Improve your search experience in Factiva with these useful tips. Really. You NEED to look at this, trust me!

The following databases are THE places to go for finding material on computers and information systems from a computing point of view:

ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Full text from articles and conference papers in computer science and related disciplines.
IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
Full text of IEEE and IET journals, magazines, transactions and conference proceedings as well as active IEEE standards. Also includes access to the IEEE eLearning Library.

And then there are databases for OTHER topical areas, such as medicine, and optics:

PubMed This link opens in a new window
Identifies articles in clinical and basic biomedical research as well as in psychology, many with links to full text.
PubMed® comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. Includes access to molecular and bioinformatic databases from the NCBI system (previous Entrez). Automatically expands (explodes) subject headings. Truncation turns off this automatic expansion of the hierarchical subject headings.
Optics InfoBase (OSA Publishing) This link opens in a new window
Browse or search for fulltext articles from volume 1 to the present in all Optical Society of America journals.
InfoBase also contains recent proceedings from selected OSA conferences.
SPIE Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Access to technical papers and monographs in optics, photonics and imaging from SPIE journals, books and conference proceedings.

Books24x7.com This link opens in a new window
Full text eBooks on computing and information technology.
O'Reilly for Higher Education This link opens in a new window
Full text of the entire O'Reilly collection of reference and how-to computer books.
Patrons must select Institution Not Listed and input their UR email to access the database.
Business Expert Press This link opens in a new window
E-textbooks emphasizing real-world examples and applications. ~300 titles covering the gamut of business topics. Fully downloadable.

ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
US and international statistics. Includes full text statistical tables and abstracts of additional statistical sources.
Covers material in American Statistics Index (ASI), Index to International Statistics (IIS) and Statistical Reference Index (SRI). Googling for material not in full text in the database works quite well.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Supplies quick statistics, facts, and market data in a wide range of topic areas. (These are "one chart wonders" - not in-depth reports - but topics are very topical and interesting).
Downloadable in JPG, XLS, and PPTP.

This is just a sampling - get in touch with me for information on the other statistical databases available to you.

The resources provided here are my "best guess" for what you might need. It probably looks like an overwhelming list already - but this is a very wide-ranging course; I can't anticipate every resource that might be useful. If there's something else you need, please let me know, and together we will improve this resource guide!

Complete Business Resources Guide

Business Resources Guide
The resources in this guide are a tiny sampling of what is available through library subscriptions. My Business Resources Guide arranges the whole gamut of business resources available to you into lists by type of information (articles, market research, companies, etc.) and by topic (Finance, Entrepreneurship, etc.) . Try these or simply get in touch and let me know what you need.

Business Librarian

Kathy Wu

Email Me

Contact:

585-273-5322
I am available for one-on-one virtual consultation through Zoom.

I also hold office hour on Mondays from 2 PM to 3 PM in the Gleason Hall Room 330. Walk-ins are welcome.

Zoom meeting only by appointment at https://rochester.zoom.us/my/kathywu