Universal Information Services

Part 1 of 3

This post is the first in a three-part series illustrating the importance of knowing your strengths. As a sales person, my strengths are in listening to the needs of our prospects and then matching them to a specific news monitoring and PR measurement solution. Humbly, I would say I’m very good at designing great solutions that carry a cost that is considered a good deal to the prospect. A good deal is a price to product balance that both parties feel is fair.

Since 1908, Universal Information Services has been creating great media monitoring solutions for their clients.  That is what we’ve done for 110 years because, to be honest, we’re great at it. Nearly all other media monitoring and measurement services have either gone away or moved out of the “complete media monitoring” model in order to pursue a simpler business strategy or aggregating media into PR tools.

There’s a reason that Universal remains the most comprehensive news monitoring and PR measurement service… because that is our strength. Now let me burn a few sentences to explain why we stick with our strengths.

Recently, we’ve seen a lot of our peers and competitors moving away from their roles as media monitors and instead trying to be more of a “communications consultant”, providing public relations software and not a comprehensive platform to monitor news.  We frequently see these competitors posting generalized guidance and ideas telling PR professionals how they should be doing their job. To me, this type of guidance blurs the line between being a partner to your organization and trying to do your work within your organization. We deliver the data and measurement insight you can’t do on your own, but you are the PR/Communications professional that knows what strategy is best for your stakeholders. No vendor has as much strategic passion for your organization than you.

To illustrate this contrast, the staff at Universal focuses our efforts on advancing our platform’s coverage comprehensiveness and reliability, providing the best news monitoring and measurement results available.  Whether we are implementing new media analysis reports that make ROI easier to understand, unveiling Alpha Clips (the world’s first media monitoring platform enhanced with Artificial Intelligence), or making sure our clients have a dedicated customer service representative that is available 24-hours a day, we recognize that you are the communications professional and your strengths lie in strategy and execution.  While we strive to become an extension of your office and your team, we totally understand the difference between your role and ours.  That understanding is the insight that although our roles aren’t mutually exclusive, and will often parallel each other, they are still radically different. You do what you are strongest at and let the best news monitoring and measurement service serve you and your team.

Simply put, we excel when working in the realm of media monitoring and analysis, and that is something we don’t expect to be your greatest strength.  On the flip-side, you are probably amazing within the realm of public relations, communications or marketing, and that is something we fully understand but choose not to make our core strength.  Universal’s continued emphasis on being the leader in technology, innovation, reliability, and comprehensiveness as a media monitoring partner allows us to drill-down and focus our efforts on helping you, our valued client partner.  Can the same be said about your current media monitoring vendor?  Not usually. Our clients agree that a company that specializes in and focuses all efforts on a core aspect of business, like news monitoring and PR measurement, will provide better service, better results, and a more valued partnership to you and your colleagues.

One way to protect yourself against services that can’t monitor as much news as Universal, or a vendor using automated measurement to generate quasi-insight, is to be aware of the red flags. Most importantly, if a sales person says, “We can provide everything you are getting from Universal, but for less”, hang up. We have seen many clients be tricked by this claim from an unscrupulous sales person, and not once has this promise of doing what we do, at a lower cost, been fulfilled. Being honest about our strengths is, well, another one of our strengths.

Let me know if I can answer questions about your current media monitoring and measurement service, or even give you a competitive proposal on how Universal can strengthen your efforts. Knowing you have options is your greatest weapon against getting stuck with a poor service.

Ben, Solutions Manager, bcaldwell@universal-info.com, 402/342-3178