Hoovers Review

PROS: Hoovers is quick and robust software that works perfectly. Data entry process can’t be easy enough.

CONS: To be honest, I don't like the idea of contact credit system, because in order to purchase e-mail addresses I need credits to cover each e-mail. And if there is a large company within my search list that has for e.g. 80 e-mail addresses for its employees then I’m going to need 80 credits in order to cover those. It takes so much time to perform simple task.

PROS: D&B has many companies in their database, though accuracy is very hit or miss.

CONS: Their contracts contain illegal auto-renewal clauses that trigger 60 days prior to your existing contract ending, and have no right to cancellation after that point.

PROS: I like the “Build a list” feature. Also, it offers lot of search criteria which is extremely valuable especially when searching for specific companies. It saves lot of time when it comes to scale the search to what I needinstead of filtering through huge data by myself. Also, there is an option to save the searches so you can execute them later.

CONS: As far as I can tell, the contact information is reliable, also someitmes the contact name and info are missing.

PROS: We are able to do research into people’s titles before doing cold call. Our business development team loves working with this product because they get information they need for doing their jobs. Also, we are able to alert Hoovers team when someone changes positions or companies.

CONS: Sometimes One Stop Reports are not robust.

PROS: Hoovers is easy to use and it provides great information about every company. You can easily find out some company’s info by using its search engine, functions and features. It is great way to find information about the companies that are within some geographical locations and areas of the business.

CONS: Information about employee count and financial for private companies is not very accurate.

PROS: This is wonderful tool and it is simple to use. I like that they breka down the reports in small pieces so they can be even more understandable. I really love doing my job through Hoovers, because the data is accurate, and you can search by lot of criteria.

CONS: Hm, I cannot think of something that I might dislike about this tool.

PROS: With Hoovers I can quickly find website, a phone number, and email for the company I’m searching for. Its search engine tool is intelligent one and as soon as you start typing for a company it auto-populate with possible accounts you are searching for, and instantly provides headquarters location in first results.

CONS: What I don’t like is the contact data that is provided by the system, because it’s usually old, expired or no longer with the company. I have found that it doesn’t provide accurate information when it comes to phone numbers.

PROS: I’ve been using Hoovers for more than 10 years at lot of companies. It is great tool for prospecting and internal work. The good thing is that is easy to use and it provides seamless integration with Salesforce. Our sales development department is using Hoovers for pre-call research and it is our main part of our processes.

CONS: I really need Global source of data but I understand that their laws are only within US.

PROS: Hoovers is great for both specific and prospective research. It allows you to take company information or even to e-mail them, it allows you to add various filters for making the research, you can export lists into Excel. The search engine is easy to use, and the product itself is not complicated.

CONS: I think that the information that is coming from Hoovers is not always accurate, I usually compare data with other system I use and the information is not same. They need to make the product more accurate and to provide accurate data, this is highly important.

PROS: I like that the browser tool is very intuitive and empowering when it comes to Marketing and Sales business cases. It’s easy to use and full-packed with information. We are able to perform research on company, contact and industry levels and we are able to create reports effortlessly. There are summaries like SWOT, reports and industry levels.

CONS: It would be great if they could be more focused on the contact side.

PROS: List building on D&B is wonderful. I’m using it weekly when trying to prospect new accounts. I use drop down menu so I can hone in on industry and territory. It is great platofrm, because I always know whether the company is good fit or not. Also, I like the visual appereance of D&B. It is understandable and you can easily learn about its functions. Also, it allows me to export my data.

CONS: Sometimes there are duplicates of companies and this means that I have to go through every one in order to find the right company with recent information. Also, it would be great if they could update companies’ addresses and receive notifications about it.

PROS: Hoovers is great tool that is used by our sales team, they are able to explore their territories by using it. It is a great product for gathering important information about corporate locations, headquarters, company size, general information based on geographic location. We constantly use its search function to shift our stance and we are able to maneuver into territory quickly.

CONS: This product lacks simplicity, we constantly need to train our new sales team how to use some basic options and perform basic tasks. It would be great if they could make the interface more user-friendly.

PROS: This is large tool when it comes to amount of data available for companies and individuals. Their filters are nice and intuitive and we can easily find leads by company size, industry, job title and other type of criteria. It provides us with detailed information on companies and notification triggers.

CONS: Some of the lead data is not updated, but this is quite normal with any database tool. It is almost impossible to stay update all the time because things are changing all the time. The Salesforce plug-in is not straightforward when getting company information.

PROS: With this tool we are able to reduce our search times and presort qualified leads. I like that it provides us with full comapny hierarchy, which is extremely helpful. The data we get is great. We are able to submit change requests issues. The whole process with Hoovers is simple one. It offers great set of features.

CONS: The redundancy processes need improvements. Also, tracking business relationships needs some improvement and work around, because there are lot that are not tied together correctly.

PROS: Hoovers is full packed solution with every kind of information for the companies. It has great features like filters, advanced search engine, simplicity and access to information. I personally like the features like SWOT, signals, triggers and all of these help me to explore opportunities. The Crush reports are detailed reports of the company with valuable information on corporate strategies and organizational structures. Also, spending and risk data provide us with information about company’s financial and spending trends.

CONS: The tool doesn’t provide lot of data for Asia, Middle East. When gathering data of some companies, the data and contact information is not accurate. Also, if you want contact information then you have to buy other service.

PROS: They have data. It may be of limited use and they will mislead about the contents of that data but they do in fact have some.

CONS: They will mislead you in sales conversations and up-sell you to unnecessary products.

PROS: It's a data aggregation tool. If you've used one before, you know what it does. Since Hoovers is owned by Dun & Bradstreet, they have access to tons of data about what's happening in the business world. Might be decent tool if you're chasing after big companies - tons of their records focus on employees of big companies like Wal-Mart, etc.

CONS: For a company with as much access to business data as they have, their data isn't nearly as quality as it should be. There are very FEW direct phone numbers for the contacts that they list. Worse, there are lots of duplicate contacts since they obviously don't use email addresses to weed them out when the person is listed under two different company names (e.g. Tom Smith working for Sun Printing LLC and then relisting him under Sun Color Management Products where both records have the same email "tom@sunprinting.com"). The user interface is HORRIBLE. I'm using their grid view, which I need to use based on the fact that I need to manually export data, due to their outrageous pricing and year long contract forcing us into the cheapest plan possible. In grid view, there are 5 scroll bars on the screen (3 vertical and 2 horizontal) just for me to be able to see all of the data. I'm using a 24" widescreen monitor, so there's no excuse.