ProCompare leverages the accumulated product knowledge of the global IT community for the benefit of technology shoppers. ProCompare will fundamentally change the procurement and selection process for business technology products, by allowing the buyer to make decisions informed by this professional communities wealth of knowledge. ProCompare is also the perfect platform for IT professionals to gain exposure as trusted experts in their fields and to network for enhanced business opportunities.
It all started when ProCompare's founder, Mor Sela, was searching for technology recommendations on the web. He could not find a single source of information that was both reliable and relevant to his specific needs. Some sites and magazines offered consumer product reviews by a closed group of experts, but that was it. Getting information that addresses one's particular needs requires a lot of reading and research, or otherwise a compromise on professionalism.
Intrigued by this gap in service, Mor commissioned the consulting firm consulting firm Brand New Marketing conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews with business shoppers. The main research objective was to identify their technology buying decision process and their satisfaction with that process.
The research showed that business shoppers tend to rely on one of the following sources for deciding which technology to buy:
- IT Magazines & Blogs: Many IT magazines and blogs are effective for keeping updated on technology and other trends. However, when it comes to product buying advice, their recommendations are typically limited to a few pre-specified products in each category. Magazines and blogs do not offer in-depth reviews on the full spectrum of products in a given category. Also, the reviewers are not addressing each buyer's individual needs. In addition, IT magazines and blogs often represent the specific editor's view and do not reflect diversity of professional opinions.
- IT Consultants: Many small businesses use IT consultants for product advice. While an IT consultant may be a guru in a particular area, however, it is impossible for him or her to master the many different IT products and services available for small businesses across all categories. ProCompare provides one-stop access to the worldwide community of IT experts, facilitating the interactions and product/service analyses that will help buyers optimize their product search.
- Q&A sites: In addition to asking friends, colleagues and consultants for advice, some shoppers leverage Q&A sites such as Yahoo! Answers. These answers are subject to issues of timeliness, accuracy and breadth.
- Traditional Comparison Shopping Sites: These sites typically give you a quick list of options. Their ranking is primarily based on single product criteria such as price. Thus, in most cases, there is no personalized advice as to which products may actually be best for the buyer's needs.
- Vendors Sites: Many procurement teams and shoppers research and compare different vendor sites themselves. Typically, larger brands are researched first, followed by lesser-known brands. This process is highly time-consuming and leaves the buyer with the almost impossible task of identifying unpublicized disadvantages to products.
Looking for a more optimal approach to procurement, Mor thought that it would be great if there was a good way for shoppers to leverage the vast amount of product knowledge accumulated by others globally. Unlike consumer-oriented products, recommendation methods that are based on similarities between shoppers (such as the one that Amazon uses) do not provide good enough results when it comes to business technology. Even when dealing with buyers of similar profile or purchase history, what is important to one shopper may not be important to another. The solution Mor was seeking had to ensure that the recommended products get high scores on the criteria that matters the most to each specific shoppers, and may include products that have lower scores on other criteria. Also, it was important to differentiate between reviewers based on their trust level.
Considering the above requirement, Mor came up with a patent-pending method that would provide personalized and instant product recommendation, based on the matching of user's preferences with ratings of a community of experts. In addition, the method was established to determine the trust level of each expert compared to others so that the recommendation algorithm ProTrust TM would use higher weighing to rating of reviewers with higher trust level
Despite the rising popularity of user-generated reviews, most experts don't spend time reviewing products without a direct incentive. To ensure varied and high-quality reviews, ProCompare focuses solely on IT Professionals. When IT professionals review products at ProCompare, they increase their exposure and trust with potential clients, partners and employers. Their storefronts and profiles at ProCompare provide an opportunity to reach out to wider audiences in a direct and innovative manner.
To take ProCompare from a great concept to a successful offering, Mor knew that he must build a highly reliable team. It was important to find people with relevant background and expertise that would cover all aspects of the business.
When Mor first presented the concept to co-founder Ravi Srinivasan, who, among other things, was responsible for initial technology procurement and architecture for the leading BPO firm OfficeTiger LLC, he immediately related to the problem and was excited about the ProCompare solution. Ravi acknowledged spending far too much time evaluating IT products and in some cases selecting the wrong products, simply because none of the sources out there where efficient and reliable enough. In addition, Ravi has tremendous experience in founding and building successful companies to become global leaders in a given space. His prior firm, OfficeTiger LLC, was acquired by RR Donnelley in 2006
Additional key members of the team are:
- Phil Rose, who brings vast experience in reviewing SMB technology, including co-founding the PC Magazine Labs and serving as a Technology Editor at Computer Reseller News.
- Matt Sarrel, who brings eight years of experience as a Technology Director at Ziff Davis and PC Magazine as well as wealth of experience as an IT consultant for small businesses.
- Shai Peretz, Founder & CEO of Consonet Internet Solutions, who served as VP Operations of Shopping.com (acquired by E-bay).
- Professor Izak Benbasat, who is known as one of the world's top MIS professors, conducted significant research about Recommendation Engine.
- Dr. Ofer Arazy, PhD in MIS who brings with him extensive research experience about social networking, Wikis extensions and other related web applications.
- Merav Greidinger, founder of BrandNewMarketing.us who brings with her over twelve years of marketing research and consulting experience with web 2.0 startups as well as Fortune 500 companies.
- Raj Gajwani, an entrepreneur who served as Director of the Data & Research product lines for Knowledge Storm.
- Amir Lahat, who co-founded Atrica, a firm that was recently acquired by Nokia-Siemens Networks. Amir also co-founded a web-based multimedia start-up that recently raised their first round of financing.
- Ben Schochet, who bring with him over 10 years of web app development experience for start-ups and Fortune-500 companies, including serving as an AVP of web app development at Lehman Brothers.
Also, to ensure development of an easy to use, highly reliable and scalable product, ProCompare had partnered with Iteamic, an SEI CMMi Level-3 and ISO 27001 Certified IT Software Services Organization with a wealth of experience in building successful web applications.
