Walker Management Library
Owen Graduate School of Management
401 21st. Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37203
Understanding a Company
To better understand a company, its performance in the market and the factors that affect it, you need to understand the whole picture of that universe. This includes :
- Company’s financials
- Products and services
- SWOT reports (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
- Industry pressures and challenges
- Competitors
- Analyst reports
While you should certainly look at the company’s website, note that will only help you gain insight into that company's opinion about itself. For other opinions about a company’s issues and performance, there are several types of library databases that will help. They are generally divided up by the type of information they contain although there are some exceptions such as Hoovers, which gathers several different types of information by company name .
Using the company stock symbol helps you find consistent company analysis from resource to resource by making sure you are comparing the same company, and not any subsidiaries.
You can access the current list of Fortune 500 companies via the Fortune website.
Database: Hoover's
Hoover's 
Contains company profiles, analyst reports, SWOTs, and market research reports under the NAICS code link..
- Search by Company Name
- Once on the results page, click on the link for your correct company
- Use the left hand menu to select specfic pieces of information on that company.
Example of SWOT analysis from Hoover's:
CRUSH Reports are available for Fortune 1000 companies and focus on IT architectures, business and technology initiatives, organizational charts, corporate strategies, budgets, and key decision maker contact information. You can access a CRUSH report from the left hand menu of a company overview page.
Additional Company Databases
- PrivCo This link opens in a new window
Business and financial data on major, non-publicly traded corporations: family owned, private equity owned, venture backed, and international unlisted companies. Company financials, M&A deals, valuations, venture capital funding, private equity deals, etc.
- Gale Business: Insights This link opens in a new window
Company chronologies, company histories, journals, market research reports, market share reports, rankings, recent news, SWOT reports, videos, industry information. Comparison chart tool.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Covers most business areas: management, marketing, economics, finance, accounting, & international business. Includes company reports, SWOT analyses, working papers, country reports, industry reports, case studies, etc.
- FactSet This link opens in a new windowFactSet is a financial platform that provides comprehensive data and analytics on global financial markets, economic measures, and companies. Any current Vanderbilt student, faculty or staff member can access FactSet for academic and non-commercial use. Users must initially register for a personal account, which can take up to 7 days to be processed. For faster access, FactSet is available on the computer in the UBM office in Calhoun Hall- no personal account needed.
- Refinitiv Workspace This link opens in a new window
Source of financial and economic data, news, and information. Provides access to analyst reports and select SDC data from the M&A section. Users must register for a personal account, which will be reset each semester. It is available to authorized users from Vanderbilt University for non-commercial, academic research. View, download, and printing limit for analyst reports and pdf documents of 150 pages per day, reset daily at midnight local time. Download limits for SDC data of 199 rows of excel data per day. Download limits for other types of data may apply.
