In addition, a 4-year backfile is available containing data from 2002-2006. Ward\'s includes details on 112,000 private and public companies in the US, offering basic contact information and data about each firm, including the industries in which it operates, names of top executives, number of employees, the type of compan, its financial performance and more. The digital version of Ward\'s includes additional information, such as alternative mailing addresses, an expanded list of executives, and historical financial information.
By exporting results of those searches to Excel (export feature available in August 2007), users can perform time series analysis - for example, a user could search for companies within a specific industry and within a certain state, then sort them by sales and total up the sales figures and the number of employees of the top-100 companies in the results list. Finally, a user could chart the results in Excel across five years\' of data.
In this way, putting Ward\'s on the Gale Directory Library platform "unlocks" the data from paper. Users can search by almost any field of information included in the directory - such as industry, state, zip code, area code, and type of company, as well as by sales ranges. Just as users can search by the fields that are specific to Ward\'s, they can sort by them too - name, date, number of employees, and financial performance.
Of course, like other directory products in the Gale Directory Library, Ward\'s is accessible 24/7 to all your users, whether on-site or off, and is cross-searchable with other digital directory products you buy on the GDL platform.