The leading full-service healthcare-centric market research and public opinion research company: Black Book Research

“We gather unbiased, accurate and timely competitive services information, client experience measurements, and user opinions.”

Black Book is the new, undisputed leader in healthcare influencer marketing, offering insights that are current, qualitative and never pre-financed by any vendor or service provider. A premier provider of competitive intelligence, market research, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, services evaluation and strategic consulting services to companies worldwide, Black Book is headquartered in Tampa, FL.

Black Book has been recognized as a Top 50 international market research firm, specializing in the technology, healthcare, outsourcing, environmental/sustainability, nonprofits, pharmaceutical, procurement, education, finance and business services sectors. The firm has served over 5,000 clients including all of the nation’s top 100 financial institutions, 300 largest hospitals, 50 top insurers, 100 top universities, and the world’s 400 largest technology firms.

Genesis of Black Book Research

Since 2000, Black Book™ has polled the vendor and service firm satisfaction across over thirty industries in the software and technology and managed services sectors around the globe. Black Book started on an international scale with outsourcing buyers in business processes, call centers, information technology, finance and legal services. Black Book’s research division in Outsourcing and Offshoring was founded in 2003 by Doug Brown and Scott Wilson. In 2009, Black Book’s outsourcing research business unit was sold to Informa UK.

In 2010, Doug Brown, a former hospital administrator, and managed care executive returned to his career roots and launched Black Book trademarked business that polled the client experiences of healthcare software users. The firm quickly expanded its survey prowess and reputation for independent, unbiased crowd-sourced surveying from Chief Information Officers as was the industry standard, to wide-spanning polls of IT and health records professionals, medical practice administrators, nurses, financial leaders, physicians, financial officers, ancillary department heads, trustees, operations leaders, business office supervisors, and hospital information technology managers. The crowd-sourced approach to determining customer satisfaction and loyalty to IT vendors grew into evaluating healthcare industry consultants, advisory firms, managed care and health insurers, alternative medicine and post-acute or long-term care.

The single biggest challenge facing competitive intelligence and market research firms was not client engagement or user excitement but rather the evolution of innovative standards and methods such as mobile applications and real-time data collection. Healthcare providers were seeking an alternative to the status quo in healthcare technology analysis. They were seeking unbiased, independent source of current user experience data. Coincidentally, healthcare technology and services vendors were seeking a new, innovative, unbiased champion of marketing influence. It was the opportunity in time and circumstance that Black Book seized.

An Epitome of Extreme Accuracy and Enthusiastic Customer Service

Originally, Healthcare was not an industry that demanded outsourced services. Rather, the banking, insurance, retail, manufacturing, and energy sectors were Black Book’s focus and the company quickly became the kingmaker of several outsourcing vendors and delivery locations such as India, Philippines, Brazil, Eastern Europe and China.

Black Book employs a crowdsourced approach to understanding true customer satisfaction which challenged the old guard of analyst firms and researchers who directly contacted vendors for briefings and provided opinions based on inclusion and participation fees. In the past six years, by listening to user and vendor feedback, Black Book has expanded into the areas of technology and services that prospective buyers are seeking at currently Which includes Revenue Cycle Management, Population Health, Analytics, Accountable Care, MACRA, Precision Medicine, Interoperability and EHR Optimization.

Stumbling Blocks on the Journey to Greatness

Black Book learned early to work with the trade, industry and business media and press to not only provide vendor rankings but to provide support polls on activities or strategies that explain why trends are occurring. The firm also learned the value of being vendor agnostic and not to sell or contact any vendor until after public survey results were announced in the media. Providing independent insight directly from users and not massaged by an analyst firm give the research real value. Black Book is not an analyst organization. It is a satisfaction, loyalty and business trend polling organization which provides relevant data to decision makers including analyst firms.

The Black Book methodology has survived through a two highly reforming industries (first outsourcing and offshoring, now Healthcare) by being consistent and true to the corporate philosophy of being unbiased and independent from vendor influence. Creatively adapting to where the market moves also maintains a highly successful strategy for Black Book.

The Time Ahead for Black Book

Black Book is expanding its healthcare offerings in Cybersecurity, Managed Care/Health Insurance, Revenue Cycle Management, Population Health, Precision Medicine and Artificial Intelligence, as well as launching interactive subscription data services for clients.

Black Book is rapidly expanding its service offerings to interactive and user-accessed data sets, more extensive subscription offerings and knowledge centers, and surveying capabilities including Health Consumer/Patient polls, Managed Care Membership polls, Hospital services satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and outsourcing in healthcare. It’s Black Book’s goal to be the industry’s first go-to source for independent, unbiased satisfaction and loyalty polling, trends identification and competitive analyses by 2018.

Founder’s Desk

Douglas Brown, President: Doug Brown is a founder of Black Book Market Research LLC, and co-founder of Black Book of Outsourcing LLC, and Brown-Wilson Group, Inc. Doug’s global expertise in the areas of business development, economic expansion, market share growth, private equity, client experience polling, customer satisfaction surveys, loyalty assessments, predictive analysts and qualitative market research is the driving force behind Black Book’s success.

Before forming entrepreneurial ventures such as Brown-Wilson Group, Black Book Market Research, and Black Book Rankings, Doug launched his career as a hospital administrator, managed care operations executive, technology, and services sales leader and strategic organizational consultant in the pharmaceuticals, healthcare, hospital and managed care industry. He attended the University of Florida earning a bachelor’s degree in Political Science/Public Administration, and the University of Houston masters’ program in hospital and healthcare administration.

“Our independent industry benchmark studies, innovative data and analytics provide buyers and consumers with impartial insights, and help vendor companies improve quality, engagement and business performance.”