One of the great hallmarks of Purchasing Magazine is our extensive proprietary databases tailored for a professional buying audience. When I first joined the magazine in 1977, our Leadtime Survey had been in place for one year. We now have about 25 years of history of leadtime data for more than 50 products, as reported by buyers. That data serves as a spot check, plus it can be analyzed to show historical trends that are very useful in forecasting. In fact, many companies do just that. A recent analysis we did shows that our leadtime data neatly forecast turns in the business cycle about three months in advance.

Over the years, we added surveys on business conditions in the chemical process industries, metals and electronics. We also do price surveys in each of those areas. We sometimes miss a call, but outside analysis shows we're the best around—even including private consulting services that cost thousands of dollars annually. The most recent confirmation comes from Enron, which studied all sources for prices of hot-rolled steel band. They say Purchasing is the most accurate source, and Enron is now basing its steel futures' index on the Purchasing price. They trusted us enough to make a multimillion-dollar play.

Now we are raising the bar with our new Business Survey that combines the panels for Leadtimes, Chemicals, Metals, Electronics and Grassroots to create new, even higher-level databases. We'll add electronics leadtimes for the first time. We'll offer regional reports on all of the data we collect. We'll have greater depth in all the data by industry segment, including some—such as plastics—that we've never had before.

Importantly, we're also saving your time. Instead of sending you three or more surveys a month, we're cutting down to one primary survey a month. We're also presenting the data in new, very colorful graphics and easy-to-read charts that you saw when you first opened this issue of Purchasing. The new survey will also allow us to add all-new indexes that are now being prepared by Thinking Cap Solutions, an independent economics consulting firm in Port Angeles, Wash. More to come on that.

We're excited about this project and hope you agree. We also hope you support our efforts by participating in our new Business Survey. Please let me know at dsmock@cahners.com. And I'd especially like to thank the thousands of readers who have been faithfully filling out our surveys for all of these years.