The Enhanced Business Searching interface of BSC has changed. It no longer shows the options to browse the Business videos, company profiles, industry profiles and market research reports at the top of the screen. You now have to scroll down to see these.
This prompted me to run a couple searches in the main part of BSC to see how they compared and whether you could get the same information by placing limits on your search in the main part of BSC. I found limiting to company report under document type didn't give you the latest report that searching in company profiles did. For example a search for John Lewis in the main BSC interface, but limited to document type found only reports for 2007, whereas a search on the enhanced business searching interface (EBSI) found a report from 2011. Why this should be, I don't know.
The company profiles are an excellent source of information about companies. They are produced by Datamonitor and are usually very up-to-date. I haven't come across many that are older than one or two years. They contain a lot of background information, history and a SWOT analysis.
I did also find that you could obtain very useful and current country information by limiting the search to country report under publication type. Many of these are Datamonitor reports, but they also have reports form EIU and Political Risk Yearbook. The information given is very detailed, giving information such as economic indicators and sociological and political information. You used to be able to search in the EBSI for country reports, but the link was taken away some time ago, but at least they are still there. It was swapped for the link to business videos (many of which look really useful).
The industry reports are also very useful and you can often find reports on industries in specific countries; a useful alternative to GMID.
