Caring and sharing
Jinfo Blog

13th March 2008

By Tim Buckley Owen

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What makes big companies big and small ones small? Unique selling proposition, quality of management and access to capital are three obvious factors. Quality business intelligence may once have been a fourth – but near universal internet access and an abundance of free and budget-priced information must have pushed that one some way down the list. According to the latest Annual Survey of Small Businesses’ Opinions from the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform http://digbig.com/4wpcw two thirds of small firms are ambitious for growth, and keeping up with technology is among the least of their worries. Over 80% used the internet, and 69% of those used it to access business information. In addition, only around 5% were worried about skills or recruitment problems. But you can be pretty sure that (with honourable exceptions like Freepint) almost none of them had information skills in mind. So hiring professional information managers should be one of the key factors differentiating big and small companies – or, to turn it on its head, there should be evidence that not using information efficiently can cost you dear. Indeed there is – but not, as you might expect, among the small fry. According to The Information Opportunity, a report from the consultancy Capgemini – http://www.uk.capgemini.com/news/pr/pr1605 – a ‘broken information culture’ is endemic in the UK private and public sectors, suppressing performance by an estimated 29%. Translate that into private sector profits and it equates to an annual £46 billion in missed opportunity. Based partly on interviews with senior FTSE company leaders, Capgemini’s report found 63% having to make crucial decisions daily without the correct information and 46% believing that a failure to share information was increasing both financial losses and operational costs. In addition, 46% also identified failure to obtain a single version of the ‘truth’ as a key reason for an organisation’s failure to innovate. All of which makes the philosophy behind another new report – from the information consultancy Outsell this time http://www.outsellinc.com/store/products/707 – especially intriguing. ‘User-centric solutions are the name of the game in today’s information marketplace,’ says Outsell’s $795 End-User Update 2008. ‘Building an information solution or environment that speaks personally to a user in a specific role or industry and mirrors that user’s workflow requires targeted marketing and product development,’ the report continues. Outsell’s offering includes ‘top obstacles to getting information, and most valued library roles’ – useful stuff for beleaguered information professionals, no doubt. But what if those obstacles include a failure to share corporately information that has been so precisely customised for one end-user’s benefit, as Capgemini’s findings suggest? If large companies’ use of information professionals is to pay effective dividends, perhaps the best contribution those professionals can make is to foster a culture of sharing.

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