2010 - a year to sweat your assets
Jinfo Blog

21st December 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

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2010 will be a ‘lose-lose-lose’ year for content buyers, sellers and users as the gap between the price of information and buyers’ ability to pay widens, predicts Outsell (http://digbig.com/5bawas) – while further reports from both Outsell and IRN foresee more difficult times ahead. But can customers use this opportunity to turn vendors’ woes to their advantage? With stringent cost control likely to remain a key priority for some time to come, the competitive battleground could well shift from what data is provided to what tools vendors can provide for end users. In the aftermath of a tough 2009 negotiating round, customers are looking to use their existing data better rather than acquire new sources – so software has held up much better than financial data. So says IRN Research’s report on the Global Financial Data Market (summary and purchase details at http://digbig.com/5baxta) – which it defines as market and reference data (including credit referencing) plus tools (such as analytical and transactional software). While lower headcount and transaction levels have been reflected in lower revenues from the sales and trading community, the market has shifted instead towards the investment and advisory side, IRN reports. Echoing earlier findings from Outsell (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e26785), IRN also notes that credit rating services have been feeling the effects of the crunch particularly badly. Casting its net much more widely across the sectors, Outsell’s Information Industry Market Size, Share & Forecast Report for 2009 (purchase details at http://digbig.com/5bawat) shows that news providers and publishers are still most badly affected by the recession. But human resources and company information, as well as business-to-business trade publishing, have all seen double digit declines in 2009, with credit & financial information, market research and Yellow Pages & directories among sectors faring little better. So what about any recovery? IRN foresees some growth in 2010 but doesn’t expect the pre-crisis 2007 peak to be surpassed till 2011, while Outsell believes that most segments have bottomed out but will experience only low to moderate growth over the next couple of years. Clearly there’s no benefit to customers if crucial vendors go under or services contract severely as a result of the continuing economic hardship. But there’s a difference between ‘ability’ to pay (Outsell’s word) and ‘willingness’ (IRN’s) – so maybe there are opportunities for information managers to work with vendors to ensure that the information that they do need to buy works as hard as possible for them.

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