How to manage the flight to quality?
Jinfo Blog

20th July 2010

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Almost half of all knowledge workers feel that the amount of information they confront each day is making it difficult for them to get their work done, and well over half feel overwhelmed by information ‘to the point of incapacity’ several times each week. It’s a grim picture if it’s accurate – but it’s an ill wind, as the saying goes, so it ought to represent an opportunity for information professionals. You have to treat the figures with a degree of caution because the respondents to this survey by knowledge economy consultant Basex are self-selected and it’s still a work in progress (http://digbig.com/5bcbbe). Nevertheless, Basex chief executive Jonathan Spira suspects we’re creating information not for its value but simply to make the pile bigger, and wonders whether we could get by with a bit less of it (http://digbig.com/5bcbbf). We almost certainly could, and maybe the answer lies with technology – clever algorithms to help sift and prioritise more effectively. If so, there’s certainly no shortage of touted solutions. Wolters Kluwer, for example, has recently added all sorts of additional features to its IntelliConnect research platform for tax and accounting professionals (http://digbig.com/5bcbbg). And credit reporting service Experian has just unveiled its new BusinessIQ web platform, which it claims will enable credit professionals to deploy advanced analysis tools to enhance their credit policy decisions, as well as helping them to prioritise their workflow with clever alerts driven by events (http://digbig.com/5bcbbh). Information overload is also the target of legal research system WestLaw Next, which Thomson Reuters claims can increase research efficiency by up to 64% (http://digbig.com/5bcbbj) and which was a star player in the company’s recent Intelligence, Intuition and Information report (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29752). Since then, Thomson Reuters has additionally announced its acquisition of document review software CaseLogistix from Anacomp Inc, to add to the Westlaw Litigator set of integrated tools for lawyers (http://digbig.com/5bcbbk). But if gizmos won’t fix information overload, perhaps the market will. Outsell recently reported an unprecedented 2.3% decline in the legal, tax and regulatory information market last year (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29615) – and now a little crop of further Outsell reports adds to the pain. Business-to-business trade & company information last year was down 16.1% from 2008 (purchase details at http://digbig.com/5bcbbm) and news providing & publishing by a perhaps unsurprising 19% (http://digbig.com/5bcbbn). Even credit & financial information declined by 2%, following two years of double digit growth (http://digbig.com/5bcbbp). Outsell comments that when budgets are tight, users often sacrifice ‘secondary’ information for a ‘flight to quality’, which tends to favour the large scale providers. When you consider the continuing product innovation demonstrated by the big players that’s perhaps not surprising – but if it stifles potentially disruptive start-ups, it could be counter-productive in the longer term.

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