Training? What training?
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

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FreePint Research: Survey on News Needs and Preferences 2011 now includes four years' worth of input from content buyers and information managers about their purchase priorities, use of free and fee resources, and internal requirements for business news content. As the data builds year over year, we are increasingly able to analyse and report on changes in the buyer marketplace. For example, back in 2009, the most important factor cited by content buyers in their choice of a premium product was the price – not surprising, as costs were foremost in everyone's mind as we all wondered what the next quarter would hold (or if there would even be a "next quarter"). The price is still important today, but its position in the priority list has dropped to number three or number four, behind (among other things) ease of use.

Another trend of note is the increased important buyers place on finding and working with vendors who are making progress in mobile delivery of news content. For the first time, respondents to the 2011 indicated that mobile capability is important to them in choosing a news vendor. This doesn't mean that buyers are necessarily fully ready for mobile deployment of news content. They know that they need to be ready, however, and they are looking for vendor partners who are innovating and moving forward in the mobile world.

Almost hidden in the data is an important opportunity for buyers and vendors to work more closely together. Over the past two data collection cycles, we have asked survey respondents how frequently users in their organisations interact with vendors in a number of different ways, including calling customer service, receiving email or print updates, participating in live or web-based training, or other forms of contact. These responses are translated into numeric values, where 1 represents an interaction rarely or never done and 4 represents an interaction frequently done. 

The figure shows average ratings for these interactions over the two years we have collected information on this datapoint. What strikes me in reviewing this information is how little training is taking place.

Vendors invest heavily in developing powerful products to meet user needs. Organisations invest heavily in acquiring these products and making them available to knowledge workers. Yet precious little investment seems to be taking place in hands-on help to ensure that knowledge workers can maximise the value of those investments.

Yes, the Holy Grail of product development is to design something so intuitive that no training is required. And users have become so accustomed to Google-like simplicity in an interface that they may have unrealistic expectations of the effort required to get the most out of powerful premium products. Adding to the difficulty is the sheer volume of work most of us are coping with every week – even if a training budget exists, who has the time to devote to accessing it?

Challenges, yes, but also opportunity: there is nothing vendors need more than to get close to their customers, understand exactly what the needs of workers are, and answer their questions directly. Similarly, knowledge workers have a wealth of information quite literally at their fingertips, but without training they will get only mediocre results and miss the value vendors and their employers have invested in.

What's missing from this equation that, if it were present, effective training would be easy? Is it lack of interest or focus from the vendors, from the customers or both that's leaving this opportunity on the table?

FreePint Research: Survey on News Needs and Preferences 2011 is available from the FreePint Shop.

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