Insight 3 from Research Focus - What you should invest in first for highest value
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

In the third of the insights from Jinfo's Research Focus, "Source Expertise - What It Means in a Google World", director of research, Robin Neidorf, explains why it's essential to invest at least 10% of your information team's time and resources into cultivating source expertise.

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If you are not investing at least 10% of your information team's time and resources in cultivating source expertise on information and data, you are doing the business a disservice. 

This is not "professional development" - this is risk management. The source expertise of your department needs to be managed strategically, with clear reporting and results into business strategy and organisational development.

During the Research Focus, "Source Expertise - What It Means in a Google World", we learned that most information services commit far less than this bare minimum to source expertise - the most important and unique thing they offer the business. "We'd love to, if we could make the time", is a common response, with heartfelt regret for missed opportunities.

This response has the equation upside down, however. Source expertise comes first, everything else should come after.

Why? It's simple mathematics: basic information work gets more and more accessible and user-friendly every year. Meanwhile, the opportunities, risks and complexity of the world of sources gets more challenging every year. So why do we see so many information services spending the lion's share of their time on transactional work, and hardly any time on planning for the future?

Source expertise is something every business needs, regardless of size or industry. Information services, whichever way it is configured and staffed in the business, is the only place this expertise can be cultivated. Without this focus on the future, businesses will not be able to:

• Optimise for the data revolution
• Adapt with agility to the next technology disruption
• Heighten the value of information interactions on every desktop (and mobile device)
• Build resilience, flexibility and meaningful measurement into the source portfolio.

Too often, investment in source expertise is perceived and budgeted as "professional development". But it's actually central to how competitive, agile and resilient a business can be in any industry. If "we don't have time/budget" is your reason for lack of investment in source expertise, you need to restructure priorities in your department to help the business focus on the future.

What should you do to invest your time in the future of information?

Freeing up the time you need for strategy requires a two-pronged approach.

1. First, get your service running as smoothly as possible, with potential to scale as needed:

• Build your foundation. Scalable systems for processing transactional work need to be created if they don't yet exist, and optimised if they do exist. These systems need to be visible to management, through clear reporting reflecting their value to the business.
  
  
• Commit to continuous improvement. With systems in place, empower your staff and managers to tweak, improve and re-engineer as often as necessary to achieve greater efficiency and results.

2. Then, focus your attention on emerging information-related opportunities, bringing your source expertise to formal and informal project teams:

• Address the mid-term, research the long-term. Select one or more areas of information development (data mining and visualisation are often on the list). Document what you already know, as well as the open questions you have. Compare your documentation with that of your peers in areas like IT, strategy, business development, etc.
  
  
• Commit to 10%. Are the opportunities you have described worth 10% of your time to the business? Can you describe the competitive edge gained through this investment?

These items from the Research Focus "Source Expertise - What It Means in a Google World" will help:

• What Savings Can You Make By Engaging Information Professionals?
• Getting More Value from Your Query Handling Services
• The Information Team with "The Right Stuff"
• Webinar recording (available to all Jinfo Subscribers): Three Ways to Influence Strategy with Source Expertise

The main lessons learned from this three-month Research Focus, plus a thematic index to all content published, are listed in the report Insights and Actions from the Research Focus "Source Expertise - What It Means in a Google World", visit the Research Focus page to get your copy.

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