Jinfo for information strategy
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

Is your information service stuck in transactional mode or operating at strategic level? Jinfo's director of research, Robin Neidorf, highlights the telltale signs of reactive mode and key traits of successful information centres.

Item

Are you planning and executing on strategy, or are you stuck in transactions?

Last week I conducted two intake interviews to provide basic benchmarking on the visibility and value of source expertise. Although both interviews were with information managers in mid-sized organisations in the financial industry, the results could not have contrasted more:

In the first interview, I was deeply impressed by the degree to which this manager was able to define and execute on information strategy, with the full support of senior leadership in her organisation. Although leaders don't always understand her domain expertise, they trust her to make sound recommendations.

As a result, she has appropriate influence over and access to key projects in usability and data analytics, and her small team of information professionals has the appropriate balance of work - responding to queries but also dedicating time to high-value projects that benefit the entire firm.

In the second interview, I learned that the information manager struggles to gain visibility for source expertise and tends to be stuck in a transactional, reactive mode. In this organisation leadership still thinks about information as a fixed resource requiring limited skills to manage and interact with.

This manager knows that a whole world of opportunity is emerging in the development of data tools and making information more accessible and intuitive to end users. But she and her team are barely keeping ahead of current contracts, vendor relations and query management. There is no time to step back and assess risk and opportunity, and make sensible recommendations. And if there were, would anyone listen?

This study in contrasts demonstrates the full spectrum of information strategy. The best information centres and services:

• Maximise the strengths of their positioning in the business, whether they report to IT, R&D, central services, or some other configuration

• Have access to the most senior leadership, who value them for their unique expertise around information sources, technology and value

• Cultivate and deepen formal and informal relationships with key departments - IT, finance, data analytics, human resources, and risk management

• Articulate clearly the role of information strategy in the success of the business and can easily name the gaps between their vision and the current environment.

That's what we at Jinfo aim to help every information manager accomplish. That's what drives our research and editorial planning for articles, reports and webinars. That's how we shape Community sessions and design the activities and discussions therein. 

As for Consulting services? This is where we customise an approach to moving you from transactions to strategy, placing information services at the heart of the organisation's future.

Recent Subscription Content of particular interest to our customers involved with information strategy: 

Articles

• Gaining Influence With Those Who Own Technology Expertise
• What Does the Digital Workplace Mean for Working With IT? Views From Thought Leaders
• Making Internal Information Visible Using Enterprise Content Management
• Information Professionals Need to Know About Big Data
• Getting More Value from Your Query Handling Services
• Being an Industry Specialist in a Global Management Consultancy
• Discovering Discovery Systems
• Design Thinking - A Useful Way of Co-Creating
• Carrying out a current awareness needs assessment
• What does declining usage reveal about my current awareness service?

Reports

• Market landscape - enquiry management and helpdesk systems
• Market landscape - discovery systems
• Market landscape - open source products
• Market landscape - company information sources
• Subscription update for information services management
• Insights and actions report from the Research Focus, "Source expertise - what it means in a Google world"

Webinars - recordings available to view for anyone with a Jinfo Subscription

• Why We Keep Talking About The News
• Balancing "Generalist" and "Specialist" Expertise
• Source Expertise and Your Value to the Business
• Shifting the Worldview around IS/IT Relationships: A First Step to Alignment

Upcoming research and events

The Research Focus, "Content and technology for current awareness" runs from July-September and encompasses three months of research, reports, webinars and Community sessions examining the challenging area of comprehensive and effective current awareness provision.

The Research Focus, "Data analytics - ready your information service" will run from October - December and offers practical insight on strategic positioning of your expertise within the burgeoning world of data analytics.

Webinars:

• Understanding the Full Scope of Sources for Current Awareness on 13th September
• Create your plan to prepare for data analytics on 11th October
• Identify - and overcome - the most common data analytics risks on 8th November
• How information services can best work with the many stakeholders of data analytics on 13th December.

Community sessions:

• Skills Crossover for Current Awareness and Data Analytics, online teleconference on 21st September
• Together buyers and sellers face up to data analytics (In-Person), w/c 26th September (New York) or w/c 17th October 2016 (London)
• Together buyers and sellers face up to data analytics, online teleconference on 25th October
• Staking your claim - the role of information services within data analytics, online teleconference on 16th November.

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