Jinfo: Jinfo for content purchasing

Jinfo for content purchasing
Jinfo Blog

16th March 2017

Abstract

Are you being impacted by mergers and acquisitions affecting your content purchasing or existing content resources? Jinfo's director of research, Robin Neidorf, suggests some Jinfo resources to help overcome uncertainties and shifts in product development direction.

Item

As I prepared to write this update, an email request came through from the Content Buying section chair of the Leadership and Management Division of SLA.

To prepare for what is always a dynamic breakfast meeting at the annual conference, she wanted to know what our top content buying "pain points" are.

This was an easy one - I get several questions every week about one pain point in particular: significant acquisitions create enormous pressure on content portfolios.

Two specific acquisitions have prompted many of these questions, but they point to content buying pressures that exist with just about any acquisition:

Less competition in the marketplace: buying organisations feel squeezed and pressured with fewer options for content. The fear - and often the reality - is that prices will undergo a steep rise.
Internal confusion and interruption of content strategy: what happens when you already have both products associated with an acquisition before the deal takes place? It can be very confusing to figure out how the chips will fall... particularly when the vendors themselves aren't always very clear on the subject.
Shift in product development: often a new owner has a very different vision for a product, and it may not sit well with what you feel you purchased. Even if the new owner honours your multi-year contract, the support for what you originally purchased can get spotty as they move in a new direction.
Owners with different objectives: it's one thing when the new owner is another publisher or content vendor; it's quite another when the new owner is in private equity or venture capital. Investor-owners may be looking to maximise ROI quickly, without truly understanding the value of the product to its current customer base.

We don't have perfect solutions to any of these concerns, but we DO offer resources to help you cope:

Talk with your peers in Jinfo Community sessions - our confidential discussions on key topics of interest to information managers
Review our market landscapes - convenient tabular coverage of providers in a given content category give you a quick view on what else may be available
Articulate with stakeholders and vendors what value means in YOUR organisation - start your purchasing and negotiations from the strength of a clear statement of what a given product delivers to your organisation in terms of value.

How Jinfo supports content purchasing

Jinfo resources support content purchasing with original research, product reviews, market landscapes, Q&As with vendors, and more. If you have a Jinfo Subscription, you have access to all our Content. Click any link below to login to view, save or share any item, register for webinars, and download reports.

We publish research-based insights, facilitate peer-to-peer discussions on them, and offer consulting services to tailor those insights to your needs. Find the right Jinfo Subscription components to meet your needs.

Recent Subscription Content of particular interest to our customers involved with content purchasing:

Articles:

Reports:

Product reviews:

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

Upcoming:

The Research Focus, "Developing an information-savvy workforce through strategic alignments " runs from April - June 2017 and encompasses three months of research, reports, webinars and Community sessions examining how essential information skills can align with the business and embed throughout departments to ensure a stronger, more capable workforce.

Webinars:

Community sessions: