Jinfo: Jinfo for information strategy

Jinfo for information strategy
Jinfo Blog

26th January 2018

Abstract

What are our top three themes for information managers to address in the coming year? Find out from our director of research, Robin Neidorf.

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2018 marks the third year Jinfo has offered our "state of the industry" overview of the most important themes for information managers to address in their strategy, goals and projects for the coming year.

In past years, our state of the industry has focused on types of projects we recommended prioritising due to their importance for information teams to underscore their value. This year, however, we focus on types of solutions we recommend leaders turn to, in order to address challenges in a wide variety of areas.

Whether your biggest challenge is demonstrating ROI, improving the visibility of your expertise, drawing closer to customer groups or getting a handle on the world of data analytics, we recommend considering these three types of solutions:

1. Position yourself as an in-house consultant

Whether a solo operation or a global team with headcount in the dozens, the best information teams are the ones that position themselves as in-house consultants on content, data, research and professional information skills. When considering how to address any operational challenge, an effective starting point can come from asking the question, "If we were an information consulting firm, how would we go about this?"

2. Re-engineer your services

There isn't an information department anywhere that avoids the problem of limited resources. The best information teams, however, stare down the challenges of capacity and tame them through rigorous re-engineering efforts. They follow the mantra of "streamline, outsource, automate, push back, stop doing".

The result? They don't just do MORE with less; they do BETTER with less.

If your problem suffers from the minimal mental energy you can put towards solving it, service re-engineering is the solution for freeing up resources.

3. Focus on fundamentals

The importance of information expertise to organisations, now and in the future, will not come from branching into wholly new directions; it will come from our ability to focus on the fundamentals of what makes information expertise unique:

Source expertise
Technology expertise
Value expertise.

No other department in an organisation will bring these fundamentals to the decision-making process. Finding how the fundamentals apply to new systems, projects and initiatives is a critical strategy for a successful information team.

View to the future

Strategy means more than laying out your major initiatives and workplan for the next 12 months. It means examining trends and projecting how they may play out 3 years or 5 years down the road, then designing the interim map to keep you in front of them.

These three solutions will serve you well in designing that map, regardless of the details of your predictions for the future.

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

Articles: