Jinfo for optimising your research service
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

How can you unpack and optimise your team's workflow and what are the key elements of workflow analysis? Find out and review the latest Jinfo reports, articles, webinars and Community sessions most relevant to managers running a research service.

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Streamline, Outsource, Automate, Push back, Stop doing: our acronym "SOAPS" is an easy way to remind yourself of your options for optimising the workflow of your research team.

But knowing when and how to apply each of these options is more art than science. It requires an ability to pick apart your practices to determine where in the process value may be leaking out of the system - and this, in and of itself, is challenging work. So challenging, in fact, that several Jinfo Consulting customers have recently brought in our analysts to help them see their work with more objective eyes.

How do you do the work you do? Why do you complete tasks in a certain order? What inputs do you use to make in-the-moment decisions about how to tackle a specific question or problem? Experienced researchers often do these things without even thinking about them. The optimisation process, however, requires close examination of each step, each shift from Task A to Task B, each decision along the way.

To learn to unpack processes and workflows, the "Jinfo model - automation and optimisation" is a helpful guide. In it, you'll find the key components of workflow analysis, listed below, along with best practice for each component and the results you can get by applying best practice. An included worksheet gives you and your team a framework for working through one or more of your own processes, to start to identify where SOAPS might apply.

Components of workflow analysis

• Essential knowledge
• Systems
• Operational data tracking
• Communication history
• Status updates
• Collaboration and substitution of resources
• Lower-value work.

More detail on each of these components can be found in the Jinfo model, included in a Jinfo Subscription.

Review the model, discuss with your team, and then plan to attend our next Community session on Jinfo for optimising a team of researchers, scheduled for 7 January 2019. Bring your burning questions regarding how to get the most out of your team - and demonstrate its value - during the year to come.

Recent Subscription resources of particular interest to our customers involved with optimising a team of researchers:

Articles:

• Why it's worth getting to know Office 365
• Nine ways intranets are evolving
• Mapping the complex technology environment
• Guide to value in the Jinfo Research Focus on intelligence systems
• Q&A with Iconitel - optimising information resources

Reports:

• Jinfo model - mapping technology readiness
• Jinfo model - automation and optimisation

Product reviews:

• Product review of Onelog
• Product review of Digimind Intelligence
• Product review of Knowledge360 from Cipher Systems
• Product review of Wide Narrow
• Mini review of Vable Inbox

Webinars:

Recordings and decks with speaker notes available; sign in to access: 

• Adjust workflow to achieve balance in content, technology and behaviours
• Shedding light on how to measure value

Community sessions:

Decks with speaker notes available; sign in to access:

• Balancing content and technology in current awareness
• Jinfo for optimising a team of researchers - your burning questions

Upcoming, register now:

• 7th January 2019: Jinfo for optimising a team of researchers - your burning questions

Find out more about how Jinfo helps you optimise a team of researchers.

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