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Business Information Survey

Information Industry Consultant, allan{at}allanfoster.co.uk

Survey of business information services in corporate information services, based on in-depth interviews with leading business information managers. Key findings are:

• Business information budgets have been stable, with at least inflationary increases built in

• Business conditions have been turbulent of late but this has had no real impact on the services to date

• With more information rolled out to the clients' desktops, the services are all working to add value through a variety of approaches, including training, evaluation and analysis, business and client development, and generally undertaking more complex work

• Some pressure on the staffing headcount in the services during the year

• Recruiting suitable information professionals is a difficult process

• Offshoring information and research work has not expanded significantly but more companies are considering this option

• `Techno-centric' knowledge management remains important in some companies, particularly law firms, but is fading as a practice in others

• There is great interest and envisaged potential in social technology and Web 2.0 tools and techniques — but not much serious deployment yet

• Even in mature corporate information environments, marketing business information services is still seen as crucial by 90 per cent of respondents

• Fifty-five percent of the services provide some kind of competitor information function, albeit not at a high level

• A significant majority (75 per cent) of services support compliance functions such as `Know your client' and anti-money laundering checks

• Existing copyright provisions are seen as a barrier to effective information dissemination within companies by 80 per cent of respondents

• LexisNexis takes over at the top of the expenditure league

• The demand for information on Asian business markets is growing

• Almost all services are committed to training users in the discovery and use of digital business information sources

• The organization, management, and sometimes realignment of services is the highest strategic priority.

Key Words: business information • business libraries • corporate libraries • knowledge management • offshoring • social technologies • strategy • survey • trends • Web 2.0

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