You may not particularly like the old saying, "To fail to prepare, is to prepare to fail," but when it comes to benchmarking, it’s a saying that holds true.
Research and information expert Jinfo – the go-to source of expertise for corporate information centres – recently published a study which laid out the broad basics through to the intricate strategies when it comes to benchmarking.
As Jinfo discovered through in-depth interviews with information managers across the manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, professional services, legal and insurance sectors, combined with an online survey, these professionals really want more insightful benchmarking analysis and tools. They want (and need, for the sake of business success) to "establish the norms of success".
Hard-to-find data
So why has the information industry found it so difficult to generate or obtain meaningful benchmarks?
With an ever-changing industry that looks completely different to the way it did 10 years ago, it can prove difficult to compare departments and specialities that have only recently sprung into being. So we focus on variables like department structure, services, internal customers, and vendor strategies - those variables that contribute to the visibility, value and strategic importance of information expertise in successful companies.
As I cover in Jinfo’s Insights & Actions report from the Research Focus "Benchmark information roles - optimise your structure", successful operating environments have a clear home in the business for strategy and implementation of information expertise.
The Insights & Actions report gives you a taster of how you can compare your business to the benchmarks. It’s not just about how information centres need to be measuring basic information now, but what they might want to consider in the future. It’s essential to assume information services’ work and value will be drastically different in three years’ time compared to now – and that change needs to be accounted for in planning.
With even basic benchmarking research into information centres being pretty much non-existent, we knew we wanted to put the hours in and get down to the nitty-gritty of both qualitative and quantitative data – and what makes information centres tick.
It wasn’t going to be a quick fix. Over 100 hours over three months were put in to interview, research, analyse and develop models for use across information centres worldwide, to help put benchmarking into practice. And it won’t stop there!
Get involved & request your free report
The next step will be to take this further, into banking and financial services, as we continue to revisit and refresh our research next year. If you’d like to get involved we’d love to hear from you, so please do drop me an email at robin.neidorf@jinfo.com.
Three key insights and a thematic index to all the resources produced as part of this Jinfo Research Focus "Benchmark information roles - optimise your structure" are available via our website. Request your free copy of our Insights & Actions report now.
If you'd like to find out more about Jinfo or our benchmarking research, meet our Head of Content, Catherine Dhanjal at Internet Librarian International in London where she'll be moderating on 17th October.