Corporate information services in 2014


"The game is changing"

Business Information Review's annual Survey is now in its 24th year.  The author, Allan Foster, conducts in-depth and confidential interviews with senior information managers running corporate information services in a range of industry sectors to develop a detailed view of how these information services are resourced, managed and financed.The survey covers budgets, staff levels, outsourcing, vendor relationships, deepening the partnership with the business, the impact of mobile technology, contribution to knowledge management and more.  The overwhelming impression is of experienced information managers who are ambitious for their organisations and who recognise the challenges they are facing.Key findings
  • Content budgets are stable - only 15% of respondents are experiencing significant reductions (5% or more)
  • Great majority of respondents interested - or have an early involvement - in big data and data analytics initiatives.
  • Major potential new role in curating big data and analytics
  • Global operations for many services, with varying central control and a mix of organisational models
  • Pressures on staff headcount - 35% lose posts; other posts filled by temporary or fixed term contracts
  • A commitment to outsourcing by some 50% of respondents, some very mature arrangements, with a shifting balance of responsibilities between onshore and offshore staff
  • Whether to embed information staff in business units is still a big decision point for managers
  • Technical, analytics and personal skills development needs of IS staff is widely recognised
  • Many positive developments in knowledge sharing, social media, the use of stories and growing use of enterprise-wide collaborative systems
  • Relationships with information vendors and managing local access to data products still a high priority
For Foster, the key issue for information managers is to find a way to exploit existing competencies and develop new skillsets to help their organisations to make better decisions.  "If this territory is moving information management away from the conventional exploitation of external information and the piecemeal processing of internal data then that's where we need to be".SAGE is offering free online access to its information science journals in April 2014.

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