Category Archives: BIR annual survey

All change, all change please

The latest issue of BIR is now available online. In the issue this month we see a focus on knowledge management and change from the reflections of senior managers of business information teams on their short-term strategy going forwards to change imposed through Covid to the disruptive effects of technology:

Our first article this issue is the awaited second part of the report on last year’s BIR Survey. Stephen Philips – Consolidate Gains, Implement More Change – The 2021 Business Information Review Survey: Part 2. This part of the survey looks at trends in how leaders are shaping their operations through technology, content acquisition, vendor engagement and client engagement. It finishes with a look at priorities going forward for the near future.

Our second paper by Taleho Tseole – Improving Knowledge Retention in the Cross-Border Mergers of the Telecommunications Industry of Lesotho is part of a larger PhD study and takes a look at how knowledge retention can be improved in the consolidated telecommunications industry in Lesotho, South Africa. It considers what actually happened, the knowledge that was retained and how that might have been improved with the use of more formal techniques.

Our third paper by Sanjay Kaushal – Sustainable knowledge management during crisis: focus on Covid-19 pandemic is a review of the literature around the importance of effective knowledge management in the mitigation of the effects crises can have on organisations. It uses the Covid 19 pandemic as the example. The paper considers what the literature shows in relation to what has been effective knowledge management through people, process and technology throughout this crisis.

Our fourth paper by Abdulakeem Sulyman – Smart Libraries: Changing the Paradigms of Library Services takes an interesting look at the effects of technology that have created ‘smart services and products’ in particular it looks at the emergence of the Smart Library Service considering both the flexibility that smart services can offer as well as what new challenges may be raised in implementing such services.

We finish this issue with our regular writer, Hal Kirkwood and his quarterly article Perspectives Revisited. This issue focussed on market research, competitive intelligence, and social media research papers from across Sage publications. Papers of interest quoted look at the exploitation and exploration of knowledge, the effects of the commoditisation of market research through the publication of industry insights and the importance of marketing information, how it can fuel growth within an organisation but also by the nature of wealth of information collected how caution needs to be exercised in order to not come to inappropriate or inaccurate conclusions.

June’s issue of BIR now available

In this issue we welcome back Stephen Philips with part 2 of the BIR annual survey results, and regular writers Sharon Richardson with another insightful Out of the Box article and a round up on interesting articles and themes in Hal Kirkwood’s Perspectives: Revisited.

Phillips ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ – The 2020 Business Information Review Survey: Part II

To make the survey results more digestible this year we have split the results into three reports. Part 2 reports on our participants’ reflections on a range of topics that are shaping their operations including the operating environment, technology and content trends.

Richardson The new physicality of data

In this latest ‘Out of the Box’ article Richardson looks at some of the innovations made possible by the focus on digitisation of existing processes and interactions and the integration of this with real world interactions and bricks and mortar. She explores some of the implications of this new physicality of data from the birth of a digital twin to the death of privacy, and the growing urgency for new approaches to data governance and information lifecycle management.

Kirkwood Perspectives: Revisited

In this issue of Perspectives Kirkwood looks at different facets of business and professional communication education, research into market intelligence and market researchers’ usage of technology, design-thinking, and the development of entrepreneurship in small cities. He reflects on how aspects covered in the articles in these areas are like situations experienced by business libraries and their users. He also looks at articles that investigate different business and management factors to the responses to the recent COVID pandemic again reflecting on the similar scenarios librarians face and important lessons learned that can be transferred to a library/information team.

Talafidaryani Digital transformation: Towards new research themes and collaborations yet to be explored

This paper is a review of research collaborations in digital transformation which indicates that research has particularly focussed on the following three areas: Technological and Industrial View, Organisational and Managerial View, and Global and Social View and that institutions particularly in Northern Europe have had better performance in research collaborations in this area. It also notes that Technology, Sustainability, Big Data, Information and Communications Technology, Innovation, Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, Business Model, Social Media, and Digitisation.

Ayinde Knowledge audit as an important tool in organisational management: A review of literature

This article is a good overview on the current literature and importance of knowledge audits. Covering audits, risk, national and international standards the paper seeks to answer the questions around what to consider when an organisations commence with a knowledge audit.

Luke Tredinnick and Claire Laybats

BIR September Issue

Our latest issue sees the publication of the 2019 Business Information Review Annual Survey. The BIR Annual Survey is the worlds’ longest running research into trends within the business information sector. Since 1991, it has provided an invaluable guide to emerging issues, changing technologies and professional values. The 2019 survey is the fourth written and researched by Denise Carter of DCision Consult. Some of the key themes that have emerged in this year’s survey include the following.

  1. The challenges of new and emerging tools and technologies and ensuring organizations have the right skills to manage these effectively.
  2. The potential for Information Professionals to become the organizational strategic advisor for data and information across the whole organization.
  3. Whether Information Professionals still view themselves as subservient in organizational relationships, and whether they feel their role is to answer queries reactively or to proactively provide data that provoke new discussions and questions.
  4. The integrity and ethics of data: where data come from, how it is manipulated and whether good ethical standards in data management will become fundamental in the future.
  5. The increasing importance of information literacy.

The BIR Annual Survey has now been running for 29 years. From its inception, it was recognized that the survey might reveal useful longitudinal data about trends and changes in the profession. However, aside from a brief review of the first 10 years published in 2000, no comprehensive review of the surveys has taken place. The second paper in this issue addresses this gap. The first of a two-part review of 29 years of the annual survey, it explores in particular the way in which technological change has been tracked by the research over time, and what this reveals about the role of emerging technology in the profession. The second part of this review will be published in the December issue.

Our third paper, this issue was written by Eddie Collins and Delphine Phillips of Integreon. Entitled ‘Automation – It Does Involve People’ the paper explores the benefits of Robotic Process Automation – software that can be used to mimic repetitive administrative tasks that traditionally require human intervention, such as data transfer. The final paper is entitled ‘The Impact of Business Intelligence Through Knowledge Management’ and was written by Wassila Bouaoula, Farid Belgoum, Arifusalam Shaikh, Mohammed Taleb-Berrouane and Carlos Bazan. The paper explores the uses of Business Intelligence tools in Knowledge Management.

Best Paper Prize 2018

We’re pleased in this issue to announce the winner of the Business Information Review Best Paper Prize 2018. The prize is awarded to the research or professional paper judged by the editorial board and editors as the most successful, interesting or relevant over the course of the preceding year. A number of papers stood-out over the course of the year, including Mark West and Delphine Philips’s ‘Exploring the future of Business Information Services in the financial sector’ published in March, 2018, and Hal Kirkwood’s ‘The current state of artificial intelligence and the information profession’ published in March, 2018. However, the 2018 Best Paper Prize has been awarded to Andrew Lambe, Fiona Anthoney and Jo Shaw’s paper ‘One Door Closes, Another Opens: Surviving and Thriving Through Organizational Restructure by Ensuring Knowledge Continuity’ published in December, 2018.

The paper addresses the experience knowledge continuity and organizational memory during NHS England’s organizational restructuring in 2015. It recounts the approach taken by the Knowledge and Intelligence team of the Sustainable Improvement team at securing organizational knowledge following the Smith Review of Improvement and Leadership Development in the National Health Service and its consequences, charting the stages in the migration of content, the development of new retrieval tools and the development of a new knowledge service. It provides an interesting and highly relevant case study, and we are very happy to award it the BIR Best Paper Prize 2018.

BIR Annual Survey – Key Themes 2 : The information professional as a strategic advisor

Another of the key themes from this years’ BIR annual survey brings up the increasingly important aspect of the information managers role as strategic advisor to the organisation. We have all seen that information and mis-information can have a huge impact on an organisation’s operations and strategy, now with the increasing need to gain value from data and bring together internal and external data and information everything just got a lot more complex.

We have long talked about the importance of the information professional to the organisation but in this perfect storm of information and data it’s time to take those ideas, skills and knowledge to the next level.

Corporate strategy is key and core to the organisation but what is that strategy built on? Market data, competitive intelligence, internal research and development data, financial information and news to name just a few.  The information team with their wealth of experience, knowledge and skills in research, information management, information and data literacy are more than qualified to play an important role in ensuring that the right information (read reliable, trusted and validated) is available to those developing and planning the corporate strategy and that that information is kept up to date and relevant to help evolve the strategy as needed.

Technology is a closely linked partner in effective information management and information professionals are increasingly required to have skills and knowledge to assess what technology and automation services are appropriate for their departments to operate in increasingly demanding environments. A number of organisations I have spoken with recently are considering intelligence tools or add ons to existing systems to help optimise their workload ensuring that they can concentrate on providing the best value add service to the organisation.

So with advising on and management of information sources and licensing, introduction of data content management, challenges around gaining benefits from an increasingly vast source of unstructured content and considering what technology and when to implement it to enhance effective information management I think it is fair to say that information professionals can indeed be considered as strategic advisors to the organisation.  The challenge sometimes is communicating the importance of the information professionals skills and knowledge to executive leadership so that they also see information professionals as a key strategic advisor to support and facilitate their objectives and goals for the future.

Find out more about what our respondents thought on this in the annual BIR survey published in September.

Emerging skills for the information profession – The 4th theme in the BIR Annual Survey

Over the past two years Business Information Review has examined a range of emerging technologies that are beginning to impact on professional practice in the commercial information management sector. These have included smart technology, cybersecurity, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. We have also explore a range of social and regulatory issues associated with emerging technology including GDPR and fake news. The information profession has become closely aligned to technological change, and information professionals have often been early adopters of new ways of communicating, managing, and finding information, data and resources.

The issue that has recurred most frequently over that time, both in the journal itself, and in the conversations that we have with professionals to discuss which professional trends the journal should be addressing, has been the growing place of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI poses advantages as a tool in information management, but also challenges as a disruptive technology for the profession, business services, society more widely. AI has featured as a topic in the journal in March 2018, December 2017 and March 2017. And it is featured again as a dominant theme in the 2018 BIR Annual Survey, but in two ways.

In July this blog reflected on the ways in which AI is poised to transform information work and business processes. But that change and other associated technological developments pose a different set of challenges for information professionals, implying new ways of working, and an associated new set of skills and knowledge. The final theme in this year’s BIR Annual Survey reflects the ways in which senior information and knowledge professionals in the commercial sector are beginning to tackle these challenges, and confront the changing skills-set of the future information professional.

The BIR Annual Survey is the longest running continuous survey of the needs and working lives of commercial information and knowledge managers in the World. Since 1990 it has provided an invaluable insight into the changing world of Information and Knowledge Management. We like to think of it as an annual snapshot of the state of the profession. Throughout July and August we have provided a taste of the issues that are preoccupying information and knowledge professionals in the 2018 BIR Annual Survey. The final report will be published in the September issue of Business Information Review, and provides a fascinating insight into a rapidly changing profession.

Realising the value of data – Third Theme in our BIR Annual Survey

This is the third in our series of themes from the latest BIR annual survey.  The value of data is something that is constantly being discussed within organisations – How do we make the most of the data we have? How do we realise the benefits?  How do we know what we know? how do we commercialise it?

All are interesting questions and equally important.  Since the rise in popularity of ‘big data’ which started around 2005,   (we have been focussed on collating data for much longer than that but technological advancements that culminated around this time gave rise to the possibilities of gathering and making use of large and potentially disparate data sets), organisations have been increasingly looking at gathering data – on their customers, on their competitors, markets, business environments to name a few.  Within this time organisations have also been trying to figure out how they can realise the value of the data they have gathered.  Even today with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) organisations are still struggling to assess the value of data.  If it is done correctly it can help inform strategy and investment in future business assets and acquisitions, if it is not then it can be very costly indeed.  There are a number of ways for looking at how to measure the value of data but at this time none are accepted as the way forward.

McKinsey have written articles and conducted research in this area.  They have found that those organisations that are able to leverage customer insights to inform and improve the business are out performing peers by 85% in business growth and sales.  McKinsey note that most organisations find it difficult to realise the potential value of their data because of different technologies, legacy systems and siloed working meaning that data is fragmented all over the place.  It is this situation in particular that hinders organisations taking real advantage of the data they already hold and can lead many into investing externally into research and competitive analysis in order to leverage value from data.

What is the answer?  You the information professional are the key to the answer.  An understanding of search, location and structure of the internal data as well as the context in which it was found and stored is vital to making sense of the wealth of data an organisation holds.  Jinfo reported on the importance of the information professional in Data Analytics – ready your information service (see references below) looking at the importance of source expertise for gathering and analysing external data. In gathering and analysing data context and source are key to providing accurate insights to inform organisational strategy.

Read more about what information teams are considering and doing today to have an impact on data value in our annual research report published in September’s issue.

References

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/your-data-is-worth-more-than-you-think/

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/capturing-value-from-your-customer-data

https://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/how-valuable-is-your-companys-data/a/d-id/1331246

Data analytics – ready your information service https://web.jinfo.com/go/sub/report/2760

 

2018 Annual Survey – Theme 2

In theme 2 we look at aspects of data and how the information professional can and should create an impact in this area.  I was recently reading on the Information Today blog a piece on how academic librarians in particular can take on the research and management of data.  It is an interesting piece by Andrew Cox and examines the links between data management and skills needed in a professional librarian role today.  He looks at how the importance of big data has grown from being just the level below information on the knowledge pyramid to the top consideration in enabling organisations to operate, grow and compete on the world stage.  He considers how this has come about through the effects of the rise of big data and the concerns it has raised along with the abilities it has given us to gain greater knowledge and understanding of the world around us.  Read the full article here https://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Academic-librarianship-as-a-data-profession-125376.aspx

 

Data governance, literacy and quality are all big featured concerns in this year’s survey.  We have seen and discussed the quality of data and information throughout the year with the rise in fake news being published not always deliberately but sometimes with a mis-understanding and mis-use of the underlying data which at the very best has led to a mis-interpretation of the data.   Also, in the news has been the reported detrimental effects of utilising machines for analysis of large data sets without the relevant context for interpretation.  So, whilst it has been feared in some circles that the rise of big data and machine search and analysis would adversely impact on jobs and employment, it turns out that library and information professionals have never been more needed in order to check the analysis and add valuable context to the data to ensure a true interpretation.

 

Understanding data, how to search for it and teaching others how to check the quality of the data they are gathering is now considered a key skill across all sectors.  Managing that data internally, creating appropriate policies to ensure that the data is not kept beyond its life span is equally important particularly with new international policies such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force.  Compliance with data regulations has taken a rise to the forefront as general public in particular have become more and more aware of data, its use and importance.  We have discussed both in the Journal and blog posts on how data has been used and mis-used to manipulate or influence situations including the impact on the American Presidential Campaign.  Information professionals have the specialist knowledge and skills to support organisations in this area ensuring the correct management of internal data, research of external data and interpretation of large data sets.

 

As specialists in this profession library and information professionals are also of great value in ensuring the ethical use of data to gain information and intelligence.  We have all read about the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, there have also been reports about other big players including YouTube allegedly collecting and improperly using children’s data.  Any news item about the potential mis-use of data can have a lasting detrimental impact on both organisations and individuals involved.  The importance of the ethical use of data is seen in the new framework guidelines on procuring data analytics that the UK Government has produced for civil servants.  The Data Ethics Framework (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-ethics-framework/data-ethics-framework#the-data-ethics-workbook) highlights the focus the Government has on ensuring that the data they collect and use is done so appropriately and ethically.  There is an interesting article and commentary on the Governments data plans by Rebecca Hill in The Register here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/14/data_ethics_centre_framework_government_ai_announcements/

 

Look out for what our research has uncovered specifically on these aspects of data and data management for information departments across industry sectors in September’s Business Information Review.

Looking at the primary research process – an interview with Denise Carter researcher and author of the BIR Annual Survey

Below is an interview with Denise Carter reflecting on the primary research process that she goes through to gather the information needed for our annual research report into the information and knowledge sector.
Tell us about the research process you go through, how has it developed and changed from when you first started?

Usually based on the previous year’s discussions and then conversations with different information colleagues and peers during the year I try to pick on a couple of themes that I believe are of current interest to information professionals. In between surveys, over the course of the year, I try to pick up articles and news items that relate to those themes, as well as anything else I see in both general and professional literature. Evernote is my great “friend” here and I upload everything to a “BIR” notebook, so I can go through when I have time to then do my further reading and see what really is useful and what not so much.

That reading gives me the building blocks for the questions I want to ask, particularly of the telephone interviewees but also to include in the e-survey.
The first year I did the survey I followed much more closely the methodology as described by Allan Foster (BIR’s previous long term author, researcher and writer of the BIR annual survey). In the next couple I have moved to having the e-survey because it handles some of the more routine questions that Allan asked everyone at the beginning of the telephone interviews about the general business climate, budgets, team sizes and so on. Widening this out to an e-survey gives the potential to get more feedback from different people and hopefully make those answers a little more statistically significant.
The process now is that I select a very general theme, collect reading on that over the year. Then I will construct the e-survey, repeating some questions (I hope that in a couple of years we can then include some comparative data), and asking some new questions that are relevant to the theme or to any other issues I see on the horizon. This year I also included a couple more open questions which gave some very insightful comment and I will certainly do that again. I try to collate and do a basic write up of the e-survey results before commencing on the primary interviews. That way I can use any feedback gleaned there to inform the questions and discussion.
What challenges have you encountered?

The biggest challenge is definitely finding telephone interviewees. I have a list of people who are regulars who have been very helpful and loyal to the process. Finding new candidates is not easy and every year it seems that some people retire or go to work in a completely different area and are no longer able to take part. Between July and December this year I plan to make a much more directed effort to finding some new interviewees.

Time is always an issue. Working backwards from the submission deadline of mid-June, then ideally the e-survey would go out second half of January and telephone interviews would take place in February, March, April. Having more time to spread them out would be useful. That would give May to get the article written. Normally I try to add the interview notes immediately following the interview that way everything is still fresh in my mind. This year there was an unexpected event and that threw the timings right out, so this year in particular timing was very tight as the interviews got pushed into May/June. Hopefully next year will be more tranquil and I can stick to my plan.

How have you overcome them?

To be brutally honest I haven’t overcome the issues of time and finding interviewees yet. They are challenges that remain for 2019. As mentioned though I hope in the second half of the year to get my network going and reach out to some new potential interviewees. Hopefully I will be able to stick to the timetable next year and break the process down into chunks.

Can you list your top 5 best practice points for others completing a similar research process/methodology?

1. The more background reading and information you can pull together outside of the primary interviews and e-surveys the better.

2. Get a structure together earlier rather than later. That helps you think of the questions you want to ask interviewees and in the e-survey and build a framework for the final article.
3. But don’t be tied into your intial structure, when you start to get information from your interviewees there may well be a different story that is emerging, you need to be flexible.
4. Don’t make references and figures and tables a chore, try to get these done in the correct format as you go along. Leaving them until the end creates a tedious task.
5. Try to have a break of at least a week, if not longer, after completing the article, and then re-read with relatively fresh eyes (I’m hoping 4th time will be a charm on that one!). Athough you always need someone else to do a proof-read, you simply cannot see all your own errors.
Overall doing a large piece of research like this can be daunting, and every year I wonder why I put myself forward, but it has also been very interesting and enlightening to speak to other information professionals and to understand what they do day-to-day. It also forces you to read, and we all know that we often have great intentions but finding the time to read up on a topic is hard, so this gives me a great opportunity and I appreciate that. This year reading about AI has been particularly fascinating, and even though I’ve submitted the article I’m still collecting more information on that topic.

BIR Annual Survey 2017 now available

We’re very pleased to announce that the BIR Annual Survey is now available on the journal website. The BIR annual survey is the longest running survey into information management and knowledge management in the commercial sector in the world. This year there has been a significant change to the scope and methodology of the survey, making it more comprehensive than ever.  We’re very grateful to Denise Carter of DCision Consult Sàrl for undertaking the research.

Over recent months we have been flagging-up some of the findings of this year’s survey in our posts on this blog. Those issues that have come to the fore in this years research include:

  • What value looks like to different organisations/senior managers
  • Successful strategies employed for measuring and communicating value (up, down and across organisations)
  • Communication methods to reach the right / different audiences in organisations
  • Having the right skill set, what that is, how it is deployed
  • Keeping up to date with professional trends (info and business)
  • What’s on the horizon – info trends, business trends

The full survey results published in the September issue of Business Information Review develop these themes in detail, and are essential reading for everyone in the sector. This year for the first time all CILIP members have access to the survey from the member’s area of the CILIP website; just log-in at the link below:

https://www.cilip.org.uk/membership/benefits/monthly-magazine-journals-ebulletins/online-journals/sage-journals

The September issue of BIR also contains are usual range of articles and columns. Technology unsurprisingly perhaps also features as important in this year survey . This theme is continued through our next article by Virginia Henry entitled People and Tools: Encouraging Rewarding Interaction in the Workplace. Virginia has worked in knowledge, change and learning management for over 14 years. She passes on her insight and expertise in this article that she has developed in getting people to work with technology more effectively. She considers what she has called the ‘humane factor’ and how to incorporate that into successful deployments of technology.

Our third article comes to us from the US. Hal Kirkwood is an associate professor of library science and business information specialist in the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics at Purdue University, in Indiana, USA. His article, Towards a Unified Theory of Business Information, looks at the importance of business information literacy and its impact on developing key competitive intelligence information to aid critical decision making. He attempts to bring all the different aspects of business information together in one framework to aid effective decision-making through providing an accurate context on which to base those decisions on.

Next, we take a look at the impact of ‘Fake news’, how and why it is generated in an article by Dominic Spohr, Media and Communications student at London Metropolitan University, entitled Fake News and Ideological Polarization. This is an interesting article which offers and exploratory look at the effect technology has had on our intake of news and current affairs, how filtering and personalization of news services has created filter bubbles which ensure that only views we agree with, or are from similar perspectives to ours are fed back to us. The implications of these developments are huge and something definitely worth considering the next time we view news sites.

Martin White’s column on Perspectives this time carries on our communication theme from the survey looking particularly at the use of corporate language and the effects specifically of international local languages. As usual Martin’s column is an excellent overview of the subject and quotes from some interesting research papers on the subject.

You can find September’s issues here.

 

Horizon scanning – the sixth theme from this year’s annual survey

What’s coming over the horizon for the information and knowledge management profession? Our final look at themes emerging in this year’s Business Information Review Annual Survey focusses on horizon scanning.

The BIR annual survey is the world’s longest running survey into business information management. For over twenty-five years the survey has tracked changes to the profession including the growth of online, the rise of the web and the emergence of knowledge management. This year the survey is bigger and more comprehensive than ever, combining in-depth interviews with a wider survey.  Due for publication in September 2017 issue of Business Information Review, the survey has become an invaluable guide to sector trends and developments.

As well as keeping you up-to-date with emerging trends in the sector, at Business Information Review we aim to look ahead at what is around the next corner. Over the last couple of years we have covered issues as diverse a Brexit, information security, artificial intelligence, and the general data protection regulations, all of which threaten significant change in the sector over the next decade.

These are some of the topics that we think are on the horizon, but what kinds of issues emerged in the BIR survey? As a part of the survey we asked about the issues that are on the horizon of the information profession. A range of issues feature in the responses across the sector, some of which were familiar, and some of which were surprising. Find out more in September’s Business Information Review.