The Tigers are coming
Jinfo Blog

By Tim Buckley Owen

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After a string of bullish predictions, a few notes of caution about the future of the information industry seem to be appearing – at last as far as the US is concerned.

In a presentation at an invitation-only event hosted by consultant Outsell earlier this month, Chief Analyst Leigh Watson Healy noted that information industry revenues generated in Asia and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region were poised to surpass North, South and Central American revenues within one to two years. American information industry revenues are currently 53% of the worldwide total, with EMEA and Asia at 47%, and it’s only a question of time before the scales start to tip the other way.

‘Drive speedier time to market, be clear on your value proposition, and insist on an agile mindset, organization and processes’ was Ms Healey’s advice to the invited information industry executives; a reinvention of business processes is in prospect, she predicts, as software, content and communities converge.

As if especially designed to prove Outsell’s predictions correct, news emerged at pretty much the same time that LexisNexis intended to increase its efficiency and reduce its costs by moving some of its US operations overseas.

According to the Dayton Business Journal, which covers an area where some 3,000 LexisNexis employees work  the company said that it was ‘non-core product development positions’ that were targeted for offshoring.

LexisNexis did not disclose which overseas location the work would be transferred to. But since the divisions involved – Enterprise Information Solutions, which creates business software, and Editorial Systems & Taxonomies, which editorialises and formats documents and posts them to LexisNexis services – are classic back office operations, somewhere in Asia seems a fair bet.

Corporate information professionals in the UK – customers of services such as LexisNexis’s – have been grappling with the challenges posed by offshoring for years, and much exercised with convincing their bosses that their continuing presence in London – or at least tolerably close to Head Office – benefits the bottom line. So the first briefing in Outsell’s Information Management Under Fire series, which is all about how enterprise libraries can measure the return on investment they offer, is especially for them.

As well as revealing ROI data gleaned from an earlier study last April, Outsell also offers a sample library ROI questionnaire, details on ROI analysis and reporting techniques – and its own set of imperatives for information managers who want to be able to make a case for continued funding for the organisational library. At $795 for just 12 pages, though, you may want to consider the value of this particular investment.

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