Arup: Engineering a Worldwide Community of Practice
18th December 2013

Arup's worldwide Communities of Practice enable its staff across 92 offices to share expertise openly internally to solve problems or share ideas, finds Catherine Dhanjal at the recent ASLIB Knowledge and Information Strategy Summit (AKISS). The CoPs, known as Networks in Arup, allow staff to look beyond the constraints of their own specialisms. Since it was founded in 1946, Arup has chosen staff not only for their professional competence but for their emotional intelligence and their willingness to engage in a community-based approach to problem solving, creating a virtuous circle which helps to improve skills and win new pieces of work.

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Product Review of Eikon: Executive Summary
17th December 2013

Thomson Reuters Eikon is the company's key desktop offering for financial markets professionals including those currently using Bloomberg. It offers global market data, news and analysis across financial markets for traders and other users and succeeds both Thomson ONE and Reuters 3000 Xtra. Eikon Answers offers a simple way to retrieve and analyse market data and Messenger offers secure messaging not just with Eikon users but also eight investment banks, two of Eikon's most powerful features, finds reviewer Andrew Grave.

Update: A new review of this product is available here »

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Product Review of Euromonitor Passport: Value & Sources
17th December 2013

With market research a strategic investment for companies of all sizes, the second part of Sophie Alexander's review of Euromonitor's Passport examines the value that the strategic intelligence tool can bring to companies. Clients range from a small ice cream manufacturer that used the data to increase its sales by 5% a year to larger companies and government organisations; 90% of clients renew every year. The resources are extensive, encompassing official sources complemented by the network of Euromonitor analysts based around the world who offer unique insights.

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Product Review of Eikon: Customer Support, Pricing & Contact Details
17th December 2013

The final part of Andrew Grave's review of Eikon explores the customer support options and pricing of this market analysis and trading software from Thomson Reuters. He finds that Eikon possesses some extremely comprehensive support pages and sets a high standard for content, ease of use and having everything in one place. Various pricing options are available, from a per-seat to corporate basis.

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Product Review of InfoNgen: Executive Summary
17th December 2013

A discovery engine for competitive information professionals in fields such as finance, legal, pharmaceutical and retail, InfoNgen is an invaluable tool for workflow automation, finds Yulia Aspinall in her executive summary. Acting as a news aggregator or listening platform, InfoNgen can save researchers time by aggregating and indexing internal and external information and automatically tagging it with metadata. Tools to share and re-publish content are included, with the ability to create custom newsletters as one output choice. Cutting down on tedious manual processes allows researchers more time for analysis of information.

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FreePint Report: Product Review of InfoNgen
17th December 2013

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Communities of Practice - Acting as a Trusted Adviser
16th December 2013

Sarah Dillingham examines how knowledge and information professionals can support the organisation in realising the best value from their communities by encouraging and supporting Communities of Practice. She highlights some sample templates, guides and examples and points to case studies from organisations including Cap Gemini, Fluor and Xerox.

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Product Review of Eikon: Customisation, Special Software Functionality
16th December 2013

The special software functionality and customisation options are put to the test in the fourth part of Andrew Grave's review of Eikon from Thomson Reuters. He finds the mobile applications an area where Eikon performs particularly well. He's also impressed by the functionality in Eikon Messenger, particularly since its involvement in the Markit Collaboration Systems network of secure messaging. This works not just across Eikon users but also with banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs.

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Product Review of InfoNgen: Special Software Functionality, Help, Pricing & Contact Details
16th December 2013

The InfoNgen solution appears to tick many of the boxes desired by information professionals in an ideal search engine - straightforward installation and access, fast filtering of reliable internal and external sources of information, de-duplication of results, and delivery of relevant content via email, alert, RSS or newsletter, finds Yulia Aspinall in the concluding part of her review. She also looks at the customer support and pricing options.

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FreePint Report: Survey on News Needs & Preferences 2013
16th December 2013

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