tfpl blog

RMS Conference 2010 - Martin Sanderson's highlights

Author: Martin Sanderson
TFPL, Senior Consultant

Returning from the conference and stuck on a London train between Rugby and Milton Keynes with a promise of going backwards due to system failure seemed analogous to how some records managers think about how they find themselves in their organisation today. That is until we had the pleasure of  Mr Mc Gee’s   SUMO’s  Key Note Address burdening me with listening to that  inner voice telling me to ‘Shut Up and Move On’ – (read his book). Cursing National Rail and  wallowing in misery as I look out of the train window at empty fields,  coping with the  guilt of thinking myself  victim to National  Rail - What  to do but to ‘move on’,  so I did and began to write a blog of my more positive experience at this year’s RMS Conference in Manchester.

A great start with the SUMO opening address that for once amused stimulated and had nothing to do with records management or government edicts.  Quickly back to reality however with a whirlwind overview of Information Assurance from Paul Dodgson.  It seemed to me from Paul’s talk that Information Assurance is a move to take a holistic view of l information within an organisation with the ambition to resolve a number of requirements such as information integrity, confidentiality, non repudiation and authentication. It sounded very similar to records management to me whilst introducing a wider scope of information than what RMers normally engage with.  I was slightly disturbed by Paul’s rather mechanistic approach to information assurance as we all know from experience that information is not a neutral entity lending itself to process management but has political, social, behavioural and psychological factors to be taken account of.  I was left to wonder how much government tax money is going to spend on mandating the assuring of all that information and to what effect.

My next highlight was Dr Reeve’s presentation describing his journey from Records Manager to Information Manager accompanied with suitable recognition and reward.  It was heart warming to listen to someone who simply (but obviously effectively) applies his many skills and knowledge to provide his organisation with pragmatic solutions to deliver positive outcomes. It confirms what I have always thought that success comes out of what you do not what label you give to it or where you sit in your organisation.

Ibrahim Hasan lived up to my expectations with an informative update on FOI with a large splash of humour which all appreciated except perhaps any politicians that may have been lurking in the audience.

My final session was Doug Miles from AIIM Europe who presented the latest survey results (great for presentations and reports) gathered by AIIM from across the globe.  The big message was the growing importance of Information Architecture.  I was much amused by the reported suggestion from ECM providers that the lack of IA experts and skills was the reason why ECM solutions were not gathering the pace expected by the big vendors.  Although few in the audience claimed to do IA I wanted to tell Doug that TFPL had been training and consulting in IA for a number of years.   We see Information Architecture as the key to providing the strategic map and holistic view of information making sense of an organisation’s information landscape from which to develop a sensible IA that can fit with an organisation’s business and technical architectures.   Personally I think this is one area that records managers should be taking very seriously as they are well placed to fill this apparent gap in the skills market.   Sorting out repositories, designing data models, metadata and the like, auditing information assets and collections, mapping information flows as well as understanding the user interface are the bread and butter of IA. IA is the platform for RMers to play a strategic role in their organisations.

A test of a good conference is not to have to sit through a boring or irrelevant session so I give full marks to this year’s conference.  Congratulations to the RMS Committee for still managing to attract the numbers in such difficult times and making the conference a pleasurable and valuable experience. I will leave the views on the dinner pots to others but I must say that having sweet followed by main course followed by starter was a new experience for me.

Rhetoric, Fashion or Fact: 2010's first Connect Conference

Author: Lucy Frost
TFPL, Head of Training and Events

Last week we held our first TFPL Connect event of 2010.  It was great to see a combination of new members along with some familiar faces. Speakers Michele Fordyce from EEF, Hank Malik from Carbon Trust and Caron Cant from Birmingham City Council introduced their ideas about future challenges for KIM specialists, which sparked some interesting questions and thoughts from the audience.

The evening was chaired by Martin Sanderson, TFPL and began with Michele Fordyce sharing with us her experiences at EEF, looking at how they engage with their customers through the new Information and Research function. Michele explained this turn around had been made possible by focusing on the key business needs, building relationship with the service lines and senior management and talking the language.  Engaging with internal customers was vital to demonstrating how KIM could contribute to the business goals, help functions meet their targets and increase value to members.

Hank Malik, then gave some interesting insights in to knowledge and innovation, discussing how we have moved from collecting content, through communities and connecting people, to ‘the wisdom of crowds’ enabled by ‘open’ connectivity in public spaces. Open innovation, the public exchange of ideas is, he argued is the next phase of KIM but with this brings issues around governance and control of information.

Caron Cant, went on to talk about her experiences at Birmingham City Council , where she highlighted that with over 56,000 employees, recognition and reward of information management skills and behaviour was key to developing an effective information driven organisation.

Interestingly in a KIM world of W2.0 technologies, blogs, jams, podcasts, it was communication and people skills that topped the speaker’s agenda. However, during the evening it became clear that there are three central issues that are likely to be with us for sometime:  the tension between structure and freedom; aligning with business drivers and customer focus; and the recognition and reward of KIM skills and behaviours.

Rhetoric, Fashion or Fact was one of TFPL Connect's regular events.  All our Connect members will receive a summary of the evening and we will be running three further evening events during the year.

Gartner latest thinking on Information Management roles supports TFPL thinking

Author: John Davies
TFPL, Senior Consultant

It’s interesting to read that Gartner has identified four “new” information management roles that IT departments will need to establish, in order to meet the “business demand for IT-driven growth and innovation. Gartner Analyst, Debra Logan believes that the “future" of IT lies outside the IT department. Increasingly CIOs are coming from “the business” and “users” are taking control of their own information delivery infrastructure.” By the end of 2010, Gartner predicts that 40% of people, who report directly or indirectly into IT, will have substantial business and non-IT experience”.

Ms Logan’s four “new” roles are:

1. Legal and IT Hybrids, who will create policies, design and execute discovery exercises and act as bridges between the legal and IT functions. More interestingly, these new staff will move to implement corporate retention schedules in the digital world and on e-mail.

2. Digital Archivists, who will apply traditional archivist skills to digital records. Her assertion that “suitable candidates can be found in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools or existing employees nearing the end of their careers” is, we think, debatable but poses an important question for those designing curricula in these areas.

3. Business Information Managers, who Logan seems to think have never existed. Information Managers, Information Analysts have been working for years in, amongst others, the finance and pharmaceutical sectors making Gartner’s expectation that “20% of companies [will] employ business information managers by 2013, compared with 5% in 2009” a somewhat surprising assertion.

4. Enterprise Information Architects who will “create taxonomies, document templates and data models”. Again, not a new role as far as TFPL is concerned but perhaps just not visible enough.

Logan rightly states that IT organisations have not changed to respond to changes in business and demographic trends and concludes that the “role of technology will now be to augment human contributions, rather than automate them. The only way to manage information better is to manage information better with people.”

Our own research has mapped the emergence of new roles like these alongside a continuing demand for more traditional skill sets. In a world where managing huge volumes of content is a growing challenge for the IT community, well-trained and appropriately-skilled information management professionals will become increasingly influential in all organisations.

Careers in Competitive Intelligence

Author: Ivan Radulovic
TFPL Intelligent Resources, Consultant

Professional Effectiveness and Personal Improvement as a CI Practitioner Panel Debate - Tuesday 9th March from 5pm - 8pm

Have you ever wondered what will happen next to you and your CI career?  Have you ever wondered how you can make that next move?  Have you ever thought about how you can prepare yourself so that when that opportunity comes, you are confident enough to say “yes, I’m ready”?  Just as a business has to set out a plan for the future, work out its objectives and then craft a strategy which will enable it to achieve its objectives.  We have to do exactly the same thing if we want to make things happen for us rather than have things happen to us.

CI practitioners are a distinct breed of expert, frequently working across boundaries and outside of any normal understanding of functional structures.  They are typically self motivated, particularly good at keeping balls in the air and usually revelling in the erratic and sporadic nature of daily tasks.  This can all bring its own problems of course, in that the lack of routine sometimes means they begin to neglect their own development needs and there is a danger that they could stagnate. Trouble is, nobody else really understands them so they don’t know what to suggest either?  As with many other speciality roles, it is up to them to make their future happen.

TFPL Intelligent Resources is a proud sponsor of the UK Competitive Intelligence Forum which is to host an event which will address some of the above issues and hopefully get people thinking about their careers and how to put yourself in the driving seat to manage their progress.  We have four excellent panellists who will present their perspective on four different areas of the CI role.  They are:

• Martin Ainsworth has worked in both the public and private sectors including strategic management consultancy, investment banking and specialised financial services. He has managed and delivered services across a range of disciplines including Business Information, Knowledge Management, Information Technology and Market Data.  He contends that CI builds on the foundations of KIM to deliver analytical tools that are fast, factual and actionable.  He also delivers training in the UK on behalf of the Institute for Competitive Intelligence in Germany.

• Mary Banks has been a successful independent HR consultant for 6 years, specialising in leadership development, performance management, cultural differences and change management.  Her client list includes: GE, Royal & Sun Alliance, Aljazeera, Louis Dreyfus, Astra Zeneca, and Genworth.  She is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

• Andrew Cosgrove is an alumni of the Fuld-Gilad-Herring Academy of Competitive Intelligence. Currently an independent consultant, Andrew has 12 years experience using CI to improve senior level decision making at Mars, Incorporated and McKinsey & Company in Europe, Asia and the U.S. He has an MBA from London Business School.

• Andrew Beurschgens is practitioner at Orange and one of the Committee Members of the recently formed SCIP UK Affiliate, the UK Competitive Intelligence Forum.  He is a recipient of the Catalyst Award for his volunteer services to the profession.

The event will be chaired by Sheila Wright, a Reader of Competitive Intelligence and Marketing Strategy at De Montfort University, Leicester.  She is by far one of the most qualified authorities on the discipline’s application reinforced by her past elected role on SCIP’s Board, her numerous articles and workshops on CI as well as front-line practitioner experience.

To register for the event, please click here. The event is priced at £20 for SCIP (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) members and £30 for non-members.