Responding to the Information Challenges

Abstract

Presents comments on selected findings of the Business Information Resources Survey 2004 in light of the experiences of D&B (Dun & Bradstreet) and focusing on the survey’s conclusions regarding the challenges facing information professionals as they attempt to provide quality services for their users and the worrying trend for corporate libraries to reduce their spending on information in response to the toughening of the business climate. Considers why it is that budget holders in UK industry are still not convinced that spending money on quality information and knowledge management is a sound investment, capable of yielding increased revenues and reduced costs. The information professional is faced with the twin challenges of demonstrating the value of the company information service, and securing high quality information services with very limited resources. The challenge for the information provider includes: providing high quality, reliable data; making that data available through relevant,user friendly interfaces; delivering new value added services; helping to provide information about the return to be gained by investing in such services; and making such services available in a cost effective manner. D&B employs a strategy for developing a single information source for global company data that involves the use of multiple sources of global information. Describes some of the automatic and semiautomatic procedures used by D&B to construct their databases and ensure the timeliness and quality of the data.