On reflection

I am writing this one week post election and we are about to enter the next phase in the UK political landscape, with a coalition government, something that I have not experienced in my adult lifetime. Over the past few weeks and months, we have listened to arguments about which policies, or ideologies, will steer the UK safely through the global resource challenges, but Mother Nature chooses to remind those of us in Europe that she also has to be considered. During the past year the developed world has been wringing its hands over financial crises, but many parts of the world have had to deal with natural disasters that we in the UK can hardly imagine. A simple volcano in a small European country has reminded me, and many others, just how much we take our benign and friendly environment for granted. I have also been struck by just how vital the combination of scientific and social knowledge is in dealing with any disaster - a topic that needs a newsletter or two to itself.

This put me in a reflective mood and I realise that despite the doom and gloom that seems to have been the feature of the last year, a lot of interesting things, some positive some challenging, have been happening in our industry. Take the controversy about the Digital Economy Act. The debate about whether this is flawed legislation, rushed through without adequate discussion, or whether it is a positive step in protecting intellectual property, has a long way to go. The fact that digital information and its communication is a key political issue is an indication of just how the information industry has become an integral part of our society. The issues of rights protection and intellectual property, information governance and security, communication and ethics are core information management disciplines and we have much to contribute to this arena. I am delighted to see TFPL Training is continuing to develop courses in the area of information security, risk and compliance. Thinking about the development of Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) roles over the last few years, I am struck by just how much evolution has taken place. Our recruitment arm has noted a recent improvement in the market and this has included an impressive range of roles – from traditional to just emerging, but for me a particularly encouraging trend is the pulling together of the disparate silos that for so long made up the KIM arena. An increasing number of senior roles are directing strategies with an overarching reach. For example, Juliet Humphries is now Head of Knowledge and Learning at Bird and Bird; Elisabeth Mangold is Senior Vice President, Knowledge and Records at Swiss Re; Andrew Woolfson is Director of Knowledge Management & Capability at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP; Peter McMeekin is Director, Competitor Intelligence and Global Product Strategy IT at GSK.

My colleagues, John Davies and Martin Sanderson have both commented, via the TFPL blog, on the comments from Gartner and Ralph Poole on the Information Management skills that IT people need to develop. This is a marriage of roles that is getting closer as the British Computer Society includes more IM skills in its remit and CILIP conducts its Big Conversation. An equally interesting and exciting development has been the integration of record management skills and roles into core business processes. As Martin Sanderson noted in his summary of the Records Management conference TFPL blog that many records managers are ‘moving on’, applying their skills to business challenges across the organisation. Worrying less about the label attached to their role and more about the outcomes the organisation needs, takes them into the realms of information management, architecture and business process. And as Julia Hordle notes, commercial intelligence is alive and well, providing a variety of roles for people with a range of skills, the ability to analyse information and spot significance, and think strategically.

My final thought, but one that has been at the top of my personal agenda for a while, is how ‘social responsibility’ has become part of our expectations. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be viewed as a cynical approach to the market – being what your customers want. On the other hand, looking back over the past decade, I can see that organisations do recognise that they are part of a community, be that global or local, and that contributing to that community is healthier for them and their staff. At an individual level there has been, according to several reports in 2009, a marked increase in people from all professions and backgrounds looking for volunteering opportunities. Of course, much of this is attributable to the recession, volunteering being recommended as a way of developing skills and CVs, and in some cases, a way for organisations to avoid making valuable staff redundant. An increasing number of people do think about what their skills can offer and it is evident that KIM skills can contribute a great deal. Just look at how any voluntary organisation works: however unsophisticated it is reliant on good knowledge and information flows and management. At the next TFPL Connect meeting, we will be exploring the positive impact that KIM skills can have on the aims of the voluntary sector and while we won’t be focusing on what individual KIM specialists have contributed as volunteers, we know that many of you are actively involved. Perhaps you could let us know if you have experience to share?

I will sign off with my best wishes for a great summer – it is going to be lovely!.

Darron Chapman
Managing Director

TFPL Intelligent Resources

We are delighted to have seen a definite improvement in the market – both permanent and contract. There has been a dramatic increase in the volume of jobs coming through including some good senior roles and an interesting range of opportunities across both public and private sectors. Consulting and law firms are beginning to cautiously develop their KIM teams and are recruiting across the range of core KIM roles – for example - Research, Analysis, Due Diligence, Internet/Web Content and Portal Development. There also appears to be a demand for Financial Services expertise. In all cases, we are seeing clients moving from the exploratory person search stage through to sifting and selection in realistic timescales, an improvement on the stop/start/stop situation that many of us have experienced during the last twelve months which is frustrating for candidates, recruiters and clients.

The search for KIM specialists is showing signs of becoming an established feature of the global market and we have seen a marked increase in international roles. So far this year, we have dealt with roles in Europe, UAE and Asia Pacific and all the signs are that this international reach is set to continue.

The increase in demand on the user side of the industry has been matched on the supply side. The increase in volume has been across all sectors but with a particular focus on healthcare/pharmaceuticals, technology, media and telecoms (TMT) and financial services. The roles coming through are interesting “meaty” roles providing great opportunities with a particular focus on consulting and analytical roles.

Help us map the market for Business and Competitor Intelligence

Joining up with TFPL doesn’t mean the old “Intelligent Resources” team has lost its zeal for developing the market for skills in intelligence disciplines. Nine months on, and the TFPL Intelligent Resources offering has diversified. This has broadened the choice of roles in the TFPL Intelligent Resources recruitment portfolio for people with strong commercial and information/research/analytical skills.

Ivan Radulovic and I have been contributing to the UK-CIF board and panel since a group of passionate practitioners decided to breathe a bit more life into the CI forum in the UK, and not be quite so reliant on the US administration of SCIP. In particular, we are interested in mapping the communities of people in the UK with an interest in intelligence.

In our Corporate Intelligence recruitment team, we already know that there is vibrant demand for people with the right mix of skills and experience for collection and communication of commercial intelligence. More specifically, there is a demand for people with the ability to see significance and steer strategic thinking. Practitioners exist within “pure” consulting roles; strategy roles exist in sales and business planning; procurement/sourcing roles in investment and advisory businesses. What is your interest? We’d love to know…

How you could participate

Next Event: The UK Competitive Intelligence Forum will be hosting its forthcoming networking event on 10 June 2010 around the theme of career planning. Please look out for event details nearer the time. Market research for UK CIF: How well do we know ourselves?

To enrich the event in June, we are undertaking some classic market research to obtain a foundation of understanding with respect to:

• How practitioners entered the disciplines.
• Their existing trials and tribulations, perception, value measurement and focus.
• How practitioners will evolve.

It will help us all to know the emerging market for skills in the UK better than we do at present – we are hoping to provide a hub of information and interest for the UK community.

Please help us all by completing the survey - 'Intelligent Intelligence Career Planning'. It will only take 10 minutes and every recipient will receive a summary of the results, from UK CIF.

As of today, we have already had an encouraging response, but your input will help make sure what we get is an accurate and balanced overall picture. Please do join in.

For my sins, I’m also involved in planning the event and would be delighted to hear from anyone who would have an interest in speaking or joining a panel for debate, or providing some sponsorship to UK CIF. Please get in touch as soon as you can. I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Julia Hordle, Director - Corporate Intelligence Resources

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TFPL Training

There has been a discernible move towards tailored and personalised training during the past year, either as one-to-one coaching or tailored in-house courses. A key trend has been the commissioning of coaching as means of developing individual staff. An increasing number of organisations are investing in this approach to help staff grow into new roles, develop in specific areas, or deal with particular issues. We are currently running several tailored coaching programmes and are finding that they are popular with the individuals and their organisations.

We have also seen a significant increase in in-house training during the past year and have helped clients including Skills Development for Scotland and Department for Children, Schools and Families. Managers have responded to the training capability demonstrated by the TFPL Open Access courses by setting out a specification of what they wish to achieve through a programme delivered to their staff.

This has a number of advantages:

• The training targets a particular development area considered important by the organisation.
• Content and delivery is designed for the intended audience within their context.
• It enables the development of a cohesive approach to a training programme to be developed.
• Group learning with a common purpose improves the chance of knowledge and lessons gained being implemented.
• Savings on travel time and expense together with organisation-specific outcomes makes it cost effective.

Current popular topics are:

• ‘Fundamentals of KM’.
• Web 2.0 tools and social media and how they facilitate KM.
• Records Management.

For example: Introduction to Records Management is coming up in June.

Please view the TFPL Training Course Calendar for further course dates.

We are delighted to announce that Vic Parry has joined TFPL’s Team of Trainers. In response to feedback from the market, Vic has developed an Information Risk/Compliance Management course for us. We are sure that information security, risk and compliance will become very familiar terms as the economy begins to improve and the digital economy becomes an integral part of our lives.

Also view the TFPL blog to see a summary of the topic by Claire Valentine, TFPL Training, earlier this year.

SharePoint Summit

SharePoint continues to be a prime topic of interest, with a great deal of speculation about the release of SharePoint 2010, that took place on 12 May 2010. We are currently planning our 5th SharePoint event for October, which will explore the challenges around current implementations, and the pros and cons of SP 2010. In the meantime, we are currently organising a seminar for the public sector in July to mark the release of SharePoint 2010. The seminar will provide you with an appraisal of the new functionality available and ideas to take back to your organisation. More information on the date, venue and programme for both events will be announced shortly.

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TFPL Consultancy

As the following examples illustrate, TFPL Consultancy has had a particularly interesting quarter with diverse and important projects and the successful implementation of a new tool, Active Audit. The Active Audit tool analyses an organisation’s information estate and produces a range of metrics for all file types such as word documents, excel spreadsheets or PDFs. These include monthly and yearly views by date created, last modified, opened or accessed and levels of duplication. The audit results can be defined to target specific groups, departments or geographic locations, to give a granular picture of information. The outputs from the audit can be used for a range of purposes including:

• Roadmap for business improvement.
• Review of information strategies, governance and policies.
• Information risk schedule.
• A mapping and analysis of information and where it resides.
• A comprehensive register of what exists to ensure compliance with legislation.
• Reduction of storage and backup costs by identifying and removing duplicate, out of date and redundant information.
• Cleanse content prior to migrating to a new system.

For more information about Active Audit, please contact Ed Taylor or John Davies.

Third Outing for Active Audit in the Public Sector

In December 2009, we successfully bid against a number of rival consultancies to conduct an Information Audit for a public sector financial body. John Davies and Edward Taylor delivered this project, following an initial briefing to a working group of 20 IT and information specialists. Our team braved the cold and snowy weather between Christmas and New Year to run our Active Audit tool.

It was the third time Active Audit has been used as part of a TFPL project. Its previous outings have been with two other public sector bodies in finance and transport respectively. Our findings from the audit were fed back to the working group and we presented them with a detailed roadmap of how to achieve our recommendations. They were impressed with the level and detail of information we provided them with, which helped us to win the next phase of work. This was a more complex task, helping design and implement a new file plan and providing the necessary guidance for records management and governance.

SharePoint 2010 makes its first appearance

March 2010 saw Edward Taylor and John Davies begin a project with a public sector organisation responsible for the management of political parties and elections. This is our first piece of work relating to SharePoint 2010 that is due to be released in May this year. Our recent visit to Microsoft at the start of the year for “developer boot camp” training on SharePoint 2010, came into good use, as well as our ongoing internal development of the Beta version.

We were tasked with conducting a project to deliver a business case to adopt SharePoint 2010 as a replacement for legacy intranet and document management platform. Phase one involved providing the project board with a thorough explanation of the new features and functionality available to them, to improve records and information management, internal communications and team collaboration. We took the opportunity to explain that the new features of SharePoint 2010 allow it to be used across more of the enterprise. Emphasis was placed on the importance of creating a governance plan and information architecture to align SharePoint 2010 capabilities with the needs of the organisation, as well as provide a framework to manage it post deployment.

In phase two, we engaged with a range of staff to understand what they needed from the proposed new platform and related these findings to functional requirements of SharePoint 2010.

Trade Association

Knowledge and Information Management (KIM) is a key objective for one trade association. They are convinced that a KIM strategy will enable them to meet business objectives by:

• Enabling staff to access information effectively and swiftly.
• Ensuring that all parts of the association are aware of the bigger picture – of current activities and policies, of what other areas of the association is doing.
• Improving the sharing of contacts and maintenance of membership details.
• Developing corporate practices of information management, including acquisition, governance, security, storage and navigation.

These factors will help to enhance the very high standard of services the association provides to its members. Implementing the KIM strategy will require a significant change in work practices affecting all staff from the most senior to the most junior. The association is tackling this need for change, and is ensuring that the new work practices developed are effective, by involving everyone in the organisation, both in a consultative and participative way. This, together with customised training in KIM practice and its benefits, has all been instrumental in the successful start of this KIM implementation.

Trade Union

We are working with a trade union, who wish to consolidate its approach to the external resources coming into the organisation, which include books, journals, reports, databases etc, many of which are in e-formats. The Union wishes to rationalise and de-duplicate their resources and increase the return on investment. Central to their aim is to ensure that all staff have easy access to all materials received, whether purchased or free. In order to help them develop an approach that meets their particular needs, we are undertaking a library review to identify the resources acquired, the level of use and user needs.

Early indications are that the union will develop:

• A central catalogue of printed and electronic material including key websites.
• A central collection of reference/commonly used books, journals and reports.
• One or two major collections located in the areas of constant use.

Although not highly sophisticated or expensive, this classic approach does provide a practical way forward, which meets the needs of the people who need to use the resources most – the staff.

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TFPL Connect & Health SIG

TFPL Connect goes from strength-to-strength. With a membership of over 650, it is a community of people in a wide range of KIM related roles, with diverse backgrounds and expertise. The only downside to this success is that our events do have limited capacity and fill up extremely quickly. We do publish a report of each event on the TFPL blog and send the link to all members. Feedback tells us that the content and structure of the events are equally as attractive as the networking of drinks and nibbles, and undoubtedly members do find the mix of people from different sectors and experience extremely valuable.

To help us plan future events, we recently asked members to give us their feedback about Connect, the type of events they would like to see and the key issues they were facing. Many thanks to those members who completed this survey. We had a great response and have some very clear messages to consider. There is a wide range of topics that you would like to see covered in the meetings – some strategic and forward looking; some more concerned with implementing new tools and technologies; some looking at the challenges of organisational cultures and the value of KIM. The overarching challenges faced by members are:

• The need to manage change effectively both within the KIM function and throughout the organisation.
• Individual personal development and skills enhancement.

Within this framework, five issues emerged as priorities:

1. Rapidly changing consumer expectations and behaviours and their impact on information delivery. How, for example, can social media be used effectively within an organisation’s KIM strategy?
2. Dealing with financial cutbacks and lack of resources; learning to do more with less while maintaining quality and delivering value.
3. Retaining knowledge and information in a climate of resource reduction; deploying knowledge transfer and other KM activities to protect the knowledge base.
4. Managing information risk and security. As information exchange, media sharing and the use of social media tools become a way of life, and as technologies are increasingly utilised, security, ethics and intellectual property are becoming core concerns. The recent Digital Economy Act could be the beginning of a spate of regulation, and organisations are also addressing their own approaches to information governance.
5. Developing KIM skills and behaviours across organisations in order that: KIM resources are used effectively; that collaborative working, knowledge and information sharing becomes the norm; and that KIM tools and techniques become part of everyday working practices.

Members quite clearly enjoy the interactive aspect of the events but also like to hear from experts in different fields and find case studies particularly useful.

TFPL Connect events

The last Connect event held in February 2010 – Rhetoric, Fashion or Fact – had three excellent speakers who generated a lively debate. A summary of the event is available at TFPL blog.

TFPL Connect - 22 June 2010: Connecting our knowledge to make a difference

A definite date for your diary, is 22 June, this event will be held at the Crowne Plaza, Blackfriars. It will be an interactive evening, Chaired by Ian Wooler, exploring the theme of social responsibility and how KIM can make a difference. We are delighted that Paul Marriott, CEO of Depaul UK will be speaking and introducing the theme.

More information about the event and booking facilities are available at http://www.tfpl.com/networks_events/tfplconnect.cfm

TFPL Connect Special Interest Group (SIG) for the Health Sector

Following the successful launch of the Health SIG last November, we have spoken to many of the people who attended to discuss what type of events they would find useful. We also had offers from a number of people to host events at their organisations for which we are very grateful.

To see what is planned and reports of events, and to register for events go to http://www.tfpl.com/networks_events/sig.cfm .

If you are not a Connect member and you are interested in attending, please contact Claire Valentine.

TFPL Health SIG event 15 June 2010, 6pm – 8.30pm

The next Health SIG event is kindly being hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine.

We could not have predicted the election result, but with warnings from all parties about continuing economic hard times, KIM professionals will be operating in a climate of change and potential financial cut backs. This meeting will give you an opportunity to discuss how KIM can contribute to and meet the challenge of delivering high quality health care in a sensitive financial environment.

Our key note speaker, Linda Wishart, Head of Knowledge Management, Department of Health, will be sharing her thoughts and perspectives with us, which will then be followed by café style discussion. The event will be facilitated by Wayne Sime, from the Royal Society of Medicine.

For more information about TFPL Connect Health SIG, please contact training@tfpl.com.

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TFPL out and about

As noted earlier, Martin Sanderson attended the highly successful Records Management Conference in March and provided a summary on the TFPL blog.

Luisa Jefford and Angela Abell are contributors at a NetKXX seminar, ‘IM / KM competencies – past, present and future’, 26 May 2010 at the International Patent Office. As they are joining Sue Westcott, Head, ICT Services at Communities and Local Government and Peter McMeekin, Director, Competitor & Scientific Intelligence and Global Product Strategy IT for Glaxosmithkline Pharma R&D, in presenting their views on the topic, it should be an interesting and lively event. We hope to see some of you there.

The LIS Research Coalition is running their first conference at the British Library Conference Centre on 28 June 2010. This will be a great opportunity to find out what is going on in the LIS research arena and, equally important, to get involved in future directions in research. TFPL, together with Sue Hill Recruitment and Glenn Recruitment, are sponsoring six places for PhD students currently engaged in LIS research. We believe that it is vital to encourage high quality post graduates to join the profession and to contribute to its development.

Anne Ashdown will be attending the 41st BIALL Annual Study Conference & Exhibition which will be held in Brighton from 10 - 12 June 2010. The very current theme is Risks and Opportunities: Managing information in difficult times. We look forward to seeing you there.

Julia Hordle and Ivan Radulovic contribute to the Board and Panel of the Corporate Intelligent Forum and regularly attend events. See the UK-CIF website for announcement of the event.

David Thew attended the UKSG Conference in Edinburgh on 12 - 14 April 2010. For a summary of the conference, please visit the TFPL blog.

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