We’re looking forward to updating our information performance benchmark data this spring, when we conduct our annual study of centralized content buying and information management practices and metrics. One thing we noticed in last year’s results was that content buyers and vendor portfolio managers were still measuring vendor and product performance pretty much the same as five years ago. The top three measures of value were: content value, usage, and data quality. We also saw that other important, quantitative measures of value were little used: ROI, time saved, revenue or sales gains resulting from use of the vendor or product offering.

I thought the question of how you measure vendor performance would be a good one to open up to this audience.

What are you doing to assess the vendors and products that provide content to your enterprise? What have you seen other content buyers and portfolio managers do to capture hard metrics on how well vendors are delivering on the value promise? I’ll look forward to hearing from you – and to sharing an update from our benchmark study later this spring.

Cornell University and Columbia University are joining in a partnership dubbed 2CUL and hope to learn whether and how the library can impact student success. Based on user needs assessment focused on humanities doctoral students, the research libraries plan to develop strategies and a course of action to ameliorate high attrition and low degree completion rates.

Grants from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and other foundations are contributing to this effort.

In its press release announcing the study, Cornell University cites research that highlights the particular challenges for the target group of students. “Humanities students have longer mean times to completing their PhDs than students in any other discipline and, according to a recent National Science Foundation study, those times are increasing. In 2003, the average humanities student took nine years to graduate, up from 7.5 years in 1978. Another study shows that humanities students’ 49-percent completion rate within a 10-year period is considerably lower than the rates of their peers in mathematics and physical sciences (55 percent), social sciences (56 percent), life sciences (63 percent) and engineering (64 percent).”

In fact, in a major study of information use in the scholarly information environment conducted for CLIR in 2002 Outsell found that students, faculty, and researchers in the arts and humanities were underserved in the digital information environment, compared to scholars in other disciplines. Nearly a decade later, it’s good to see action in the form of a new and tightly focused examination of how library services can positively impact student outcomes. Although the study won’t be finished until March 2011, we’ll continue to keep an eye on it and what learnings it offers for libraries striving to link to and directly impact outcomes.

One of our key Information Management predictions for 2010 is that we will see the information industry reach a higher level of awareness of the importance of delivering phenomenal experiences in our era of a new day, new dawn and new decade. We see this as the path to success and growth for information managers and information providers in 2010. We noticed an interesting and relevant discussion going on in the Designing Better Libraries blog. It’s good to see the dialogue and questions about how well library staff understand users’ needs and whether user experience – especially when it carries the trendy acronym UX – is a fad that will generate buzz for the moment and then fade away.

For over a decade now, Outsell’s mantra has been the importance of starting with the user and working back from there to product or service design and delivery. Let the customer lead and the content follow (think needs, then solutions.)

All too often we hear from vendors that information managers seem out of touch with their internal clients and unable to speak with the voice of the user. “Know your users” doesn’t begin to describe the depth of understanding that delivering superb user experience will require. We’re glad to see active debate in the blogosphere on how well information managers are poised to deliver on user experience. We’ll bring our observations here about where we see great examples of doing it well, and we invite you to join the conversation.

We’re witnessing many different ways that libraries seek to measure and demonstrate value, and it’s encouraging to see assessment initiatives moving beyond traditional ROI measures and seeking to understand the library’s real impact to the institution. For example, ARL, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Tennessee will undertake an ROI study based on a grant awarded by The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The investigators aim to create an ROI model and methodology that can be used by other academic libraries to demonstrate value to its stakeholders. The “Lib-Value” study will seek to address these kinds of questions and desired outcomes:

• Does the library’s reputation influence enrollment?  (more tuition)
• How does the library factor into retention of students? (student achievement/student success)
• How does the library increase the quality of students?  (improved ratings in the National Survey of Student Engagement)
• In what ways does the library influence students’ attitudes about the overall quality of campus life? (future alums as donors)
• How does the library increase the amount of funding for research granted to the campus through its departments?
• How does the library increase the output of researchers (increased publication/patents and inventions)?

The Lib-Value study team includes numerous consultants and advisors – just one indicator of the complexity and visibility of this ambitious initiative – as well the intent to produce  authoritative results. We’ll keep an eye on the progress and outcomes of this effort to dramatically advance the state and practice of library assessment.

My Kindle has been lying unused for several months now, not because of usability issues or any lack of interest in ebooks, but because I’ve committed to working through my four two foot high “to-be-read” piles of printed books next to my bed before I allow myself to download any more ebooks. I’m also working off of a “buy one, give away ten”  negative growth principle to get my overflowing book collection under control. So I’ve been taking numerous boxes of books to donate to the local library and have also been using the library much more lately. Every time I go, it’s standing room only – every table, chair, carrell, and computer workstation in use and people of all ages and stages chatting inside or out by the fountain. Lately, Seth Godin’s post about the future of the library has raised a storm of challenge to his assertion that librarians should train people to take intellectual initiative, rather than delivering DVDs or “books that individuals don’t want to own,” which he sees as a poor use of tax dollars.  Aside from inviting Seth to visit the library to see individuals taking initiative in a library that is highly focused on the needs of its constituents, I invite discussion of how libraries are measuring and demonstrating value. For example, the Tarpon Springs Public Library asks users to assess value by putting a simple “personal savings calculator” on its home page. In looking forward, what do you see? What plans and initiatives do you have for assessing and communicating value in 2010? We’ll gather and report results here – we’d love to hear from you.

With Gartner’s purchase of Burton Group right on the heels of acquiring AMR, the market is getting more top heavy with a few big players dominating, followed by a long tail of smaller, niche players. The business reasons for M&A in today’s economy are clear: vendors are seeking ways to buy growth, enhance market position, acquire innovation, or pursue cost savings. We expect the consolidation trend to continue as vendors face challenges to growing organically.

Enterprise information buyers often talk of the importance of vendor consolidation – reducing the number of vendors to drive lower costs, to reduce staff time, and to improve quality of service by working only with high performers. We see where strategic partnering with selected suppliers can result in win win, driving innovation, higher value, and greater ROI in product and service delivery.

And yet, ongoing industry consolidation is forcing vendor rationalization. As vendors acquire and eliminate competitors through M&A, this reduces the number of options available to enterprise content buyers. The challenge for buyers will be managing vendor portfolios that are a moving target. And integration of acquired assets is not always smooth or easy. Post acquisition, buyers should expect to see vendors pursuing cost reductions in overhead areas, integrating sales forces and optimizing channels, and ultimately, integrating product offerings.

Tips for information managers faced with vendor consolidation: Communicate openly with your stakeholders and share their feedback with your vendors. Monitor vendors’ performance closely – show how they stack up against each other and users’ needs. Scrutinize investments in offerings that may be discontinued. Move negotiations to executive level in a vendor firm when you are not getting what you need. Watch for quality problems and, if they appear, to either stop doing business or insist on appropriate restitution. Continue to seek win win and be a good customer even as you scorch the earth for viable alternatives that will deliver value for money.

As Anthea Stratigos wrote, enterprise content buyers often tell us what they don’t like about working with vendors. Well, it always takes two to tango. Here are some things that make vendors’ lives more difficult and get in the way of developing productive, strategic business relationships.

• Assume all vendors are bad and have ulterior motives
• Withhold feedback that would help vendors improve
• Expect everything – vendors should make all options available
• Challenge vendors’ right to make a profit, as if that is the worst possible motive for doing business.
• Be out of touch with their users’ needs and unable to be the voice of the user
• Benchmark vendors’ prices to other buyers’ contracts and negotiate on that basis. Don’t take into account the myriad variables of doing business and the unique needs of their organization.
• Issue unnecessarily complex RFPs.
• Cancel out of meetings at the last minute when the vendor’s rep has already flown to Kansas City to be there. Don’t return phone calls or explain.
• Don’t educate themselves about vendors’ businesses or markets
• Fail to comply with licenses, Ts & Cs, and other agreements.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen these behaviors by information managers in some of the world’s largest and more prestigious enterprises and institutions. It’s important for information buyers to remember first and foremost that vendors aren’t out to get them, despite the headaches and hassles of vendor selection and negotiations. Everyone deserves a fair shake, and working together is essential for survival, remaining healthy, and expanding and growing.

Vendors and buyers – please send your ideas about what makes ideal vendor/customer relationships. We’ll share them here – please join the conversation!

Information Management priorities in 2010 will be about optimizing content portfolios, ROI, and assessing value – and about demonstrating the real impact of information services to the enterprise. 2010 will also show greater focus on improving user experience and productivity. Here are Outsell’s top 10 predictions for Information Management in 2010.

1. Power to the CFO. 2010 promises to be just as challenging as 2009. Information managers who survive will be tightly aligned with their CIO and CFO, speak their language, and have solid ways to build and communicate business cases for information deployments.
2. Pricing Pushback – No More Mr. Nice Buy. Information Management’s purchasing power is being decimated as publishers’ prices for content continue to rise. With this widening gap, buyers will get tough. Astute publishers that develop pricing models based on usage-based metrics will be relatively secure.
3. Advertising Implosion – The End of Free Content. With the dramatic downturn in advertising, publishers with advertising models are rushing to launch new paid offerings at a time when enterprise information budgets are down and users are also spending less on content. With more content chasing smaller budgets, successful publishers will be those that deliver superb experience on all fronts.
4. Open Access – The End of Paid Content. Momentum for unfettered access to research literature continues to build, with funders finally waking up to the mismatch in business models. In parallel, new flavors of open access – books and research via Google Books and Google Scholar, case law, and open government initiatives – are creating free availability of other forms of content. Information managers will have more options for providing enterprise information, and information users will have greater ability to help themselves to what they want.
5. Divide and Conquer—The New Vendor Clarion Call. Publishers and information providers are capitalizing on power shifts in the enterprise, positioning themselves with the ultimate funders of information spending and “following the money.” Information managers need to seize the opportunity to step up to a larger role of enterprise information governance as arbiters of content procurement.
6. Vendors Get Tactical. In researching and advising about methods and metrics for measuring ROI of information, we recognize that value must be measured in terms of quantifiable benefits to the enterprise. Expect to see vendors provide more sponsored studies, resources, webinars, and white papers about the measuring the value of information offering more prescriptive guidance — free of charge.
7. Focus on User Productivity. Information managers will emphasize on empowering the enterprise with the right selection of information resources and tools at the desktop and on improving user productivity and experience. The role of one-to-one, high-touch inquiry intermediation will not be scalable in the face of the resource constraints most Information Management functions face in 2010.
8. Generation Gap is Closing (Forty is the new Twenty). Outsell’s latest research shows that information users’ ages have become less useful as predictors of behaviors and preferences. Technology adoption is evening out across the generations, with boomers, Gen X’ers, and millennials alike embracing social media, mobile applications, information portals, and all manner of easier-to-use technologies. We’ll stop seeing technology resistors in the workforce, resulting in much greater efficiencies in information delivery leading to improved user productivity and ROI.
9. Providers Compete to Drive Greater ROI With Workflow Tools. As more publishers move toward publishing into workflows, a few mega players dominate at the top of the pyramid, with many more “workflow” options emerging from players wanting to move into the space. Increasingly, users will expect each solution to have all of the necessary content (or it will not be a solution). Information managers will have to think about various ways to integrate content into workflows, recognizing that there are few total solutions yet.
10. The Dawning of the Age of Experience. As users go beyond mere seek-and-find and increasingly live and work on the web by participating in social media and generating content, information is shaping their experience as part of their social interactions–the “conversation.” The ability to facilitate these interactions, plus the experience of doing business with vendors, are becoming the competitive differentiators for information providers and information managers in 2010 and beyond.

For ten years I have written reports and insights for Outsell clients and spoken in our industry about information and its future and about innovation in information management in the age of all things digital. Long before joining Outsell, I’ve been committed to making information accessible, from writing and research as an undergrad and grad student at Emory University, early days in a small college library in middle Georgia, helping build what was then a state-of-the-art information center at The Coca-Cola Company, and then leading the print-to-digital shift at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta research library. My early interest in transforming information processes through technology led me to the vendor side of our industry, first leading the business and government divisions of The Faxon Company and then entering the publishing fray by helping a small Thomson Company, known then as Research Publications, open up massive primary research archives into readily accessible and exciting new products in CD-ROM – the hottest new medium of the moment.

Why “Valuing Information”? Since the advent of the web and my joining Outsell, I have been witnessing and analyzing our industry’s dramatic and accelerating changes. The ubiquity of information and enabling technologies ensure that “good enough” information is seemingly everywhere. With information budgets under fire, I’m constantly seeing how the value of information is challenged or reinforced, how information managers in the enterprise, or academia, or government are executing – or failing to execute – on the fundamentals of assessing, demonstrating, and communicating the real impact of information and harnessing impact assessment to influence funders. And how some are struggling to survive and some are thriving, innovating, and harnessing potentially disruptive influences.

My goal for Valuing Information is to share my insights and to engage blog readers in a conversation about assessing the true impact and value of information. We’ll seek to understand what’s happening, to identify strategies, best practices, and tools that work, and to provide a central place for people concerned about valuing information to share their successes and to identify ways through the value challenge.

I will seek to serve the following roles: Information Management leaders, Vendor Portfolio Managers, Content Procurement Managers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Financial Officers.

Please join the conversation.