www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2221387/rol -
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Published on: 7/11/2008
Last Visited: 7/11/2008
Since then, Factiva's original CEO Clare Hart has become president of the Dow Jones enterprise media group as well as vice president of the wider organisation.She has overseen the integration of Factiva into the group and been tasked with growing the business in that time.
Speaking exclusively to IWR, Hart explained the process the organisation had gone through in the last 18 or so months but also how she saw Factiva's information services complementing the changing roles of information professionals.
"We realised in 2006 that Factiva would be stronger under single-parent ownership," said Hart.
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Hart believes that the way the products are developing is the result of the organisation's listening to its customers. In particular, she cited Factiva's Research the Researcher programme, a study it conducted last year to identify what information professionals did in their day-to-day roles and what influence that should have on Factiva's products.
"The Research the Researcher effort is something that is going to drive the way we evolve the Factiva product, specifically Factiva.com, to respond to the needs of researchers," she said.
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while we continue to focus on providing capabilities for our end-users, the core of our business is still researchers, and we need to make sure we are differentiating our product offerings for them," said Hart.
The Factiva survey also calculated that researchers would be spending more time on the value-added components of their job, and less time on finding information and forwarding it to the relevant executive.This shift reflects the improving search skills and technical acumen of end-users.Whereas 10 or even five years ago an end-user might have gone to an information professional, they now have the skills to use general tools like Google better, as well as the more specialised ones, like those offered by Factiva.
But aren't information professionals being bypassed by the increasing functionality of Factiva's services?"No way," said Hart.
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For Hart, the path of the information professional is clear.
"Information professionals are expected to know more than just the primary aggregators, so they are also going to be the resource who will know where the best blogs and websites are for the people in your company," she said."They are the content specialist as well as the researcher, as I see it.I don't see them going away.In fact, the demand for the skills of the information professional, complemented by technology skills, is only going to increase in the organisation."
EMBEDDED POSITION Hart recognises the pattern of info pros working in specialised areas of the business: "I think the role of the information professional has the potential to evolve in so many ways.There will be people who continue to do research and there is always going to be a job for researchers."One of the trends is information professionals embedded in a business unit , someone fully dedicated to marketing or competitive intelligence or research and development.There is an embedding process where you can play the role in a specific department."
For Hart, the modern information professional is an ambitious knowledge worker with business as well as technical nous.
"The more sophisticated, business savvy information professionals are going on to roles like knowledge management, competitive intelligence, chief knowledge officers, chief learning officers.We are seeing that in organisations."
Hart pointed out that there wasn't one set route, even suggesting corporate communications as a possibility.
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