Valuing business information services

Abstract

In the first part, ‘Valuing business information services: Calculating base costs, premia and discounts to demonstrate the benefits they offer’ (James, 2004), a model was described that can be successfully used to value a business information department, using the concepts, theories, rules of thumb and current methods of business valuation to value an information service as a discrete unit. That article was designed to be a stand-alone description of the valuation process. This article looks more closely at the wide range of concepts and strategic thinking needed to design the types of premia and discounts that might be employed in the valuation model and discusses how they may be employed in the business information service (BIS) model. It also indicates how well prepared a BIS manager needs to be before attempting to undertake this type of valuation. To complete the valuation, and particularly to prepare an impressive selection of premia, they need to be fully aware of a wide range of both business and management and library and information services literature as well as being completely up to date with the attitudes and needs of all their users.