Realigning a business information service for future success

Abstract

This article reviews the some of the pressures that have been felt by the global financial markets over the past ten years, including: the normal recession/boom cycles; the massive growth and sudden collapse of the dotcom boom; the continuing globalization of the world’s financial markets; the financial markets’ own poor market performance (with shareholder discontent in many of the larger institutions); financial institutions’ clients economizing to protect their revenues; the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001; the spectacular bankruptcies of Enron and WorldCom (with the spate of new regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act); and legislation against money laundering. These pressures have provided considerable opportunities for information professionals to demonstrate their expertise and become trusted advisers on information management issues to the business at large with tasks that have included: cutting costs; improving profitability; and dealing with the fall-out from the regulatory and legislative impact. The period 2001-2005 has seen an increasing polarization of the activities associated with information management and information supply and this is expected to result in a realignment of information management to the strategic aims of the business and placing information retrieval work onto a more tactical foundation. The author concludes that a new class of information professional will emerge that is capable of understanding the strategic requirements of the business and the large number of factors that shape that strategy.