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COPYRIGHT 2003 Information Today, Inc.
Corporate information centers in large enterprises are quickly moving toward increased global cooperation, creating a new set of challenges and opportunities. As a stark economy leads large companies to evaluate support units for potential savings, many companies are having to deal with a profusion of libraries, information centers, and other pockets of information that are not structured to meet the needs of the organization with maximum efficiency and cooperation. "Globalization" describes the creation of a unified and coordinated information center from what was previously a loose-knit group of independently operating information functions. For many organizations, this is the ultimate result of a strategic assessment. According to functional managers who have embarked on the globalization process, there are many compelling benefits for doing so, but also some substantial challenges.
GLOBALIZATION RACES AHEAD
Large corporations continue to look for economies of scale, and the key content management and deployment functions are no exception, as shown in Outsell's The Changing Roles of Content Deployment Functions, published in 2002 and updated in 2003. Twice as many information center respondents this year as opposed to last year (40 percent in 2003 versus 20 percent in 2002) report that their operation supports the global or enterprise-wide organization. There is also an increase in those who say they provide support for a major company or operating unit within their larger organization (up to 23 percent this year from 18 percent last year), and more are supporting multiple departments (18 percent vs. 12 percent in 2002). Further evidence for a globalization trend lies in the fact that information center respondents said an additional 7 percent of their vender contracts will become global over the next year, raising that figure to 64 percent.
Intelligence functions (market, business, and competitive intelligence) are experiencing a similar trend. These activities, too, increasingly support the global enterprise (41 percent of this year's respondents over 28 percent last year) or major companies or operating units within their...
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