Delivering Value to Your Clients or Organizaton

Information professionals deliver value to their organization or risk becoming expendable.

I recently delivered a webinar program to members of the Association of Independent Information Professionals on how to deliver value added analysis. You can download the slide deck titled Adding Value to Your Research: Value Added Analysis to get the gist of the presentation.

Cyberspace is abuzz right now as specialized librarians debate the merits of renaming their professional organization. The current name is SLA: Special Libraries Association. The suggested name is Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals.

The proposed name actually represents a mind shift from information management to something broader. Some info pros appear to object to this change. From my angle it represents an appropriate evolution in our profession. To demonstrate the value in what we do, we have to wrap value into the services and solutions we offer.

Value added analysis serves as one proven strategy for an evolving profession.

Analysis and the Executive Summary

Do you create executive summaries for your clients' project reports? First, let's define "executive summary." For purposes of this discussion, we're not talking about my business plan in a nutshell as described by Guy Kawasaki in his blog. We're talking about the summary that brings together research findings to answer a question or series of questions.

If you do not include executive summaries in your research reports, why not? Indeed some clients prefer do all the summarizing on their own, but in my experience they represent the exception rather than the rule. As we all face info glut and data smog, most clients value a nicely written snapshot of the situation with the key questions answered up front.

What is it about info pros that makes us ideally suited to creating an information overview or executive summary? Stephen Abram has been heard to say that info pros are skilled at identifying patterns. I'm pretty sure that's one of the skills that helps us summarize mass quantities of information. I think we also have the ability to pull salient points from text heavy sources and distill the points into a few words. Hopefully we write well.

What other skills are required to create a useful research summary? Your comments are encouraged and most welcome.

Adding Value to the Information You Deliver

Remember rip and ship? There was a day when the value that the info pro brought to the table was access to and the ability to search commercial, subscription based databases. In those days, a professional search yielded otherwise hard to access information. Ripping the results from the dot matrix printer and shipping it to the client was standard practice.

Online searching is no longer novel. The technology is practically ubiquitous and answering the ready reference question or delivering full text articles is no longer a value add service.

So, what's an info pro to do? For an examination of the justification and how-to's for creating value add deliverables, see Amelia Kassel's Value-Added Deliverables: Rungs on the Info Pro's Ladder to Success published in Searcher. Kassel states that a value added deliverable will include organized research results with a summary of findings.

I recommend using the summary of findings as an opportunity to add further value to your report. The summary should answer the questions, but it's also an opportunity to share insights about the findings. We'll take a closer look at this in future postings.

In the meantime, let us know if you include a summary of findings in your deliverables.

Slow Down and Check the Facts

Whoa nelly! The US Presidential campaigns are in full swing, and the assertions are coming on fast and furious. I say assertions, because some of the information we're seeing is simply not factual. In the interest of political neutrality I will forego the opportunity to give any examples. For now, suffice it to say that we must all check for the facts before passing along or taking seriously what may turn out to be simply rumors.

The #1 site for political fact-checking is Factcheck.org. Sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, they "are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics."

In the interest of seeing the best possible outcome for the November Presidential elections, I encourage all voters to visit this site regularly and get the facts.

Image Generators

Here's a question for info pros who deliver value added research results in the form of electronic documents. Have you ever included content created by an image generator? I've been experimenting with these tools, and it seems like we have an opportunity here.

Since the concept is new to me, I haven't had a chance to try out my idea. I have created a couple of images, and it's really pretty cool. Here's one I made just for fun using Badge Maker at Big Huge Labs http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/


There are other image generators like ImageChef http://www.imagechef.com/
and CustomSignGenerator http://www.customsigngenerator.com/.

Once I've had a chance to use this concept in a client report, I'll post something here and let you know how it goes. In the meantime, for those of you who are one step ahead, how have you used an image generator to enhance a deliverable?

What's the Deal With Adding Value?

The law librarians talked about it in Portland earlier this month. The specialty librarians talked about it in Seattle last month. The independent info pros talk about it regularly on their association discussion list. So what's the deal with adding value? Information professionals are coming to realize that the old rip and ship model of information delivery is no longer sufficient. Attaching a hodge podge of documents, PDFs, and URLs to an e-mail is not adding value.

In responding to a research request, it is incumbent upon the info pro to deliver answers, not just information. Delivering answers means taking time to create a document that summarizes findings and puts the desired information front and center. Doing this takes time, but it also brings to light our ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, summarize findings, draw conclusions, and provide insights.

Add value. It's good for your organization, your decision-makers, and your career.