Information inefficiency across the enterprise – Index shows no sector has found a definitive solution

[Note: The following is a guest posting by Jeremy Bentley, Chief Executive, Smartlogic.]

Information is at the heart of what most enterprises do. For some it is their product and lifeblood; for others it lubricates all aspects of their operation. The fact is that, in one form or another, information management is vital for virtually any organisation, particularly as tough economic conditions prevail, and the more efficiently enterprise content is controlled and accessed, the more effective organizations’ operations become. After all, we all operate in an ‘information economy’ these days.

Astonishingly, however, new research shows that organisations of all types – private, public, not-for-profit – are failing to make internal information easily accessible to staff, clients, investors and other stakeholders. Our Industry Information Index, a benchmarking study conducted by MindMetre Research, demonstrates clearly that information efficiency in every sector is fundamentally unsatisfactory with no industry scoring more than 50% and the total score for all sectors a lowly 38% – that is, fewer than half the organisations in any sector rate their industry as capable across the four categories examined (search effectiveness, categorization proficiency, fragmentation of systems, and progress and investment in content management).

Industry Information Index
(Source: MindMetre Research)

The most astounding research finding is that the sectors dominating the bottom half of the Index are those enterprises that largely generate and depend on unstructured information – all in all a rather damning showing. The sectors that the Index indicates struggle most with their information efficiency include Media & Publishing and Banking, which need to generate huge numbers of smaller articles and information items that can be sorted and streamed to their clients – news, comment, blogs, reviews, alerts, market updates, financial results and other announcements. Other sectors in the bottom half of the table include Information & Research, Chemical & Pharmaceutical, High-tech & IT and Aerospace – industries that depend on very large pieces of complex content such as research, product development reports, market analysis and technical specifications.

The worst showing was by Media & Publishing. Media organizations not only depend on their capacity to find reliable information – often relying on their own previous articles for background to avoid needlessly redoing work and to ensure accuracy – but increasingly on their ability to instantaneously deliver relevant information to subscribers. With the Internet providing few barriers to entry for rival media brands, especially in specialized fields, established players have to maintain a competitive advantage by harnessing their vast archives while employing their extensive information-gathering resources to capture new pieces of content.

Similarly, Hi-tech & IT, placed – counter-intuitively – second to bottom, a surprisingly poor showing from an industry that should be savvy to the importance and availability of leading-edge information management technology and practices. The very nature of this sector, with its constant innovation, on-going research and changing market conditions, means the ability to develop new products and leverage information assets within both the consumer and B2B fields is essential.

But no sector in the Index covered itself in glory. The results showed that, for any enterprise using information assets to achieve commercial success or meet a mandate, there is serious concern. In fact, the findings make clear that far too many organisations are struggling with information overload, information governance issues, the limits of existing information management systems, and an increasing need to re-purpose and monetise information. Clearly, no business, government organization or non-profit enterprise can afford to be complacent when so few are able to systematically manage and make use of their most valuable information assets.

Clearly, too many business, government and non-profit organisations are having serious trouble leveraging their information assets – a worrying trend when one considers that a March 2009 IDC study found that reducing the time wasted dealing with information overload by even 15% could save a company with 500 employees $2 million a year. For large international firms, that number could be much greater.

Better control of and access to information is absolutely crucial to all organisations – and by no means beyond any enterprise’s grasp. On the contrary, the Index reveals that service, productivity and, ultimately, profitability in virtually every industry can be improved. One key means of doing so is by introducing ‘Content Intelligence’ to the information management system – that is, utilizing a bolt-on system that uses taxonomies and existing information management platforms to improve business intelligence, work flow, collaboration and search, turning unstructured content into actionable information.

At a time when organisations are facing mounting pressures to improve efficiency, deal with a proliferation of new information and overcome a legacy of poor practice, it is imperative that they implement cost-effective solutions to facilitate access to, and use of, their information archives. Putting an effective and consistent categorisation system in place ensures quick and easy access to the right information and means better access to corporate knowledge, improved risk management and compliance, superior customer relationship management, enhanced ‘findability’ for key audiences, and an improved ability to monetise information.

Jeremy Bentley, Chief Executive
Smartlogic

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

My Mom Taught Me To Share

There seems to be a lot of buzz about Pinterest and their potential copyright debacle. The image-based social network is taking a small step toward relieving some website owners who are concerned with potential copyright violations.

This interesting information was found on Marketing Land in their article, “Pinterest Takes A Small Step Toward Fighting Copyright With Opt-Out Meta Tag.” Pinterest is supporting a “nopin” meta tag that will prevent users from pinning images directly from the site where the code is installed.

Now let me talk as an avid Pinterest user. I can’t understand why people wouldn’t want someone to share what they found. I have purchased many items from sites I found on Pinterest, and the recipes I have made from food websites and blogs are too numerous to count. Maybe I don’t understand the risk completely, but I certainly would be less inclined to visit a website twice that wouldn’t let me share what I found. Just sayin’.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.

2012: What Lies Ahead?

This time of year I read a lot of trends and reviews. What happened last year and what will happen in the coming year is a popular topic and it is in fact a good time to take stock and think about initiatives for the year ahead. So here is what I see coming down the road for 2012.

1. More people will be building and implementing taxonomies. The awareness of controlled vocabularies and their applications continues to grow. They will be applied not just in publishing but in websites, association offerings, commerce online and in records management and retention. There are many ways to leverage a taxonomy and information architects have only brushed the surface in their applications. Medical organizations will also embrace alternatives to IDC-9 and the complexity of government driven coding to find accuracy through taxonomic means.

2. Taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, interoperability and linked data will become mainstream for corporations. Publishers and associations will also actively embrace the needs for control over ever growing collections. Universities and government will be late adopters.

3. With the increase in taxonomists there is also an explosion of “carpet baggers” these people see a hot trend and are leaping on the wagon with newly heralded expertise. It is true that vocabulary control has been around for well over 100 years, so many will have a back ground in the area, just a new field to apply their skill sets. It is also an area that is learned in practice, but not difficult to learn. The standards outline the options and there are many webinars, reading and other training opportunities in the field. This means the buyer beware in checking the credentials of their service and software providers. Is there hands on experience or book learning or opportunity seekers?

4. I don’t think the semantic web will happen this year either. In fact I don’t think it will ever happen as originally envisioned. It is just too complicated and no search system to support it has gotten out of the lab to handle large data sets. Just as SGML gave way to HTML and then XML, Semantic web will fade and Linked Data will rise.

5. I do think that the linked data initiatives will take the lead. I expect the Linked Data community will get over its focus on the syntax and start talking about implementation and application leading the way by showing how it can be done, in many ways and there is no single path needed to make those links. Mash ups using linked data will become much more common. Some of these are already very active sites and many more will follow in 2012.

6. The rebirth of Dublin Core. Oh I know it has been around for a long time – I have a few lashes to show for it myself. But when that standard (Z39.84) was “passed” it was by inventing a new way to get around the standards consensus requirement and used a new program called “fast tracking”. now 15 years later the reasons it got 7 NO votes are still there but they are finally getting an honest appraisal and serious consideration on what the functional requirements need to be and how to make Dublin Core work as a real measurable standard rather than a guideline. The new crop of DC advocates will make it happen. In addition the linked Data crowd and the DC crowd are working together to bring real change and education to the marketplace as well as to University enclaves.

7. The ontology name is so cool. Not many are really sure what it means and very few mean the OWL standard when they use it. Having said that I think we will all be talking more about ontologies and less about taxonomies (and certainly not thesauri) this year. We might still mean the same thing but our words to describe it will change.

8. Finally I think everyone will be more cut throat. Manners and honesty will take a back seat to getting the sale and the close. We saw that increase last year and I think it will continue to grow as a problem in 2012. There are two underlying reasons. The shrinking marketplace tied to the larger number of investment capital firms behind many businesses will cause them to cut corners to get the sale so they can make their “numbers”. The other reason is the increasingly uncivil political climate will bleed its desperation into all other corners of our lives.

Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President, Access Innovations

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

I know I can’t be alone in the amount of spam email I get daily. In fact, I probably receive a lower amount than most. It is amazing that I actually find my real mail, mail I actually want to read, in the middle of all the junk. Then there are the spams that cloak their selves in pretend reality. They are like the fake checks that come in snail mail that are actually offers of credit or some other promotion.

This topic was inspired by the blog, Beyond Search, from Arnold IT – specifically their post titled, “Temis, Spammy PR, and Quite Silly Assertions.” Apparently Steve Arnold is as tired as I am of receiving self-glorified propaganda trying to pass as true information and quality content.

This reminds me of the difference between professional taxonomy development by someone like Access Innovations, that can help clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies to manage their content, and those who sell software and run. Do your research and choose a professional who will be there through the entire process.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.

Taxonomy Meetings 2011 – A Year of Change or Realization?

What are the meetings that cater to people who use controlled vocabularies, like taxonomies? Where should a taxonomist go, click, or attend to learn about the latest implementations and uses of controlled vocabulary strategies? Every company thinks long and hard both about what they do and where to find customers for their products and services. The Information Industry is no different. In the Age of the Internet when everyone’s “knows” about searching and information; it seems like the “information Industry” should be booming, its conferences should be huge, and the attendance incredible, but that is not the case. Why? If the information industry and our little taxonomy segment of the business has gone mainstream, then where are all the people you would expect at the long established industry meetings? The meetings we have attended for years are dying on the vine. The SLA Expo was sparse, the Information Today meetings are smaller, Online Information (formerly International Online) was nearly empty, and NFAIS remains the same size each year.  ASIS&T is growing significantly. Frankfurt Book Fair is bigger than ever. Specific User Group meetings are increasingly targeted and well attended.

I believe there are several factors at work. The diminishing meetings have had challenges for years. Nor are we alone in this trend. It is national and perhaps international. Other options are now available. Nationally 126 million people attended meetings in 2009. In 2010 only 80 million attended. “There were 12 percent fewer attendees in 2010 than in 2005 – and 19.7 percent fewer in 2009 than in 2006,”  notes the Baltimore Sun.  The trend is downward significantly even with the problems of the economy. Let’s take them one at a time.

SLA Conference and Expo – an expensive and glitzy meeting held in conjunction with the SLA (aka Special Libraries Association) annual meeting. This meeting has had as many as 7,000 attendees and many auxiliary events such as user group meetings and advisory boards surrounding it. The meeting itself is significantly smaller now. The membership itself is down to half its numbers from 14,000 to about 7,000 including an unknown, but likely held steady, at about 2000 student quotient. This means they no longer command as large an audience. In spite of a well-meaning board trying to cater to the un- and underemployed by reduced fees, the membership has been shrinking. The Expo has held two functions in the industry. One, of course, is to show the companies wares to the attendees, people who work in corporate and other kinds of unusual libraries and often command large purchasing budgets. Second is the meeting of most of the players in the industry in a single exhibit hall allows for intellectual property rights discussions and business arrangements/deals to be made. But several things have happened to make this a less attractive venue.

Years ago SLA mandated that a company could not sponsor a division’s activities, that is get close to the real customer group, unless you were an exhibitor. That meant paying for the booth (about $5000 for the smallest), paying for furniture, electric, carpet, Internet, card reader, plus the art and brochures, and giveaways, etc. (much more than $5000). Then you need staffing for the booth including airfare, hotel for at least two, but usually more staff. (Another $5 – 7,000 in direct cost per person plus a week away from the office.) After that you get to be the target of every division to sponsor their events – at $500 – $5000 each (there are 28 divisions and almost all of them will call you). So SLA needs to be at least $30,000 line item in the budget, but is usually over  $50,000 plus staff labor and opportunity cost. The business aspect of companies (a less degrading label than “vendors”; What are we circus performers?) talking with companies has been good, but the increasing number of companies “suitcasing” (that is, without a booth), has made the exhibitors targets of not only the divisions and SLA, but also those who did not pay the freight to be in the show. Meanwhile, the attendees are walking the aisles, looking for giveaways, not making eye contact since they have no budget to spend.

More recently the Divisions have realized that they could get more out of their target companies, if they held out the carrot of a speaking slot. If you pay X you are a sponsor, if you pay Y you can also have a speaking slot. That all works as long as there is a large audience to talk with. But over the past two years there have been very few people attending the meetings. The sessions of substance are well attended. I went to the Taxonomy related ones and they were often standing room crowds. Buying of speaking slots, however, degrades the programming options and also makes the exhibitors feel cheap. My expertise, which I have been able to found and run a company on, is only worth hearing, if I pay you to listen? It feels like  some kind of prostitution going on here!

At SLA 2011 many sessions had to do with how to get a job, get a raise, change careers, etc. These are helpful to the out of work perhaps, but NOT a persuasive reason for an employer to send a staff member to the meeting. Why should they send their staff to a meeting to learn how to get a different job? The early program was full of such sessions and a turn off to many of the employers and potential attendees I spoke with. They need to send people to the meeting for a skills and industry update and refresher.

So few attendees because the programs are not delivering content and while business discussions for exhibitors have held them in the hall for the past few years, is that enough to make the show a go? Here are new options out there as you will see later in this article.

Over laden with regulations, booth fee increases, and limited staff resources, have resulted in a thin meeting on top of an already downward fiscal spiral for SLA. Can they pull it out? Perhaps they can, but probably not with the current strategy. That exhibit hall finances much of the SLA annual operations. An organization which gets more than half of its annual income from a single face-to-face meeting in the Internet age has some hard thinking to do.

Information Today built its reputation on the once premier meeting in the industry – the National Online Meeting. It sprang into being when SLA and ASIS&T missed the rise of online searching and the incipient internet offerings as a potential big force in their lives. More recently this meeting has been cut into sections and targeted to specific groups like “Computers in Libraries, Internet Librarian, Taxonomy Boot Camp, Knowledge Management World,” and etc. Each of them seems to draw a small, but loyal crowd of attendees. The business aspect of the meeting has been lost, not much deal making goes on here, and the exhibits are shrinking. Here too, if you are a potential exhibitor, you are generally not allowed a speaking slot unless you pony up for a booth.

This has led to a platform of consultants, who plead inability to exhibit, hawking their services from the podium. The quality of the program is diminished and the people with industry knowledge look for another avenue to get to the customer. The previous model of perhaps if they were speaking, they might also exhibit, has changed to no speaking unless you exhibit. Further the segmentation of the meeting has meant that the exhibitors cannot form the deal making side of attendance that is so important to their livelihood.

International Online was also an Information Today meeting (okay, Learned Information and when they sold it they had to change their name to the very successful industry newspaper they publish – not a bad thing). Traditionally held the first week of December in London, it was THE place to be for the buying and selling of digital rights and to see what new things were being released in the New Year. A vibrant, exciting meeting with a crush of people, big parties in the evenings, cutting edge presentations, and many user group meetings surrounding the IOM. One person commented that about 90% of the Intellectual property rights deals and changes for the year happened in that week in December. This year the meeting was a shadow of itself. Most of the big players did not exhibit, very few people walked through the hall. If you set up lots of meetings in advance, it was okay, otherwise a dud. What happened?

It became two unconnected meetings. One was the conference with delegates (attendees) held on the third floor a block away from the exhibit so the attendees seldom came down through the wet London cold to the exhibition. At the same time it became very expensive! Greed in the face of an economic down turn certainly plays a role, but this is not the only factor. Next year it is moving to Docklands from the Olympia and changing the format and venue. The meeting we knew is gone.

NFAIS has gone a different way. It is a membership organization of about 120 companies. But the leverage of the intellectual value added including controlled vocabularies is not the current focus of these former abstracting and indexing organization’s meeting. Their focus is on the “next big thing,” the trends in the industry. The program committee does NOT select member companies to speak. So if you are a member, you will not be on the podium except as a possible moderator. But NFAIS members would like to hear from members who are in a similar situation and find out how they have dealt with the problem. It is a cutting edge meeting, well planned and thought out, but does not grow due to self-imposed limits.

ASIS&T, the American Society for Information Science and Technology is often considered an academic meeting where professors can get their students’ papers on the program to showcase them. The Board is academic. The members are a mix, more academic than practitioners, but still a fair number of people looking for new technologies and a way to implement them on the home front. I used to survey the audience and decided it was in three segments. The academics sat in the front of the hall ready to comment and debate with the speaker, the practitioners and managers in the middle soaking up what they could from the presentations and questions, and the entrepreneurs and other misfits in the back, standing or on the aisles with an easy exit plan.  It is still that way except that the middle has thinned out considerably. The meeting this year was a pleasant surprise on many fronts. It was a substantive program. Lots of hard hitting application and real life talks, less of the presentations on a sample of 10 – 30 and extrapolating unrealistic results. The talks were longer – 30 minutes and allowed enough time to actually describe the substance and then have penetrating questions. The student papers were moved to a huge poster session – 92 posters replacing the Presidential reception with dinner in the middle and posters around the edge – great for conversations, good learning experiences. Well done. Some even had to do with taxonomies.

But for a lot of application and implementation discussions, the action has moved to the ASIS&T IA Summit. The information architecture meeting now has as many attendees as the annual meeting (around 700 people) and has its own Web site and branding. Here it is far less academic and much more hands on discussions. I found the meetings clannish, but the discussions were worth listening to.

Frankfurt Book Fair – a few years ago this meeting was only for print publishers, although it was THE meeting for print. But as digital media has taken hold a new pavilion was added and the digital activity in Building 4 is now incredibly active. The rights trading is definitely done at this show now. The parties and the satellite meetings have mostly moved here. Publishers and the Online community have merged to be here in Frankfurt in October.

User Group Meetings – remember they used to be satellite meetings around the bigger meetings, but their members were no longer attending the big meetings. They now go for the shorter, pure vendor update, and presentations, which deal directly with their service, product, or software. They use these specialized events to learn what’s new and how to use it better. It pays off back at the office and you meet others who are using and leveraging the same things. I attended several of these during the year. They were uniformly well attended by enthusiastic people wanting to know more about the products and services so they could better manage their investments. Meetings that are viable are those that engage the attendee and the User Group Meetings. I attended several this year and they are of two types. 1) those which follow the rock star level of presentation – like MarkLogic  and SilverChair, 2) and those which are hands on updates on the applications and use cases to leverage the customer investments like Atypon and Data Harmony.

Summary:

Okay great – we know where the companies are going to get their work done, make deals, and to learn new things, but what about the individual? Where are they going?  What are they now doing to learn and keep skills fresh?

The Internet has made many things possible that were not possible before. We can convene a meeting electronically in a very short time. We can have discussions over Skype or Webex or GoToMeeting. We can develop documents using collaborative wikis.  We can have conference calls for people in many locations and several continents without leaving our desks. People have turned increasingly to webinars and web searching to find new things and answers. We follow blogs to read opinions and discussions to add to and enjoy.

If we go to a meeting, we are expecting something else. We want to find community. We want to build relationships, which can then be maintained on the Web once they are established. We want to have discussions. We want to help build, brainstorm, learn, and develop in a group setting. We want to make a deal, discuss the terms, and build trust, face to face. Teaching new skills, reading thought pieces, and announcements can now be done in a web-enabled environment.

Selling (Prostitution) of the speaking slots by the real vendors, those who put on the shows, has had a deleterious effect on the quality of the meetings. The costs have reached a tipping point where they no longer provide a good return on investment for attendee or exhibitor. It is no longer useful to have a big party for your users or to set up a user group meeting in conjunction with one of the big national meetings. But more than that, the challenge remains on how to engage the attendee. How can they be part of the meeting rather than a passive audience? How do you get a sense of community?

There are several budding online communities, which seem to be flourishing. Taxonomy Community of practice is one; the Taxonomy Division of SLA is another. The ones on LinkedIn and Facebook have not yet taken off. The rest are in user groups. Access Innovation’s Data Harmony User Group meeting will be held in Albuquerque February 7-9, 2012.

Come join the community!

Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President, Access Innovations

Don’t Just Jump In

Enterprise content management (ECM) is not a cookie cutter product. What works in one organization may not work in another. There are factors that can help guide content management implementation and keep the system functional.

Search Content Management brought this information to our attention in their article, “Alignment, governance critical for content management implementation success.” It’s important to ascertain what you need an ECM system to do and then align this strategy with business objectives. That may sound obvious, but many companies skip this step and choose a product before completing any up-front work. That up-front work is often just thinking. Thinking about what the capabilities are and how employees will use and share the information.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

Data Governance – Help or Hindrance?

Data governance seems to be an increasingly popular topic these days. The chatter around it isn’t all good either. It seems most organizations don’t like data governance. They see it as too complicated or requiring too much change, or not in their  job description.

IT Business Edge brought this topic to our attention in their article, “Two Approaches for Making Data Governance Easier.” Can data governance be made easier? According to Vincent Lam, product marketing director and author of Seven Steps to Effective Data Governance, “Contrary to popular belief, data governance does not have to be a harrowing endeavor. Taking small, tactical steps will not only provide fast business value, but will also enable companies to avoid the pitfalls of both over and under reaching in their data governance strategies.” He goes on to share some recommendations. Check it out. It is worth the read.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.

BizSphere Joins IBM Global Entrepreneur Initiative

BizSphere is now the latest member of the IBM Global Entrepreneur initiative. This initiative was created to help the ‘next generation of entrepreneurs’ who develop software based innovations to capture emerging business opportunities.

PRNewsWire in the UK brought this news to our attention in their release, “BizSphere was Accepted as Member of ‘IBM Global Entrepreneur’”. This program started last year in the United States and 2011 in Germany. The IBM Smarter Planet agenda develops intelligent and environment-friendly solutions. BizSphere was chosen for its knowledge management solution for sales optimization.

It is encouraging to see the combination of know-how in the areas of semantic and social being recognized in our business.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

Where Are They Now?

Tech companies come and go. There are always tech savvy entrepreneurs with big ideas looking to fill a need in the market and investors looking to get the huge returns that can come from investing in tech startups. 

But tech is risky, markets are volatile, and oftentimes what seems like a good idea is not always as good once implemented in the real world. A good example of this is the dot com boom and subsequent bust in the early 21st century. You could get funding on a back-of-the-envelope business plan. Billions of dollars were invested in tech startups with big ideas and big dreams. Many of these dreams were shattered when investors realized they were not getting the returns they had hoped for.  

The business of providing knowledge management solutions is especially prone to this kind of cycle. There is a lot of money to be made in this market because businesses, publishers, and government organizations are losing billions of dollars every year through inefficient methods of data management and are willing to pay to prevent this loss. On the other side of the coin, there are numerous graduates in the IT field who seem to think they have the solution to everyone’s problem. Combine this with the fact that just about every investor wants to get into tech and you have a “perfect storm” of startups offering solutions in search, indexing and semantic enrichment of some sort or another. 

The unfortunate truth, however, is that data management is a tough business to learn, to get into, and to maintain. New startups offering “the next big thing” fail to catch on amidst a sea of competitors and ultimately go out of business. 

Take Groxis, for example. Groxis was a search company that started in 2001 with much fanfare as the cool new entry in the field. Groxis offered search solutions through its search engine Grokker. Groxis’ partners and customers reportedly included Sun Microsystems, Stanford University, FAST Search & Transfer, EBSCO Information Services, the Internet Public Library, and Amgen, as well as Yahoo!, Google, and Amazon. The company survived the dot com bust, but closed its doors in 2009 due to a lack of funding.  

Another example is TermTree. Started in 1999, TermTree offered classification and thesaurus management through its software of the same name. After only eleven years in business, TermTree has been shut down and is no longer available for purchase. 

WebChoir was around as recently as 2006 and offered the WebChoir Vocabulary Server which was a set of tools for building controlled vocabularies. It was the only way to really get hold of the fine Getty Vocabularies for a while. This company is now nowhere to be found. Internet searches reveal no information on what became of WebChoir.

When searching for a solution to buy, especially a big ticket items like knowledge management software, the stability and longevity of a company is of critical importance when making a decision. You want to make sure the company you’re buying from has experience in the field,  that the solution actually works, can do a pilot or a test of your own data, and will be around for years to come to provide you with support and updates. 

Access Innovations is known as the leader in database production, standards development, creating and applying taxonomies, the back room operation of many well known companies. We are a privately owned company founded in 1978 that offers an extensive line of information management, database construction products, and services for academic institutions, government agencies, and industry. To learn more about Access Innovations, visit www.accessinn.com

Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President, Access Innovations

Location Tool Drives Business

April 21, 2011 – LocalResponse launches its long-awaited public beta of their new tool that allows business owners to respond to their customers to drive transactions. Localresponse.com allows businesses to track their consumers in real time by organizing, indexing and prioritizing various location-based services.

We found this interesting piece of news in Directions Magazine in their article, “LocalResponse Launches Public Beta, Forever Changing How Businesses Engage With Consumers.” Tagging along with the frenzied “I am here” location applications, LocalResponse is harnessing consumer psychology and engaging the consumer at the point of sale.

Businesses will now have access to a simple and user-friendly platform to sift through millions of online messages and respond accordingly. It provides a forum for them to retain customers, create new ones and manage relationships.

Melody K. Smith

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