Quantum2 Topic of the Month - Achieving Information Service Excellence

Quantum² Topic of the Month - Achieving Information Service Excellence
Seeking and adopting best practices can help improve the work processes for delivery of products and services to better meet client needs. That translates into achieving efficiencies and economies that are extremely important to senior management. It also aids in building stronger relationships across the organization.

The process of identifying and implementing a best practice can be outlined in five steps:

• Asses internal needs by looking at the business needs of the organization and how the information center should perform to meet those needs.
• Understand current practices by capturing the current workflow that meets those business needs, and identifying gaps and points of failure in that process.
• Examine alternative practices, including research into benchmarks in order to identify possible improvements
• Model best practice through selection of an appropriate solution, and creating a new workflow or process for implementation.
• Implement the new process, measuring the effectiveness and communicating the results to staff, customers and senior management.

By taking a visible role in leading this best practice project with visible results, the information center becomes associated with the value of the project, thus making its ROI self-evident.

This summary is taken from an article by Betty Jo Hibberd, s enior manager, Information Professional Development, published in the January 2007 edition of the SLA journal, Information Outlook. To read the full article, please visit scientific.thomson.com/media/newsletterpdfs/2007-01/excellence.pdf.

This topic is also the subject of a Quantum² workshop on February 22, 2007   https://thomsonscientific.webex.com/mw0304l/mywebex/default.do?service=1&siteurl=thomsonscientific&main_url=%2Fmc0705l%2Fe.do%3Fsiteurl%3Dthomsonscientific%26AT%3DMI%26EventID%3D94877212%26Host%3Dafdfeeaeb83c3f071f5e44%26RG%3D1