Project Name:  In-forté – Information for the Enterprise

Cadence Group Services:  Content Acquisition
Current Awareness Services
Custom Application Development
Research Support
Training
Web Content Management Services

SITUATION:

In 1985, a major telecommunications company deployed an interdepartmental database for cataloguing their internal information, competitive intelligence, and other information obtained from external content providers. Over time, the database evolved into an enterprise-wide Intranet application that could be used for competitive intelligence, research and decision support. However, an essential issue remained — many business units and departments were duplicating purchases of business information from content vendors creating expensive redundancies. Thus, a process was implemented to annually evaluate needs and solicit funding from departments across the enterprise.

CADENCE GROUP SOLUTION:
In 2001, Cadence Group was retained by the telecommunications company to manage content acquisition for the enterprise, improve the company’s virtual library, and refine the intranet application. Today, Cadence Group manages a cost-effective, high-quality process that stretches the company’s information and research budget. Cadence Group calls their business solution In-forté, Information for the Enterprise. By consolidating and aggregating departmental needs, the In-forté model has increased company-wide access to competitive intelligence, market sizing and development, and marketing and strategic plans while reducing content acquisition costs.

Cadence Group performs an annual review of the company’s business unit research needs and negotiates with the world’s leading business information content providers like Thomson Financial, Gartner, Forrester and others, to ensure the company is getting the most for its money, including content, reporting, accessibility, and value-adds like analyst visits and conference attendance. The reporting functionality built into the application allows Cadence Group to identify the vendors that have been most beneficial to the information needs of the company. The application’s database is then updated to include only those content providers that have proven their benefit across all departments – thereby promoting prudent information purchases and eliminating expensive redundancies.

In addition to negotiation, Cadence Group also handles budgeting, regular usage surveys, on-site research, and design and management of the intranet application, which provides single-point access to content from a dozen vendors in a self-service manner. Using a “push” technology, information can be disseminated according to specific requests by users. The result is that any user (whether skilled researcher or not) can find the information they need in seconds.

In just 24 months, Cadence Group has received a 100% client satisfaction rating and has enabled the company to fully transition from a physical to a virtual library — freeing up the expensive time of departmental staff and significantly suppressing the rising costs of content acquisition. Industry-wide, content costs have increased by 3.9 percent, while the company’s content expenditures in 2002 alone decreased 8.3 percent and research usage skyrocketed.

The In-forté model has been so successful that Cadence Group has launched the service offering to Fortune 500 companies nationwide.

In-forté is an enterprise solution that cost-effectively acquires decision-support information through product evaluation and aggregation of content purchases, and then organizes and presents targeted information to employees using search, browse and push technologies.