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By Sarah Hinton
 Last autumn, having completed an enquiry about a company, its competitors and key market areas, I received an appreciative email back from my client, but also the following request: 'I would be interested in how you decided where to look so I could have a chance at doing it myself as efficiently some day!'
How to go about finding information is usually a multi-faceted process. Although working out a search strategy in advance is always a sound idea, that strategy is not set in stone and will very likely evolve as your search progresses, as it will be undergoing revision by the less-easy-to-summarise application of your professional skills and experience. This comes home to me every time a client asks how I found what I sent. It's not always easy to explain; if it were, we wouldn't be needed. But it's not a 'black art' either. Information professionals frequently give one-to-one or group information literacy training on how to find high quality information, which requires a good level of clarity on how to search effectively. In response, I could reply to my colleague that the search process looks something like this. Asking the right questions There are useful search phrases which help to generate interesting results on topics such as company strategy or product innovation. With this sort of search I've even found, on occasions, that the oft-avoided route - taking the plunge and entering just what you want to find into Google - can work surprisingly well. But, most of the time, the search involves playing around with your keywords, bearing in mind the context of what's required which might include: - What do you really want to find out about the company (or industry sector)?
- Is there a slant to the information required, such as sustainable product development, rather than product development in general.
- Perhaps you want some clues as to how the company innovates?
- Where do they have R&D centres and how they are structured? (A classic from the Awkward Enquiry category!)
- What's their take on environmental policies - greenwash or genuine?
Taking a break from Google to try one of the cluster-based search engines, like Kartoo, can be a useful exercise for expanding or refining keywords, as well as being a refreshing change from Google! If you haven't used this type of search engine before (or very often), using a familiar topic as a first search will enable you to get an idea of how the clustering deals with your keywords. When you do find one very relevant article, closely study the keywords and descriptive phrases used. After all, part of the game is trying to second-guess what terms an author has used to describe what you're looking for. A good article or report can really help you to refine your search terms and give you additional ways of describing the topic - especially helpful if your enquirer has been a little vague or if you're searching in a highly technical or unfamiliar technology area. Even when I've been asked to search across only free sources, if I come across a few articles that look highly relevant but aren't available in full for free, I will tend to include them. For one thing, it demonstrates thoroughness, plus I'd rather give my enquirers the choice to pay for an article, rather than leaving them ignorant of what might be some very useful papers, simply because they weren't free to access online. Checking your dates Try typing something like Pepsi product development 2009 or Pepsi innovation strategy into Google. This can be an effective way of finding articles about the company you're interested in. Include a date, such as the current year or next year as this can often help to ensure that the results are recent. Google's Advanced search date range can also help, but I prefer to enter a year as part of the search. For example, I often enter future years like 2012 or 2013 when looking for industry predictions or market forecast data, as up-to-date reports will be looking ahead this far. This can also work when looking for a company's future plans. Either way, you need to keep a sharp eye out for how recent the information you've found is - a page recently updated may still be carrying an old article. If you can't tell, it's worth running a search using the article title to see if the same article crops up on another website whose version might include its date. But, if no date seems to be given anywhere and the article gives no clue, then I would be reluctant to include it in my results. An exception might be, if it looked spot-on (and it would have to be) then I might decide include it, but with a clear warning to my client that it might be old. In recent years, firms like Procter and Gamble have been quite keen to describe their product development strategies (just enter P&G product development into Google and you'll see what I mean), but it isn't necessarily that straightforward for other companies. This is where searching across press, journal and analyst blogs can come in handy. Google will include some blog results, but a dedicated blog search will be more effective. Technorati's analyst blogs contain some very useful company and industry insight. Other non-traditional sources Inside information can sometimes be gleaned from specific sites. GlassDoor, what employees say about their employers, is one such example. Still in beta, GlassDoor collects employee opinion by inviting employees to post a review (anonymously) about their company, from whether it is a good employer to the sort of personality you need to have to thrive there. The small catch is that, to read a review in full, you have to submit your own review of a present or past employer! However, even the headlines can provide an interesting insight into what companies are like (or how they are perceived) from the inside. A patent search may also be appropriate if your search is product-focused, for example, if you've been asked to find out more about a company's competing product. It might also reveal other competitors that your client wasn't aware of and can give more specific details about the product than the glossy description on a company's website. I mostly use Delphion which is a subscription site, but also Espacenet as all patents are free to download, plus it very usefully gives a list of equivalent patents, which is handy when you want to know if there's a version of a patent in English! Competitive and market information Use market reports to find competitors or key industry players. A general web search looking for a ranking of top companies in an industry sector is great if you can find one but, for the sort of sectors I tend to search across, there aren't usually tailor-made rankings, or they may only cover US companies when my focus is global or European. However, I find that looking at market report tables of contents can be effective. Sometimes, too many companies are listed, but the key companies might be mentioned in the report abstract and some publishers, such as Global Industry Analysts, often split the companies into 'key players' and 'others' which gives an indication of both the major and more minor participants. I usually search for market data using a combination of:
- Google, which helps to capture the more specialist publishers that don't appear the sites of aggregators
- MarketResearch.com and Profound - a market reports database, owned by MarketResearch.com (but a subscription service)
- News databases to find which market reports have been quoted - this can also reveal some of the more specialist publishers.
If you have the budget (always negotiate hard - you really can achieve good deals at present, but that's another story) checking analyst reports on a database such as Investext can also be very useful and provide a different slant on a company's performance and prospects. We've found the strategic competitor insight reports from Global Markets Direct especially useful as they include a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, but these aren't freely available. How do librarians make a difference? My colleague asked a good question. As information professionals, we need to have a clear understanding of how we do what we do. In the December 2008 issue of SLA's Information Outlook, Stephen Abram, president of SLA, takes as his theme the classic comment that as almost everything's available on the Web now, why do we need librarians? As part of his reply, he points out that a search engine is 'just a big stupid empty search box. Personal service easily senses the difference. The lesson: Information has context and so do the users.' Embedded in this 'personal service' are the skills which enable us to ask the right questions in order to understand the enquiry correctly and gain enough knowledge of the client. Then apply that understanding to knowing where to look, structuring and developing our search strategy, while assessing what we find for accuracy, authority, currency and relevance. These skills are as much a key part of the finding process as having access to large internet search engines. Reference Finding our voices in an internet world. Stephen Abrams. Information Outlook, December 2008, p32-33 This article is included in the FUMSI Report: Folio on Competitive Intelligence. Learn more and purchase.
By Sarah Hinton
Sarah Hinton started out in government libraries and then worked as a
solo at Sagentia (formerly Scientific Generics). She is currently
information manager at Manage5ines Ltd (still a solo position!). She
wrote a chapter of the 'Information Literacy Cookbook: Ingredients,
Recipes and Tips for Success' (Chandos, 2007) and sits on the
Information Literacy CILIP sub-group as commercial representative. An
associate member of CILIP, she is also a member of the SLA.
FUMSI articles by Sarah Hinton »
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