The Selection of the OneSource Product

By January 2001, a case had been prepared to justify investment in a product called OneSource. The Research Manager had decided that the department needed a new business intelligence database and, that she really knew what was needed, therefore there was little point in waiting to see the outcomes of the TCS programme. The Research Manager had identified the package, as she had worked with this and other similar packages, in a previous role. OneSource is an online business browser which is linked to a business intelligence database. The database contains over 400,000 UK company profiles such as turnover, staff positions and premises addresses. It also contains news items, business and trade articles, research reports, industrial intelligence and financial data. The primary idea was that the browser would be used to identify prospective companies and contacts that clients could seek work with. OneSource was intended to replace the home-grown equivalent – the TMP application. The TMP application required manual updating by staff at T.Co, data quality was weak and it only held details of around 27,000 organisations. OneSource was trialed by the Research Manager and the positive outcomes of this were fed into the justification document. The Research Manager stated “OneSource offers a competitive advantage in terms of quality of Research and level of service to our clients. OneSource adds a professionalism and efficiency that should turn a Gold Service into a Platinum one.”

Her report also recommended the extended usage of OneSource throughout T.Co and the purchase of additional application. These recommendations are shown in Table 5.3.

Table 5.3: Benefits and Recommendations for the Purchase of OneSource

Benefits to T.Co:

- Company information is swiftly collated and can be exported to a number of applications - OneSource will remove time consuming and labour intensive tasks in the research

department

- The application negates the need for further personnel support for the research manager - The application will be used by others releasing the research manager for value adding work. - The sales team could use the application to identify potential sponsors.

Recommendations:

- That we subscribe to a ten-licence version of OneSource at £20k pa.

- That it becomes the major source of information for the Research Department - That all reports are customised as “T.Co Documents”

- That it is installed in the client library at Manchester, Theale and the Midlands.

- One primary researcher is located at each office so that each office does its own standard primary research with secondary research continuing to be carried out at Manchester - That consultants are trained in its use.

- That the Sales and Telemarketing Department are trained in its use to improve existing standards and intelligence of sales information

- That we replace the T.Co Senior Search database with Executive Grapevine CD-Rom (at a cost of £3,500 per year, plus £600 per satellite office).

The decision to purchase and implement OneSource was agreed with minimal questioning by the Board. Interestingly, I later found out that the Research Manager had shared a two-hour train journey with the Managing Director and it was during this time that she was able to sell the application to him. The TMP application had contained key functionality that OneSource did not. It was therefore decided that, until the client-tracking package23 was implemented, it would be necessary to retain certain aspects of the TMP application and establish a link between this and OneSource. Essentially, OneSource was to be used as a searchable database. Once searches had been performed to identify potential employers, their details would be

exported to a revised TMP application. The TMP application would then be used to guide secondary research and the generation of mail shots to the employees.

In order to refine the TMP application, and establish the link with One Source, a requirements gathering process was initiated involving a member of the TCS academic team, the IT Manager and the Research Manager. This began in September 2001 with prototyping, testing and refinement following on and carried out up to January 2002. Awareness sessions were then held to obtain feedback from consultants, sales and research staff. This was fed into the process and the new application was released April 2002.

The new application and OneSource both appeared to be received warmly by the staff who used them and they were quickly subsumed into the everyday working lives of those who interacted with them. The Research Manager was particularly delighted as she felt her life was now going to be much easier. She said “I’m so chuffed we got it, no more having to update TMP manually!”

Furthermore, access for staff at satellite offices was appreciated by them, as it had resulted in quicker response times for clients and in searching for potential sponsors. They no longer had to wait for headquarters research staff to undertaken searches on their behalf as the information could be accessed via the internet. For example, one Telesales representative stated “It was a really good idea of 'S'’s to recommend that we use OneSource too – it gives us more companies to go at.”

The IT Manager was similarly happy, but for different reasons. She said that the purchase of OneSource was a small step in making her life simpler, and it would become more so when the TMP application was also finally replaced with Goldmine (the client-tracking application). She claimed that when it was in place, she could get on with more strategic work and let the day-to-day stuff deal with itself. In a meeting late November 2002, I asked the IT Manager how the application was bedding in and she said it was still fine although she pointed out that staff were forgetting what it was like before. She said the sales staff were now becoming more demanding and were beginning to complain that overseas and public sector organisation data was not available in the database. I asked the same Telesales Representative as before about her feelings on OneSource at this point. She said, “Yes, I’m still happy, although it would be nice to have more global data”. Interestingly, they had never had this before, but now it had become a priority.

I did ask if the package was to be rolled out to consultants as initially intended, but I was told by the Research Manager that this had been put on hold as there were only a limited number of licenses available. I therefore asked why more were not purchased and she smiled and told me it just was not an option at the moment. As I suspected, I was told by another source, the real reasoning behind this was that the consultants were not inclined to undertake work that had always been done for them (the searches), even though it might have improved client experiences. It was explained to me that T.Co had decided not to push this as it was more important to keep the consultants engaged in the client-tracking project.