This session by Rob Haran from Shire Pharmaceuticals (based in the UK but international company). A medium sized company (I guess in the pharmaceutical world)

Company that is growing – so need flexible solutions. Cost limitations both in terms of content they can afford and the size of the team managing electronic resources.

Marketing used:

• Passive – email strap lines, out of office messages, posters
• Active – new hires email, articles in newsletters
• Self marketing – resources and word of moth

InfoZone – is web site giving: global access to electornic resources, other services and training

Creating an identity – built on InfoZone – distinctive logo – on top of this now built new services – InfoHub (a study/information space) and InfoLink.

Rob notes problem of emails – can be spam – and this creates very negative reaction.

Make sure training is targeted – but found specific training for new/updated resources didn’t work so well.

Attending team meetings – 5 minute snap shots – Rob’s experience is that you loose peoples attention if you go longer than about 5 minutes (10 minutes is too long)

Where ideas haven’t worked so well they have tried to refine and improve – e.g. promotional material in A4 format put on people’s desks just got binned – but postcard sized material worked.

Found classroom based training for new or updated resources (i.e. aimed at existing staff) weren’t successful – perceived as too long (3 hours), wrong time, not of immediate interest. So need to relate training to short term business needs, thinking about shorter sessions over lunch.

For introductory email – made more interactive by introducing links – rather than pushing more and more content into email. Can also ask questions – ‘what alerts would you like’, ‘what information do you need’ – get the person using your services straightaway.

Rob sees seamless, easy access to resources as part of marketing

Collaboration outreach and ‘inverse’ outreach:

• Reference Manager – enable request for literature search support
• Work with Corporate Communications – they may want information (e.g. newspaper articles) that you have access to

Meaure success – get feedback, capture quotes.

Conclusions:

• Develop and identity
• Take opportunities
• Don’t expect immediate results – these things take time