Financial management and blogs

Information Outlook, July, 2005 by John R. Latham

In my non-SLA life I am an adjunct faculty at the University of Maryland, giving my first course, Financial Management of Information Projects, in the Fall Semester. Rest assured that when the course preparation is completed, you will be subjected to a condensed version as a subject for this column, but in the meantime I am reminded of the importance of the new information professional seeing her/himself as a business professional as well.

To many this may be preaching to the choir, but as I pointed out in my April column, it is a cut-throat world out there, and we have to prove that we are indispensable members of management within the organization. Whether you work for a corporation that lives for its earnings per share, or a government, academic--or non-profit organization, profitability or whatever your organization has to call it--is life and death to you and your information center or department. In any organization you will have a budget that you will compare with actual monthly results, and report on trends and variances, but that is history, and if things are not going well, it may be too late to act. You need to look at an organization's financial situation from the top down, and keep ahead of the game. Just because your area may be performing well financially does not mean that is the case for the organization overall.

Find out as many ways as possible to establish exactly what the financial situation of your organization is. I am not suggesting that you have to acquire the abilities of a professional financial analyst, but results are generally published internally and externally in the case of publicly listed companies. It helps to understand fundamental financial management terms such as working capital, cash flow statements, liquidity ratios, price earnings, and off-balance-sheet financing, as they can give you indicators to the financial health of your organization. If you aren't generating any cash, something is wrong, regardless of what the balance sheet looks like. Remember Enron. As information professionals, you won't have any difficulty in finding out what is being said about your organization in the financial press. In the government or academic world that may a little more difficult, but if anyone can find information about the financial position or future of your institution, you should be the one. If you smell a financial rat, engineer a meeting with one of your finance department colleagues under the guise of seeking his advice on your department's results, and find out what you can about the overall financial health of the organization. These guys are a cagey lot, but they generally feel under-appreciated, so lay on the flattery with a trowel, and they will open up.

The art to survival is being one step ahead, so if you find out that there are serious financial problems, concentrate on your results and the financial impact that you have on all other areas or departments. Prepare an ROI report and circulate it before you are asked for it. Keep a record of all testimonials from fellow employees, especially if they refer to the money or time your work saved them. You can easily convert their time into bottom line value. Keep your ears open in the lunchroom or coffee lounge. That's where you will hear about disastrous results, financial woes, or proposed funding cuts.

What's This Got to Do With Blogs?

There is nothing like actually using something to find out how useful it is. Blogs are not new, but helping set up and use the SLA Conference Blog taught me how simple they are to use, and how perfect for disseminating information without too much fuss. Your library or information center should not be without one. With the information from your ROI report, budget/actual comparisons, and testimonials, you can use your blog to continually keep the value of your services in front of senior management. A bit like Chinese water torture. Don't use the sledgehammer approach, but mix in the financial comments with all the other information on the blog. Like subliminal advertising, if you have enough examples, and say it often enough, noone will dispute the financial impact of your indispensable services.

As Darlene Fichter said in her introduction to her May 11 virtual seminar on weblogs, more and more libraries are using blogs to help market programs and services, publishing online newsletters, library construction news, and links to new resources. Others are using weblogs to publish their Web site or parts of a Web site taking advantage of the lightweight content management tools for business processes on the library's intranet. Make sure that you also use them to highlight how you and your services impact the finances and profitability or financial health of your organization or institution.

Business Management

As I consider financial management issues, I should refer you to Debbie Schachter's monthly Business Management column in Information Outlook, as she deals with subjects just like this, which are dear to my heart.