Information Management Best Practices: Fueling Your Enterprise Content Budget – Funding Models That Work

Content buying in the enterprise has moved up the value chain from being a small departmental job in the library or marketing department to comprising major initiatives to strategically source and move mission-critical electronic content out to the enterprise. Outsell data provides solid evidence that going to enterprise-wide, centralized models works, with an average of 25 percent cost savings and a 40 percent increase in number of users. Obtaining stakeholder buy-in and securing funding require time and effort, however. This Briefing provides metrics, methods, and best practices from our latest information management benchmarks on vendor portfolio practices to help information managers cut down the time and administrative overhead required, and to increase their budgets in order to move enterprise electronic content to the next level of intelligence and analytics. The Briefing tracks the twin drivers of cost-cutting and rising external costs for external tools; analyzes new hybrid funding models that blend the traditional overhead, allocation, and chargeback methods; and outlines best practices for securing funding, fitting funding models to multiple departments' needs, and tracking and managing a content budget. It examines in detail six funding allocation models used in surveyed companies.