Benchmarking for information service excellence: The pharmaceutical industry

The pharmaceutical industry, the third largest export earner for the UK, depends upon information for its core activities. Two British Library sponsored research projects undertaken at Loughborough University - on 'Benchmarking for the library and information sector' and 'The impact of information use on decision making in the pharmaceutical sector' - investigated aspects of information service effectiveness in relation to industry needs. The extent to which benchmarking as part of an overall quality programme could be used by information services was considered. In addition to a questionnaire survey which identified the range of quality applications in information services in the academic and commercial sectors, a pharmaceutical company and two other demonstrator cases tested techniques. The results of the two studies indicated that benchmarking offers a means of measuring the effectiveness of the information service against best practice, but that there was also still much to be learned about the role of information use in support of decision-making. While the pharmaceutical company's information service established its enquiry service as exemplifying best practice, little new was learned from the benchmarking project about how to develop this area of their service. Further investigation of managers' uses of the information obtained from enquiries was also needed.