Dow Jones Client Solutions Offers Three-Phased Approach

Van Dyke brought in Dow Jones Client Solutions to analyze external

content and delivery requirements for the Staffing Research &

Competitive Intelligence group at Microsoft. Dow Jones consultants

reviewed editorial content, analyzed workflow in the department,

investigated best practices for information delivery via the Micro-

soft SharePoint Web portal application, and developed a roadmap

for short-term objectives as well as long-term future needs. As a

preparation for the Dow Jones engagement, Van Dyke did a survey

of the Microsoft staffing organization. “We learned that they needed

two things – current staffing-related news on competitors and infor-

mation on the latest products from each competitor,” she says.

Dow Jones Client Solutions professionals worked with Van Dyke to

put forward a three-phased proposal to Microsoft executives. The

first two phases involved making better use of the existing content

within the SharePoint portal, and the third phase looked at how an

automated solution would benefit Microsoft staffing employees by

streamlining workflow.

A major aspect of the engagement was ensuring that Dow Jones

Client Solutions professionals had a complete picture of what the

Staffing Research & Competitive Intelligence group at Microsoft

does each day. “We work to understand how competitors position

their organizations so that we can compete,” Van Dyke says. “We

need to know about other high-tech companies like Amazon,Google

and Apple. How do they promote themselves to potential em-

ployees? What is their corporate culture? How do they describe

themselves? We interview people who are new hires at Microsoft

who came to us from other companies, and we also speak with

recruiters who provide information to us.”

Van Dyke says that the news they get from Factiva, plus other exter-

nal information from articles and Web sites, is critical. “The staffing

consultants and recruiters at Microsoft need to have good informa-

tion and data about our competitors when they talk to candidates,”

she says.

“ We analyze competitors, startups, graduate schools, and other places that we compete with for talent.”

Technology for Hire In the highly competitive recruiting environment for talented and

experienced employees in the technology and software businesses,

Microsoft Corp. relies extensively on information to find, recruit

and hire the very best talent. Ruth Van Dyke, Manager of Staffing

Research & Competitive Intelligence at Microsoft, is the individual

charged with arming the entire staffing department with the com-

petitive knowledge it needs to be effective. “I have a unique role in

that I’m doing a marketing job, but I’m doing it within the staffing de-

partment,” Van Dyke says. “We have an entire department that uses

marketing concepts to promote working at Microsoft to prospective

employees.”

Van Dyke says that most people within her team have a marketing

background and that allows them to act more like a product team

than an internal service organization. “We use competitive intel-

ligence to market employment in much the same way our product

marketers use competitive intelligence to market our products,” she

says. “We analyze competitors, startups, graduate schools, and

other places that we compete with for talent.”

“ One of the good things about working with Dow Jones Client Solutions is that they brought together an understanding of information delivery plus the information science approach to how information and news can help us here at Microsoft.”

According to Van Dyke, Microsoft invests heavily in making informa-

tion available across the entire organization. “I have a library science

background so when I joined Microsoft, I wanted to find out what

information was available. I immediately found that Factiva, from

Dow Jones, was available to all employees,” she says. “Towards the

end of 2006 we learned about new options available in SharePoint

2007 for working with content. Since Microsoft was already paying

for Factiva information and we were migrating to SharePoint 2007

for delivery, we were looking for a better way to deliver the informa-

tion that we already owned.”

Dow Jones Client Solutions Microsoft Case Study

“ Towards the end of 2006 we learned about new options available in SharePoint 2007 for working with content. Since Microsoft was already paying for Factiva information and we were migrating to SharePoint 2007 for delivery, we were looking for a better way to deliver the information that we already owned.”

About Dow Jones & Company

Dow Jones & Company (NYSE: DJ; dowjones.com) is a leading provider of

global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group

publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch and the Far

Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones

Newswires, Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and

Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Its Local Media Group operates

community-based information franchises. Dow Jones is co-owner with

Hearst of SmartMoney. Dow Jones provides news content to CNBC and

radio stations in the U.S.

Dow Jones Client Solutions delivers end-to-end, technology-enabled

business solutions and innovative consulting services that help organizations

transform their information assets into competitive advantage. With access

to world-class content, cutting-edge technology and integration experts

worldwide, Client Solutions creates, deploys and manages solutions that

optimize the sales process, improve marketing intelligence, increase loyal,

value-driven online financial business, and solve complex information chal-

lenges. For more information about Dow Jones Client Solutions visit

www.dowjones.com/clientsolutions.

Integrating News and Information

During the engagement, the Dow Jones Client Solutions team

learned that the portal had limitations in user options and timely

delivery of current information. In addition, creating scorecards was

a time-consuming cut-and-paste operation. “The process of reading

news each day and creating the scorecards is very manual,” Van

Dyke says. “So I was looking for a better way to do it.” And for the

entire organization, the migration over to SharePoint 2007 was the

ideal opportunity to re-think the approach to information delivery.

The recommendations that Dow Jones Client Solutions made for

phase I and phase II have been implemented, including RSS and

automatic delivery of premium content required by the Microsoft

recruiters and staffing professionals. A key consideration for the Dow

Jones Client Solutions consultants was to quickly leverage the com-

pany’s investment in the Microsoft SharePoint portal technology.

The first two phases were up and running upon release of the new

SharePoint portal in early April. “It is alive and well and being used,”

says Van Dyke. “We are in the process of doing another survey to

find out what people think. The anecdotal feedback is that things

are going well, but I am eager to hear from the staffing consultants

again.”

Now Van Dyke is working to implement the phase III recommenda-

tions. “For example, we currently have the competitor scorecards

in MS Word, but we want to make the scorecards a real-time daily

update of a Web page instead,” she says. “The third phase has not

been implemented because it is difficult to find the right home for it

within Microsoft. We are working off the recommendations docu-

ment that Dow Jones gave us for phase III because it provided good

thinking and clarity to the process. This is useful because I found

it challenging to explain what needed to be done prior to thinking

the project through with Dow Jones. Now I have a way to work on

implementation with our internal IT partners.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in

software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their

full potential.

Dow Jones Client Solutions Microsoft Case Study

©2008 Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All rights reserved. DJCS-3566