Case Study: Managing a database of Top Industrialists for the Department for Trade & Industry (DTI)

The DTI [now the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills] is a major government department that wished to communicate with industry leaders. In the distant past this was fairly spasmodic, using data sourced from high-profile information providers as and when it was needed. The fundamental flaw in this approach was that a) data from even the most reputable list providers proved to be out-of-date; b) it required a fair amount of work to clean before it could be deemed to meet the department’s standards for data presentation; and therefore, most importantly, c) it was impossible to undertake communications exercises to Britain’s opinion formers at the drop of a hat.

Data therefore existed but it was not being maintained in a way that lent itself to rapid or selective manipulation, especially if for example the Secretary of State wished to write to the UK’s top companies overnight. The decision was therefore taken by the Communications Directorate to establish a database that would be professionally managed, kept up-to-date and which would therefore be in a permanent state of readiness for DTI and other central government distributions.

Because of the nature of the data subjects, special considerations had to apply. Firstly, the heads of the top 1000 companies in Britain include a high percentage of academically highly-qualified, honoured or decorated individuals, often all three at the same time! Second it was important to recognise that unlike in most other walks of life, top industrialists are very ‘mobile’ and ‘pluralistic’ individuals [translation: they move about a lot and many sit on a number of boards of directors at once]. Simple databases, in which one individual can only ever have one linked value are described as one-to-one. Organisational data, in which a company record is linked to several people within it, is described as one-to-many. Here, since individuals may be linked to more than one organisation, this database had to be many-to-many.

It was imperative to have data available that reflected creditably on the department. The DTI’s Communications Directorate agreed that by maintaining a contact database such as this, they knew that, no matter when they called off the data, it would be more up-to-date than just about any other data source.

The bottom line for this project was:

• timeliness of the data; if the Times has reported that a Mrs Robinson is no longer on the board of BRF Limited, or that the Chairman of XYZ plc, Sir Henry Melchett, is now Lord Melchett, the database needs to be updated, ideally within days, not weeks or months
• accuracy; if a Chief Exec’s name is Dr E Bruce Farmer CBE, they don’t want to be written to either as the MD, or as either Mr, Eric or OBE
• relevance ie. it is essential to be able to differentiate between companies; there is often little point including in any distribution to top UK companies those that merely have a high level of working capital, such as a finance or property company with six employees in Canary Wharf

top of page