|
|||
|
|
|||
| In summer of 1998, Merrill Lynch Canada
announced that it would acquire Midland Walwyn Canada Inc.
Both companies had well established but different library
services. Merrill Lynch Canada served the investment
banking and capital markets group exclusively and was part
of a world wide network of Merrill Lynch libraries. Midland
Walwyn provided services to all areas of the company and
had one librarian dedicated to providing services to a
large investment banking group. Merging the operations of two companies is a big undertaking. Many decisions need to be made and usually there are a lot of people involved in the decision-making process. In the securities industry, mergers move very quickly and decisions need to be made. The first decision was to move all library functions to the current BCE Place office. The second decision was to have the Library report to the Director of Investment Banking. Midland Walwyn's Corporate Library had always reported into the Director of Research. Over the course of 6 weeks we developed a layout for the "new" library and over a period the library staff made decisions about the collection, weeding out duplication, moving files and eliminating duplicate vendor contracts. We were lucky that our move was done at the end of December because that meant that most contracts were coming up for renewal in the New Year. We just let contracts run out. All the same it was a big job going through each individual contract, contacting vendors and making all the necessary changes. All of us were committed to ensuring that service to our clients was not interrupted and we were lucky that our physical move occurred the week before Christmas. This was a good time as many people were beginning to take Christmas vacations and we would have a couple of weeks to get everything organized. We decided to continue servicing our respective clientele as we had done previously. We allocated two librarians to service investment banking across Canada and two librarians to service the rest of the company. As the librarian for Midland Walwyn Capital Inc, I found the merger was beneficial because it gave us access to electronic resources made available to through Merrill Lynch worldwide. Merrill Lynch was committed to very high technological standards worldwide and because of the size of the company negotiating contracts with vendors allowed us to get tremendous value for our money. The range of products and services available was a real bonus to us and we lost no time in promoting these services to our clients. In addition to the expansion of services one additional benefit was the access to worldwide corporate information. It's great to be able to obtain information on an obscure Australian mining company or the prospectus on a German transport company. Our Merrill Lynch counterparts around the world know their business environments and help us with research in areas where our expertise is lacking. For our clients this level of service is necessary as the financial services marketplace is affected by globalization. Gone are the days when all we had to know was the Canadian marketplace. One aspect of the merger that became important was that while we were undergoing change so was all the other areas of the company. It was important to stay abreast of restructuring in all our client groups. Sometimes there was a shuffling of personnel in other cases there was a change in a particular department's function. This often affected the information needs of the group. All of us had to be aware of the changes and adapt our services to meet those changes. In a couple of instances, we needed to step in and perform research that was previously managed by another group or an area that was eliminated in the restructuring. Our response was to see if we could address the information needs quickly and promote this to the different client groups. We needed to maintain visibility in a changing environment. This was achieved by providing the best information services possible - good service sells itself. We also held open houses, did individual and group consulting and produced marketing literature to advertise our service. It's been two years since the merger but we continually meet new challenges as the market changes and the company grows and develops to meet these changes.
|