Citation
(2001), "A world of information", Work Study, Vol. 50 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2001.07950gab.006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
A world of information
A world of information
An Aladdin's cave of answers has been opened up to businesses and consumers as MSN.co.uk The Daily Telegraph and specialist small firm Web site, Smallbiz UK, offer users access to one of the world's most powerful information search services – Infofast. People using the services will be able to get answers to a vast range of questions via Infofast's professional researchers, who use revolutionary search technology to find information from the Internet and more than 2,000 other databases.
Infofast utilises 150 researchers based in Marlborough, Northampton and India. It plans to have five research centres, providing capacity for more than 1.2m customers. Answers can be given by telephone, e-mail, fax or mobile SMS – usually within two to five minutes of being asked. Costs are agreed on a per-question basis between the user and researcher, with payment being made by credit/debit card or company invoice.
Visitors to MSN.co.uk can ask questions from seven of the site's channels: businesses, news, computing, health, entertainment, careers and women. Users pose their questions via a dialogue box, which connects them in real-time directly to an Infofast researcher. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
For the two million plus readers of The Daily Telegraph, the service is accessed by freephone number (0800 1 382 384). The Telegraph Information Service is available from 6.30am-10.30pm, Monday to Friday and from 9am-5pm on Saturday. Users of the Smallbiz UK Web site (www.smallbiz.uk.com) can choose to access the service by phone (08701 20 20 23) or via a real-time dialogue box, during the same hours.
Infofast answers 98 per cent of all questions it receives and makes no charge if the information required cannot be found. This success rate is made possible as a result of Infofast's own Internet data-mining process which allows its researchers to go deeper into thousands of portals and Web sites to find a user's particular information.
Martin Kelly, chief executive officer of Infofast, said: "Twenty per cent of all Internet searches fail and for difficult or involved questions a user can often take up to an hour trawling the Web for an answer. Using Infofast the answer can be found in minutes, simply because an expert researcher can undertake a much more intelligent search than any search engine".
For more information, visit www.infofast.co.uk