Dow Jones Rebrands, Reorgs ‘Institutional’ Biz

The new divisional branding “more accurately reflects the business needs of our clients and the offerings that they value from us,” said Dan Smith, who was appointed head of the group last month, having led the review of the Institutional Business following Fenwick’s departure, in a memo sent to the vendor’s product and sales teams on Monday, Aug. 4.

“When we embarked on our Institutional review in January, we did so with the intent of reevaluating everything across the business, including what we call it. We soon realized that the label ‘institutional’ provided a very limited view of our business, only representing a small segment of our client base and product capabilities,” and did not reflect the “incredibly diverse range of individuals and companies across many industries… [that] rely on our products as the most trusted source for news and information,” Smith said.

The division’s new branding was revealed more broadly during a roadshow last month, when CEO William Lewis, chief HR officer Mark Musgrave and chief financial officer Anna Sedgley visited 15 Dow Jones offices worldwide to present the company’s goals to local staff.

In addition, Dow Jones has reorganized its Product team under head of products Edward Roussel over the past four months to combine the teams serving its Consumer and Professional Business, while also creating dedicated groups focused on each of the Professional Business’ key areas: Dow Jones Newswires, headed by Joe Cappitelli;, Risk and Compliance, headed by Joel Lange; and Corporate Products, which comprises Factiva, Private Markets and Venture Capital and DJX—the service rolled out last year to provide a single point of access to content from all these other business areas—headed by Frank Filippo. Under the new structure, each area within the Professional Information Businesss reports to Smith, who reports to Roussel.

A Dow Jones spokesperson says this change reflects Roussel’s belief that a flatter structure makes it easier for different groups to collaborate and share ideas, and “mirrors the flexibility we’ve been bringing to our offering in recent months,” including making it possible to purchase individual services such as Factiva on a standalone basis, instead of just through DJX.

Other initiatives resulting from the Institutional review include product enhancements in response to customer feedback, including the integration in June of user-generated videos from Dublin-based Storyful—which Dow Jones parent News Corp. acquired last year—into Factiva, and an expansion of the scope and volume of Dow Jones Newswires’ Market Talk real-time news and market analysis service by having journalists covering different regions and industries contribute commentary to the service.

Following the review and roadshow, the vendor is now building 90-day plans with each department for how they can work towards the company’s goals, and will provide more clarity to staff about these goals around the end of September.