Knight-Ridder Reorgs Marketing -- Emphasizing Vertical

Knight-Ridder Financial has initiated a major corporate reorganization, one which the vendor believes will render it more information-focused. To this end, Knight-Ridder has pulled its so-called global product marketing group under the umbrella -- and under the control -- of its global vertical marketing group. The newly configured global product marketing group will be headed by Doug Weil, who previously oversaw what used to be known as the vertical markets management group.

As part of the reorg, Knight-Ridder has brought its product assurance and testing group -- once part of the global product marketing group -- into its so-called systems and development organization. That effort will be headed by Jose Pecache, under the rubric of software quality assurance. Like Weil, Pecache will report to Knight-Ridder Financial president Paul Tucker.

According to Knight-Ridder officials -- including Tucker -- the emphasis was shifted to vertical markets in order to enable the vendor to more closely link development of its information products with development of the platforms those products are delivered on. Though Knight-Ridder officials are, not surprisingly, hesitant to criticize the status quo ante, it's likely they concluded that the previous structure alienated vertical marketers from the development process -- a situation that left people closest to the customers with little ability to influence what the customers are supposed to buy.

What's more -- though officials at Knight-Ridder deny there is a connection -- the latest reorg echoes some of the same themes that emerged during the vendor's shakeup of its U.S. sales staff last year. At that time, the vendor sought to implement a corporate cultural shift among its salespeople -- one that aimed not only to make them more responsible to the bottom line, but also to educate them better as to the inner workings of the financial markets their customers work in.

At the time of the sales department shakeup -- which forced many staff to the exits (IMD, May 9) -- the new president of Knight-Ridder Financial Americas said that the sales teams needed "more fluency" and a better "diagnostic capability" ... as opposed to a group that would "just push product" (IMD, May 23). It appears that the current reorg, albeit in a more top-down manner, is designed to foster a similar transformation in the marketing and product development areas.

Word of Knight-Ridder's plan to give more emphasis to vertical marketing has emerged two months following the departure of Karen Sosnick, who left her post as head of global product marketing to take a job with an information vendor to the construction industry (IMD, Sept. 26). The implementation of this reorg explains Knight-Ridder's failure to immediately seek a replacement for Sosnick.

An interesting adjunct to the reorganization is the shift of a significant proportion of Knight-Ridder's promotional efforts under the oversight of Tucker himself. Weil previously handled most such tasks. Tucker says that "on a global basis" Knight-Ridder hasn't "focused on [public relations] as well as we should have ... haven't done a particularly good job of getting the message out."

Weil, as head of the global product marketing group, will oversee four global market managers -- positions which have yet to be filled. The positions are strategic manager of sovereign debt products, strategic manager of derivatives and foreign exchange products, strategic manager of metals and energy products and strategic manager of subscriber systems.

The primary roles of the global market managers will be to develop and refine Knight-Ridder's long-term strategic plans in each of its vertical markets, as well as to develop more detailed and targeted traditional marketing strategies for each segment within those markets. The managers' objectives will include a major focus on packaging, pricing and marketing Knight-Ridder's information and more closely coordinating the design of Knight-Ridder's information delivery systems to the information and functional needs of its customers.

The new position of global marketing manager for subscriber systems will entail the overall management of the platforms through which Knight-Ridder delivers its information services, including Moneycenter for Windows, Moneycenter for Unix, Profitcenter, the Digital Page Server and the Digital Data Feed.

Meanwhile, Pecache's software quality assurance group will include two groups under the direction of Jason Van Ness and Paul Ames, both directors of software development. Van Ness is based in Leawood, Kan., where the basic systems architectures and Windows products are developed. Ames, based in New York, is in charge of the Unix group.