I've worked with someone in biz-dev for a while where he essentially interfaces with certain large companies and keeps senior management and research up to date on things the companies are working on that impact us.

There has been a slow and steady decline in the quality of these reports over the last year or so, to the point this person is literally forwarding me items directly from the company's RSS feeds.

... [sigh] ... So, I conducted an experiment where I subscribed to 3 RSS feeds and kill filed the biz-dev guy. The result? I'm actually receiving *more* up-to-date info then he was providing because I don't have the lag-time while he reformats other people's content into Digest-of-Company-X emails. Granted I'm missing his commentary but thats a trade-off I'm comfortable with.

Maybe that makes me rude, but I found a way to save the company $80k a year. Go figure.

Replacing people with RSS feeds