Businesses today need to organize and manage both structured and semistructured knowledge assets. Structured knowledge is explicit knowledge that exists in formal documents, as well as in formal rules that organizations derive by observing experts and their decision-making behaviors. But, according to experts, at least 80 percent of an organization’s business content is semistructured or unstructured information in folders, messages, memos, proposals, e-mails, graphics, electronic slide presentations, and even videos created in different formats and stored in many locations.
Enterprise content management systems help organizations manage both types of information. They have capabilities for knowledge capture, storage, retrieval, distribution, and preservation to help firms improve their business processes and decisions. Such systems include corporate repositories of documents, reports, presentations, and best practices, as well as capabilities for collecting and organizing semistructured knowledge such as e-mail (see Figure 11.3). Major enterprise content management systems also enable users to access external sources of information, such as news feeds and research, and to communicate via e-mail, chat/instant messaging, discussion groups, and videoconferencing. They are starting to incorporate blogs, wikis, and other enterprise social networking tools. Open Text Corporation, EMC (Documentum), IBM, and Oracle Corporation are leading vendors of enterprisecontent management software.
Barrick Gold, headquartered in Toronto, is the world’s leading gold producer, and it uses Open Text tools for enterprise content management and for supporting communities of practice. The company has 26 operating mines and20,000 employees worldwide, who were creating and storing information in many different locations. Barrick needed a way to centralize this organizational
expertise, make it easier to access critical company information, and ensure that best practices are documented and shared. Barrick’s Knowledge Center is a central repository for documents about policies, procedures, standards, guidelines, new ideas, and best practices, and has capabilities to identify the latest version of each document. Administrators know who is accessing the site and which documents they are using. The content management system includes social networking tools, such as wikis, blogs, and forums, to help communities of practice share their knowledge key problem in managing knowledge is the creation of an appropriate classification scheme, or taxonomy, to organize information into meaningful categories so that it can be easily accessed. Once the categories for classifying knowledge have been created, each knowledge object needs to be “tagged,” or classified, so that it can be easily retrieved. Enterprise content management systems have capabilities for tagging, interfacing with corporate databases andcontent repositories, andcreating enterprise knowledge portals that provide a
single point of access to information resources.
Firms in publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and entertainment have special needs for storing and managing unstructured digital data such as photographs, graphic images, video, and audio content. For example, Coca-Cola must keep track of all the images of the Coca-Cola brand that have been created in the past at all of the company’s worldwide offices, to prevent both redundant work and variation from a standard brand image. Digital asset management systems help companies classify, store, and distribute these digital objects.
KNOWLEDGE NETWORK SYSTEMS
Knowledge network systems, address the problem that arises when the appropriate knowledge is not in the form of a digital document but instead resides in the memory of individual experts in the firm. Knowledge network systems provide an online directory of corporate experts and their profiles, with details about their job experience, projects, publications, and educational degrees. Search tools make it easy for employees to find the appropriate expert in a company. Knowledge network systems such as Hivemine's AskMe include repositories of expert-generated content. Some knowledge networking capabilities are included in the leading enterprise content management, social networking, and collaboration software products.
COLLABORATION AND SOCIAL TOOLS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
For knowledge resources outside the firm, social bookmarking makes it easier to search for and share information by allowing users to save their bookmarks to Web pages on a public Web site and tag these bookmarks with keywords. These tags can be used to organize and search for text and images. Lists of tags can be shared with other people to help them find information of interest. The user-created taxonomies created for shared bookmarks are called folksonomies. Delicious, Slashdot, and Pinterest are popular social bookmarking sites. Suppose, for example, that you’re on a corporate team researching wind power. If you did a Web search and found relevant Web pages on wind power
you’d click on a bookmarking button on a social bookmarking site and create a tag identifying each Web document you found to link it to wind power. By clicking on the “tags” button at the social networking site, you’d be able to see a list of all the tags you created and select the documents you need. Companies need ways to keep track of and manage employee learning and to integrate it more fully into their knowledge management and other corporate systems. A learning management system (LMS) provides tools for the management, delivery, tracking, and assessment of various types of employee learning and training. Contemporary LMS support multiple modes of learning, including CD-ROM, downloadable videos, Web-based classes, live instruction in classes or online, and group learning in online forums and chat sessions. The LMS consolidates mixed-media training, automates the selection and administration of courses, assembles and delivers learning content, and measures learning effectiveness.
CVM Solutions, LLC (CVM) uses Digitec’s Knowledge Direct learning management system to provide training about how to manage suppliers for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Delta Airlines. Knowledge Direct provides a portal for accessing course content online, along with hands-free administration features such as student registration and assessment tools, built-in Help and Contact Support, automatic e-mail triggers to remind users of courses or deadlines, automatic e-mail acknowledgement of course completions, and Web-based reporting for courses accessed. Knowledge Direct also provides a company-branded login for each client firm and enables CVM to create and assign a company administrator who has access to the student reporting tool for that company.
single point of access to information resources.
Firms in publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and entertainment have special needs for storing and managing unstructured digital data such as photographs, graphic images, video, and audio content. For example, Coca-Cola must keep track of all the images of the Coca-Cola brand that have been created in the past at all of the company’s worldwide offices, to prevent both redundant work and variation from a standard brand image. Digital asset management systems help companies classify, store, and distribute these digital objects.
KNOWLEDGE NETWORK SYSTEMS
Knowledge network systems, address the problem that arises when the appropriate knowledge is not in the form of a digital document but instead resides in the memory of individual experts in the firm. Knowledge network systems provide an online directory of corporate experts and their profiles, with details about their job experience, projects, publications, and educational degrees. Search tools make it easy for employees to find the appropriate expert in a company. Knowledge network systems such as Hivemine's AskMe include repositories of expert-generated content. Some knowledge networking capabilities are included in the leading enterprise content management, social networking, and collaboration software products.
COLLABORATION AND SOCIAL TOOLS AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
For knowledge resources outside the firm, social bookmarking makes it easier to search for and share information by allowing users to save their bookmarks to Web pages on a public Web site and tag these bookmarks with keywords. These tags can be used to organize and search for text and images. Lists of tags can be shared with other people to help them find information of interest. The user-created taxonomies created for shared bookmarks are called folksonomies. Delicious, Slashdot, and Pinterest are popular social bookmarking sites. Suppose, for example, that you’re on a corporate team researching wind power. If you did a Web search and found relevant Web pages on wind power
you’d click on a bookmarking button on a social bookmarking site and create a tag identifying each Web document you found to link it to wind power. By clicking on the “tags” button at the social networking site, you’d be able to see a list of all the tags you created and select the documents you need. Companies need ways to keep track of and manage employee learning and to integrate it more fully into their knowledge management and other corporate systems. A learning management system (LMS) provides tools for the management, delivery, tracking, and assessment of various types of employee learning and training. Contemporary LMS support multiple modes of learning, including CD-ROM, downloadable videos, Web-based classes, live instruction in classes or online, and group learning in online forums and chat sessions. The LMS consolidates mixed-media training, automates the selection and administration of courses, assembles and delivers learning content, and measures learning effectiveness.
CVM Solutions, LLC (CVM) uses Digitec’s Knowledge Direct learning management system to provide training about how to manage suppliers for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Delta Airlines. Knowledge Direct provides a portal for accessing course content online, along with hands-free administration features such as student registration and assessment tools, built-in Help and Contact Support, automatic e-mail triggers to remind users of courses or deadlines, automatic e-mail acknowledgement of course completions, and Web-based reporting for courses accessed. Knowledge Direct also provides a company-branded login for each client firm and enables CVM to create and assign a company administrator who has access to the student reporting tool for that company.
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