Intranet Portals ? Collaboration through Team Rooms

Knowledge Management for beginners

Knowledge Management (KM) can be defined simply as the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Knowledge assets are often grouped into two categories:

(1) Explicit Knowledge
Generally, everything and anything that can be documented, archived and codified. Examples include patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research and customer lists.

(2) Tacit Knowledge
The rest. Tacit knowledge is the know-how contained in people's heads. The challenge inherent with tacit knowledge is figuring out how to recognize, generate, share and manage it.

Most often, generating value from such assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to reach ? or go beyond - best practice.

Where Collaboration technologies can help? and hinder

For explicit knowledge, the focus can usefully be described as "connecting people to things", whilst for tacit knowledge, the focus is "connecting people to people".

As such, structured and unstructured search technologies are usually the core of strategies to encourage greater sharing of explicit knowledge; the user searches for a document either by typing some text into a search engine or by clicking through a document taxonomy.

Similarly, a well structured "yellow pages" directory, where one can search for people with particular skills or experience, forms the centrepiece of tacit strategies; where the aim is to connect people often for 10 minute telephone conversations / requests for help that could save a week's work.

Both explicit and tacit strategies are, however, much enhanced when combined with Collaboration or "work-group" technologies. By creating "communuities of interest" around cross-functional themes, individuals can share documents, plans and other material, find and discuss issues with subject-matter experts and even allocate tasks and calendar items to each other.

For example, a community for "customer insight" might have members drawn from call centre operations, marketing and IT teams (to name but a few) who share a common interest in better understanding the customer need. They could each contribute into the team space document repository materials that (once added together) create powerful new insights and possible future revenue enhancement. By sharing, they (a) gather a sense of belonging to a wider network of similarly minded people, (b) gain knowledge that helps each to better achieve their objectives and (c) gain recognition for being an expert in their particular area.

Benefits (for your business case) include: (a) better customer service through improved response times, (b) faster new product development and time to market, (c) enhanced employee retention through rewarding knowledge sharing, (d) reduced Opex through the streamlining of processes, (e) reduced IT network and storage cost growth through a reduction in email file attachments.

There are, however, risks to collaboration, where poorly implemented. For example, if individual community documents are not accessible through the overall portal search, then you risk creating information silos, where only a select few can access information that is of much wider use. Also, part of your portal benefits are likely to stem from people visiting all areas of the site and learning about other departments and teams. If people spend all their time in their own team rooms, the benefits of this wider perspective will be lost.

Typical Team Room Functionality

Most intranet portal offerings contain some collaboration functionality, either (a) as a standalone optional module, (b) as a partly integrated standard portlet or (c) as a fully integrated function, combined with email systems.

Typical elements include:

1) Shared Calendar:
The team can maintain a single calendar of notable team events or shared deadlines. Where not fully integrated to email systems, this functionality is sometimes only sparingly used.

2) Discussion Forums:
The team can set up and post to threaded discussions, where issues or opportunities can be fully explored. It can take time for people to really get used to using this functionality and taking such discussions off the email system. A key role is that of the moderator, who can (a) spark new discussions, (b) invite people to join them, (c) deal with any abuse of etiquette and (d) capture and structure the result (e.g. a key decision) before archiving the thread.

3) Shared Documents:
The team can workflow, version control, security protect and store / retrieve documents, including policies, reports, analysis and plans. This functionality is often the most heavily used and of particular value for project teams, where many hundreds of key documents may be created in the course of delivery.

4) Allocate Tasks:
The team can set-up tasks and allocate them to themlseves or other team members. Reminders appear in the team calendar and (where there is email integration) in the email inbox of the task owner. Again, it can take time to get people usign this functionality but ? once working well ? can be of immense value for teams driving at particular outcomes and deadlines.

Some final thoughts

Collaboration technologies can be a very powerful addition to your knowledge management strategy, complementing structured search and yellow pages functionality. It is important to get the implementation right. In particular, to really think about ways to move people from email to teamrooms (e.g link to files in a teamspace rather than attach them) and to ensure that documents in teamrooms can be accessible via the wider portal search functionality.

About the author:

David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the Intranet Portal Guide; 31 pages of advice, tools and downloads covering the period before, during and after an Intranet Portal implementation.

Read the guide at http://www.viney.com/DFV/intranet_portal_guide or the Intranet Watch Blog at http://www.viney.com/intranet_watch.

---

10 Reasons To Survey Your Visitors, Subscribers And Customers

1. To find out what type of content visitors want... Read More

Shopping Cart Features to Consider

Often the simplest Web stores have the most success. But... Read More

Google Catalogs - Old Gashioned Mail Order Meets High Tech Search

In addition to Google's Froogle shopping service (still in beta),... Read More

What Are The Barriers of Implementing E-Commerce Solutions

What is electronic commerce?"Electronic commerce is about doing business electronically.... Read More

Selecting The Right Shopping Cart For Your Website

Shopping Cart Installation And SetupShopping cart technology has evolved to... Read More

Old Habits Die Hard in the Third Age Years

I spent a lifetime in retailing and I'm still at... Read More

How to Boost Conversion Rates, While Lowering Merchant Account Fees!

Using an Address Verification System (AVS) when processing your online... Read More

Retirement Signature Frames ? The Perfect Retirement Gift!

When most people think of a retirement gift, they think... Read More

Is Your Website Credit Card Friendly?

In my last column I discussed the process of credit... Read More

Excuse Me, Are You Wasting Traffic?

The largest cost and concern of an internet business is... Read More

The Webmasters Assistant

There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse... Read More

Ten Reasons Why Online Surveys Are The Future of Marketing

Customers are tough cookies. They're extremely media aware and increasingly... Read More

Ecommerce Comes from Customer Satisfaction

Online shopping is convenient, but many companies whose web sites... Read More

The Internet and Customer Care: Aid or Anarchy?

It was reported in 'Marketing' magazine this month, that Britain... Read More

10 Tips To Build, Manage And Profit From An E-Commerce Website

Just because you've built your e-commerce website doesn't mean the... Read More

Coupons & Rebates

Yes, it's true, coupons are not just for newspapers anymore.... Read More

Shopping Online: What You Should Know

For some people, shopping online is as normal as driving... Read More

A Beginners Guide To Setting Up A Successful Online Store

A beginner's guide to setting up a successful online store... Read More

The Origins of E-Commerce

What is the Internet?In order to provide a discussion on... Read More

10 Reasons Why People Wont Buy A Second Product From You

1. You didn't follow up after the first sale. After... Read More

Complementary-Relational Linking and How It Could Save Your Internet Business

The concept of linking is that sites with common interests... Read More

Writing Web Pages: Get To The Meat Faster

Much of my consulting work comprises writing 'Outside Opinion' reports... Read More

Online Payments Make It Easy For Your Customers To Buy

In the last column we discussed the process of credit... Read More

Intranet Portal ? Business Case ROI

The days of easy money are overIn these post-dot-com days... Read More

Beginner Ecommerce Mistakes

This is a short article because in the constraints of... Read More

5 Tips for Online Shopping

Shopping online has become more and more popular in America... Read More

Web Users Crave Familiarity

The sad truth is, general Web users would love it... Read More

How To Sell Your Products Online?

E-commerce is gaining pace! Research firm eMarketer predicts that 2003... Read More

Choosing an Ecommerce Shopping Cart

Choosing an online shopping cart is a big decision. Unlike... Read More

Increasing E-commerce Website Sales

With consumers purchasing billions of dollars of merchandise online each... Read More

Alternative E-Commerce Solutions

Over the past several years, the Internet has emerged as... Read More

Helping Your Visitors: a State of Mind

What does "helping your visitors" mean exactly?It means writing your... Read More

Shopping Carts and the E-Aisles

Have you ever gone to the store and thought you... Read More