Mashup - Web 2.0 with Enterprise (Part 2)

Continuing my discussion on web 2.0 in an enterprise from the my previous post, now lets look at the some web 2.0 applications and how they have been deployed in enterprise environment.

Web 2.0 applications can provide value to the employees in internal collaboration & communication, knowledge sharing and collective intelligence. But we still need to answer some of the questions. How are these web 2.0 applications different from legacy applications? What additional value do these apps provide which the predecessors have failed in? I would say legacy apps have been very useful and provided everything that one needs. But now employees need more in web era.

Does company provide its employees with all the information and tools that I need to perform my daily job? Are they spending their working time in finding information that they should have readily accesses to? The shift in web 2.0 paradigm is to be able to pull the information anywhere anytime and more so when is required, rather than pushing information to the employees. The focus should be to transform the company’s tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge continuously and at all the times. The focus should be able to find the right experts when you want to connect with them rather than later. The focus should be able to harness collective intelligence of employee pool rather than handful of strategist. The focus should be on leveraging company data as competitive advantage in their business model. And apps will also enable business growth and reduce redundant cost.

Lets look at some of the internal apps and how they can help organizations in achieving their goals using principles of web 2.0.

Wikis are probably most used web 2.0 application with in the enterprise environment. The very reason for its popularity could well be the meaning of the word wiki itself, which is Hawaiian for "fast". Yes, it is first version of writable web. In comparison with traditional content management systems, wiki enables everyone to be able to manage content. It does not require elaborate complex processes to create and publish content, the user can edit the content in context and publish it. Wiki is a powerful tool for internal and external collaboration & communication including discussion threads, calendars, RSS, project management, knowledge organization, document management and much more. In fact it can be classified into platform category since it provides extended capabilities of mashups, data aggregation and integration plugins. Some of the most popular commercial wikis are SamePage and Confluence. There are tons of open source wikis that corporates can deploy if they happen to have even slightly strong IT teams. Do companies need expensive and complex Content Management Systems after advent of wikis? I guess not.

Collaboration 2.0 is another offshoot of '2.0 era'. These are platforms that have been built by integrating various related technologies that either existed standalone or built over them. This 2.0 platform is very much in space of wiki but more complex and controlled. It includes workflow, business intelligence, forms and email synchronization in addition to wiki features. Microsoft Sharepoint, EMC eRoom and Vignette Collaboration most popular tools in this space.

Expert Finder or Directory 2.0 puts enterprise on the social networking technology map. If you look at the traditional directory services within the corporate,
it is more like a contact list of the outlook application. In the web 2.0 era, when we are talking about harnessing collective intelligence and finding right connection at the right time, the question is, how do you know if the required expertise exists within the organization or not. It can further be extended into a social networking application where employees can create communities and collaborate on subject of common interests. Employees can cut through the red tape and connect with each other to reduce duplication of effort and collaboration.

Blogs have made millions of journalist out of common people. Anyone who has ideas and thoughts can share it with anyone in the world and get instant feedback. There is no more dependency on print media or web sites to reach out to people. Anyone can start blogging in matter of minutes and has million of readers at his disposal. Blogging is one of great tools for harnessing collective intelligence using comments. Techcrunch is one of the most popular technology blog in the world. In the enterprise environment, it will take sometime before free employee blogging will acceptable to everyone in upper management and become part of corporate culture. I have seen executive management blogs in most of the large corporates, a channel for information distribution. Blogs have been extended where ideas get posted through audio and video media. Podcast has added another channel for information distribution and has been utilized for trainings and information sessions.

Knowledge is key when it comes making strategic decisions. Knowledge needs to be created, shared, distributed and applied continuously within the organization. In web 1.0 era, knowledge was created by few and then distributed across through multiple channels, for example, MSDN. With web 2.0, knowledge is created though collective intelligence. Take an example of wikipedia, the largest knowledge base on web, is not created by few but by everyone who has the knowledge and are willing to share. How we can replicate the success of wikipedia in the enterprise environment? Wiki is the defacto tool for creating knowledge repositories within the organization harnessing collective intelligence.

RSS has become backbone of content syndication and distribution. It is as simple as it names suggests, real simple syndication. As mentioned in my previous post, web 2.0 applications leverage the network effort. Information has limited utility if it is not shared and distributed. Information needs to be distributed across the network so that it can be utilized appropriately to achieve better results. RSS can also be used to aggregate the data from various sources to create an actionable knowledge base.

There are other popular web 2.0 apps that have made in-roads in the enterprises. Linkedin, FaceBook, Twitter, and Dopplr are some of them. I will discuss these apps in subsequent posts.

How about we integrate all the web 2.0 applications discussed above in unified connect platform. Unified Connect is a collaboration and communication platform that takes care of all business needs. It includes all the collaboration applications including instant messaging, calendar, meeting place, document management, wikis, blogs, etc... New applications can be added to the platform using mashups and SaaS. Some of the products that are available to look at are from Cisco's WebEx and Adobe.

In the next post, I will be writing on the external apps.

Mashup - Web 2.0 with Enterprise (Part 1)

Web 2.0 has been great success story with consumer products but much has still not been said or done with it in the enterprise environment. Pundits and analysts have been toying with idea of web 2.0 in the enterprise sector but surveys show very little actual adoption of web 2.0 in this area. How can the trends be optimistic if surveys show the opposite? The trends have been optimistic but actual implementation of web 2.0 is yet far away from reality. Do we know why?

What is web 2.0 in an enterprise? What do we need to know about web 2.0 that can be applied in an enterprise environment? Web 2.0 is a trend or paradigm that is shaping the next generation of world wide web. But this definition is not enough. Web 2.0 has different meaning for different audiences - technical and business. For technical community it is wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasting, folksonomy, mashups and social networking. From business prospective it is finding new business models and opportunities, marketing new innovative products, engaging large untapped user communities into the businesses and enhancing customer satisfaction and retention to name the few. Where do web 2.0 and enterprise meet (mashup)? We will only be able to answer this question if we understand underlying set of principles of web 2.0 and try to put all web 2.0 blocks together in the enterprise environment.

First lets discuss the core principles of web 2.0. According to Tim O'Reilley, web 2.0 are networked applications that leverage network effects. What is "Network Effect"? It is a situation or effect in which a product or service becomes more valuable as more people use it. It is increasingly focused towards engaging large user communities into the network with new products and services, strengthening the network with shared knowledge pool and collective intelligence, and leveraging the web into business strategies, products and services. Then what is problem with widespread adoption of web 2.0 in an enterprise? We have all its constituents; audience, web, knowledge. The fourth quadrant i.e. product and services, depend and leverage the other three constituents and enable in shaping the new business strategies and opportunities with web 2.0.

Then why are the enterprises not moving as fast as they should have been in adopting web 2.0? Web 2.0 is more than just products, people, knowledge and web, it is also about processes and culture i.e. shift in power and control. Enterprises will have to change the way they do business to take strategic advantage of the web 2.0. It will not be easy to formulate a web 2.0 strategy without changing underlying processes and power switch. It will require an enterprise widespread and dynamic changes since web 2.0 approaches will require self assessment, introspection, risk and new strategic alignment. Web 2.0 is basically a disruptive model that may derail old platforms and business models. Web 2.0 advocates moving away from command and control towards collaboration and teamwork, from push to pull model, from process-centric to people-centric business model.

Even in the presence of directives from top management for enabling this change, enterprises are still unable to implement or deploy the web 2.0 apps? My 2 cents. The single biggest challenge here seems to be the employees. The sheer numbers here present a daunting task of getting them at an equal level of understanding of the new technology and its strategic advantages. It is a challenge to educate them and for many leaders, web 2.0 shift is thus beyond their scope and mandate. Avoiding risks and taking the path of incremental improvements then becomes the easier alternative.

Many companies have therefore adopted web 2.0 principles not as a business strategy but more as an experiments to get on the web 2.0 technology map. These companies are plying low risks strategies and trying to gauge its adoption with respect to business model and corporate culture. It will be interesting to see how many companies deploy web 2.0 as business strategy and change their internal culture, because that is when they take full advantages of web 2.0 principles.

The next challenge is where exactly to apply web 2.0 principles. According to research and surveys, the biggest reasons for widespread adoption of web 2.0 are to cut costs and increase revenue. Nothing new, lets find more. About 80% of companies surveyed see the collaborative aspects of Web 2.0 as a way to increase corporate revenue and/or margins. As a cost-reducer, 30% of companies expect Web 2.0 tools to trim the most in customer-service and support costs. As for increasing revenue, 40% of companies expect web 2.0 will help in acquiring new customers and 25% in product innovations. Generally perception is that collaboration is single greatest reason for web 2.0 adoption within the corporate. So far the largest implementations of web 2.0 are wikis and blogs that have been adopted as next generation collaboration tool.

There are two facets of an enterprise - internal and external. Internal apps are for their employees, internal communication, knowledge sharing and product innovation. External apps are for their customers and partners, marketing and sales, product development, customer services and retention, and new opportunities.

I will drill more into these facets and how web 2.0 can serve them. These apps may use same technologies but differ from how they are provisioned and used. I will start with internal apps in my next post and then discuss the external apps of the organization with reference to web 2.0 in subsequent posts.

Please follow the links below for rest of the series:
Mashup - Web 2.0 with Enterprise (Part 2)
Mashup - Web 2.0 with Enterprise (Part 3)
Mashup - Web 2.0 with Enterprise (Part 4)

Knowledge Management Strategy - Web 2.0 Prespective

How web 2.0 initiatives has impacted knowledge management strategies of companies? How companies are adopting and adapting to the new KM generation options available out there from the web 2.0 world?

Initially people had rejected Web 2.0 as merely a buzz and marketing jargon. But as the new applications evolved and benefits became apparent, people started adopting web 2.0 seriously. Now CEOs and CIOs are openly advocating using web 2.0 in all spheres of their businesses and seeking new business opportunities, greater collaboration and more knowledge sharing across the enterprise. Though knowledge management talks about both explicit and tacit knowledge, traditional knowledge management was much heavily inclined in the favor of explicit knowledge as opposed the tacit knowledge. Knowledge management experts have always been trying to advocate more balance approach towards knowledge sharing and collaboration and web 2.0 has provided them with tools and technologies to press their need. Knowledge management and web 2.0 are natural partners in the new web paradigm.

Collaboration is key component of knowledge management which involves active participation of employees, partners and customers. Web 2.0 advocates collaboration and communication through giving up central control, collective intelligence, empowerment and active participation. Collaboration is extended to groups, communities and network building. There are various tools and technologies that provides opportunities and values to the business as collaboration vehicle.

Content Management (CMS) provides for effective creation, management and deployment of the enterprise content. The content published out CMS, can be accessed, repurposed and distributed in real-time. But content is created and management by handful of content writers that provides a contraint in itself. Web 2.0 advocates collective intelligence, information to be created and accesses by everyone at anytime from any device. Time is opportunity and no one has time to wait for information to be available. Everyone needs information that they want, right there, right when they need it. Wikis and Blogs are the great alternative solutions. There are used across the enterprises for both internal and external information sharing. Blogs have become effective tools for knowledge sharing and distribution. Wikis and Blogs also provide for effective feedback mechanism though commenting, rating and trackbacks. Wikipedia has replaced encyclopedia through shear collective content creation and management. The enterprises are trying to replicate the success of wikipedia by introducing enterprise wide knowledge repository using wikis. I am not surprised if you see Ciscopedia, micropedia or Oraclepedia in very near future.

Taxonomy provides effective way for organizing, searching and navigating the enterprise content. There is so much of content created every day within the enterprise and finding taxonomy place holder for the each content piece is getting harder everyday. Search engine provides taxonomy classifier which can automatically find taxonomy for the content. But it requires an enterprise wide taxonomy to start with. More so often, business do not have enterprise wide taxonomy for various reasons (outside scope of this post). Web 2.0 propose folksonomy which is collective building of taxonomy. It provides the readers the ability to create tags for content pieces so that it can be accessed faster and better.

Portals provides facade to all information available within the enterprise. It is single point of access to the entire knowledge base of the enterprise. Portal requires training to end users because of its functionality and not to intuitive interface. Web 2.0 propose intuitive rich user interface and experience. It advocates active user participation, self learning and minimal training.

Web 2.0 is not just a technology but it economic, social and technology trends for next generation of the Internet. It is any networked application that explicitly leverage network effect. The next generation of knowledge management tools aligns with new trends of Web 2.0. The enterprise technology strategist should take a look at web 2.0 principles and emerging initiatives before defining strategies for the knowledge management initiatives.

Knowledge Management Methodology Framework

Knowledge Management is a not technology, it is about people, processes and practice. Without the three main pillar of knowledge management, it is absolutely certain to fail even if you have state of art technology.

People are important from vision, commitment, change, and culture perspective. The organization needs an individual or a group to have a vision to lead the knowledge management initiative. Vision is not just aligning it with business drivers, but also thought process of taking it to a higher level. Not all initiatives see the light, success and adoption, commitment is the black bone of all implementations. It needs to come from executive management. Knowledge management is also about change in processes and culture. It is about openness and adoption from people who are part of it. Culture varies with organizations, geographical locations, and people. The success of knowledge management is heavily dependent on organization's culture as well.

Processes are policies that govern activities across the corporate. Knowledge management is set of processes by which companies organize themselves to generate value from their intellectual and knowledge based assets.

Practice is platform on which processes are designed, implemented and governed by the people for the organization. The processes managed and governed over the period of time becomes practice when it is wildly adopted.

The knowledge management methodology framework consist of four stages. It is strategy, planning, execution and improvement. Though it is typical of any methodology to have these stages, but it is important to understand each of the stages of knowledge management before starting a new initiative.

Knowledge management is about generating value, value from knowledge assets. Knowledge is actionable piece of information that one can act upon for generating value. Value is subjective and varies depending upon the business strategy. One business strategy could be generating new business from products and services or generating business from new products and services. The strategy is focused on the market and companies core business. For example, Google's main business runs out of web. It is important for Google to accumulate knowledge of user behavior and web traffic statistics. Google can plan the new products and services based on that knowledge. Another business strategy could be saving cost, enhancing predictability and quality by increasing productivity and reuse. The strategy is focused on internal resources and their productivity and knowledge reuse. For example, Cisco would want to reduce learning time and increase productivity of the employees through reuse of existing knowledge base.

I read an interesting commentary by an executive. He said he lived in a small town all his life. He went to New York for first time to see Manhattan. When he landed at the airport, he rented a car and headed toward the Manhattan. When he was driving towards it, he saw larger than life view of the Manhattan. He thought for a minute and then took the U-turn for his hotel. He realized that he has to first make a plan and then come back later. The planning is very important, be it a sightseeing or a knowledge management initiative.

Processes needs to improve all the time. We need processes to collect data on processes from quantity and quality stand point. Using the data, we can build statistics, charts and reports for further improvement. Process should be seen as constant learning vehicle, learning and improving from the data supplied within.

The key activities in each of these stages are listed below:

Strategy

• Formulate measurable business objectives
• Obtain ongoing executive sponsorship
• Find right resources for KM team
• Identify and tackle cultural resistance

Planning

• Identify target users and experts
• Conduct detail needs assessment
• Identify small and critical first phase
• Identify organization knowledge
• Design processes for collate and create knowledge content
• Design effective business processes

Execution

• Execute to a detailed project plan
• Keep user community involved at all times
• Focus of knowledge Quality
• Market Knowledge management Implementation

Improvement

• Measure qualitatively and quantitatively success of KM processes
• Continuously improve KM processes
• Provide feedback to all the above stages

Each of the activities can further be divided into tasks with guidelines and finite deliverable.

A typical knowledge management implementation model can be divided following steps:

• Aligning with Corporate Strategy
• Identifying and Capturing Knowledge
• Communicating and Organizing Knowledge
• Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Culture
• Benchmarking
• Continuous Improvement
• Leveraging Knowledge for Market Success

Please feel free to post your comments on the knowledge management methodology framework. You will see in subsequent posts, how these activities can further be split into tasks with finite deliverable.

Implementing Knowledge Management: Practical Approach

Knowledge is key for decision making and strategy building. But knowing does not always translate into doing it. It is very critical for organizations to implement right and effective tools for managing organizational knowledge to build and sustain competitive advantage.

Knowledge Management facilitates creation, consolidation, transformation, sharing, distribution, and application of knowledge. No two organization can follow same methodology to implement knowledge management. And it is not necessary, if an approach works for one organization, other organization can use it as a cookie cutter. Knowledge is very subjective by definition and varies from one organization to another. Even if organizations are in same business domain, knowledge management methodology may be same but implementation approach may be completely different.

Knowledge starts with understanding of organization's business perspective and future strategies. Organizations have not been able to implement effective knowledge management practice for very reason that they do not understand their problems, opportunities and strategies clearly. Knowledge management starts with understanding of business processes and offerings. Organization needs to understand what is knowledge for them and what is not. Initially while setting up a knowledge management program, technology should take a back seat. The focus should be on processes and people, and technology should be seen as an enabler. Many organizations make mistakes by throwing technology before understanding the organizational knowledge assets and processes.

For example, Software consulting organization should know that organizational assets are project documentation and code. They need to organize and store the assets in a way that everyone in the organization should be able to re-use it and thereby reduce the learning time. The organization gains the competitive edge by transforming the assets into knowledge and there by improving productivity and developing core competency. The tremendous growth and profitability of Indian Software Industry is attributed to an effective knowledge management programs.

Steps for implementing an effective knowledge management program or practice are:

1. Identifying knowledge - Organizations needs to identify all sources of the knowledge and information so that it can be consolidated, stored in the centralized or distributed repositories, and shared and distributed when required.

2. Organizing Knowledge - Once the knowledge sources are identified, next step is to organize and provide structure to knowledge into organizational taxonomy. It helps not only in removing unnecessary and redundant information but also provides structured navigation to the information. In this step, organization need to understand boundaries of explicit and tacit knowledge. This step requires lot of thoughtful thinking and analysis from people and organization perspective.

3. Transforming Knowledge - Knowledge needs to transformed in a way so that it facilitates in making decisions and building new strategies. The knowledge needs to internalized, socialized and externalized so that it is shared and applied in most efficient manner. Further read 'How to transform the tacit knowledge into explicit form?'.

4. Measuring knowledge benefits - No process can be improved if it it is not measured for success. The key to success of knowledge management is the ability to measure the effectiveness of the implementation and narrowing it down to returns through revenue. The monitoring and control on processes are necessary to identify opportunities for eliminating redundancy and allow for continuous improvement.

What role technology play in knowledge management? As mentioned, technology should only be seen as facilitator or enabler. Knowledge Management program can even be implemented without additional investment but it won't be as effective or productive. Organization need to understand that they would need to make investment if they have to implement any Knowledge Management program. How much, depends on existing technology infrastructure and approved budget. If the organization does not have executive sponsorship for the program, no matter how deep and wide is your vision, the initiative is bound to fail. The executive sponsorship is required from the monetary as well as commitment perspective. Most of the initiatives fails because of half hearted commitment from executive management.

Knowledge Management program should be seen as organizational change management. Despite of great implementation and technology support, knowledge management may fail due to lack of support of organizational culture and adoption. Knowledge Management has same definition of the Democracy, knowledge of people, (utilized) by people and (created and consolidated) for people.

Key Components of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is more about processes then products. But products and technology enable these processes and provides required tools for an effective KM program. We talked about Knowledge Management lifecycle in previous posts. Knowledge Management provides order to unstructured enterprise data and information into knowledge that is actionable and provides business value. Those who are responsible for knowledge management directly or indirectly should know the building blocks and their interaction with the processes.

What are the building blocks of Knowledge Management from technology standpoint?

Knowledge Management consists of following components:

• Collaboration
• Content Management
• Search
• Taxonomy management
• Business Process Management
• Business Intelligence
• Portal

How these components interact with Knowledge Management processes are highlighted in the following diagram:


All the components are required for knowledge management practice within the organization. There are vendors that provides all the required components in their product suite to enable organizations to implement effective Knowledge Management program.

How to transform the tacit knowledge into explicit form?

We tried to understand "Why the tacit knowledge be converted into explicit knowledge?" in the last post. We will dig into "how" part now.

It is not only important to transform tacit to explicit, but also be able to share and convert other forms of knowledge into one another.The organization will not be able to generate the value out of knowledge assets in various electronic repositories, if it is not shared across the organization specially with the key decision makers. The knowledge has a value if it is actionable, otherwise it remains just an information.

The following chart explains various forms of knowledge and their transformation matrix.



1. Tacit to Tacit - Socialization

Socialization is sharing knowledge in formal and informal manner. It could be face-to-face meetings, instant communication, emails, any groupware applications like chats, collaboration tools, and also social networking applications.

2. Explicit to Tacit - Internalization

Internalization is sharing and distribution of knowledge with in the organization. Everyone in organization can access the information that is available on intranet websites and knowledge repositories. The end user can either navigate through the repositories or search within. Search is the most effective tool to find desired and relevant information. Knowledge repositories add intelligence to content by creating categorization schema and adding metadata that make search and retrieval faster and more efficient.

3. Explicit to Explicit - Combination

This is easiest form of conversion and is already done in most of the organization. The explicit knowledge is re-purposed in form that is desired for the decision making. It can be done using any technology discussed above including emails, collaboration tools, knowledge repositories.

4. Tacit to Explicit - Externalization

Externalization is the process that transforms tacit knowledge into explicit form. This can be done using collaboration systems, online discussion database, wikis, blogs, forums. The process requires transforming the knowledge that is minds of people, into electronic forms.

All forms of knowledge are critical for business growth and decision making capabilities of the organization. The knowledge can be in tacit (in minds of individuals) or explicit (in electronic form in databases and repositories). It is important to consolidate and integrate the knowledge (in whatever form) in the organization so that people can use it to take appropriate actions.

Why tacit knowledge be converted into explicit knowlege?

Typically 20% of knowledge in average organizations is stored in paper form and about 38 % electronically and astonishing 42% is stored as tacit knowledge. The learning and knowledge is lost when people move jobs and roles within or across organizations. The need of transforming the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is far more bigger challenge than implementing the knowledge management practice with the organization.

The knowledge management facilitates in getting the right information to the right person in the right time. The right information means accurate and relevant information, right person is who is in need of the information and right time is when it is required and as fast as possible. The knowledge management is more about processes rather than technologies. The knowledge should reside appropriately within the organization to bring value to information and its users. If the knowledge only resides within individuals, it only provide great value to the organization till the individual is in the same role and job.

Why do we need knowledge? Usually knowledge is required to take tactical or strategic decision. These decisions are usually based on data, information found in structured form (explicit form, analytics). So it becomes more important to transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. The dangers of not converting and collecting tacit knowledge includes:

1. Inaccurate, irrelevant and limited knowledge to take decisions
2. Ineffective use of employee time to obtain right information
3. Poor judgment when when taking decisions
4. Unable to provide information when it is needed most
5. Loose customer and business opportunities because of incomplete information
6. Duplication of effort

In research organizations, lot of researchers attend conferences, seminars, interact with fellow subject matter experts in meetings and phone conversations. They gain lot of knowledge, information through their interaction with other people with similar interest. If the acquired knowledge is not explicitly captured, the organization do not have advantage of the researcher knowledge and time spent. When the individual retires or leaves the job, all the knowledge that he had gained on the organization's behalf goes with the individual. The example can be extended most of the organizations.

While we understand the significance of explicit knowledge but it is important that we emphasize the need to convert and transform the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.