MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT: AN EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION PLATFORM FOR INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Transcription

1 e-library Science Research Journal ISSN : Research Papers Impact Factor : MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT: AN EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION PLATFORM FOR INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Arundhati Ghanwar, M G Sreekumar and K Mohan 1 Dean Knowledge Management, SRM University, Kattankulathur, Chennai, India. 2 UNESCO Coordinator, Greenstone Support for South Asia Librarian & Chief Information Officer, Center for Development of Digital Libraries (CDDL), Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kerala 3 Director ITKM, SRM University, Kattankulathur, Chennai, India. Abstract : Technology is an important enabler in the success of knowledge management in any organisation. The paper reviews various technology platforms, while describing the various user-friendly features, easy to use environment and the ability to integrate with other Office applications, it recommends Microsoft SharePoint 2007 as one of the best platform that can be deployed in organisations for managing their institutional knowledge management activities. KEYWORDS : Knowledge Management, Microsoft SharePoint, MOSS INTRODUCTION The world is experiencing the transition from industrial economy to knowledge economy. Innovation being the primary key in this knowledge society is enabled through knowledge, and hence, managing this knowledge efficiently becomes imperative for any organisation. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1991) emphasised the importance of knowledge management in one of their statement, In an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge. Successful companies are those that consistently create new knowledge, disseminate it widely throughout the organisation, and quickly embody it in new technologies and products. Keeping the importance of the role of knowledge in the organisational growth and productivity, many studies have been undertaken to understand the various aspects of knowledge, how to manage it effectively and efficiently, academicians and industry practioners have worked on knowledge management concept. Human resource is crucial for knowledge creation, be it explicit or tacit knowledge, it is the human resource that is responsible for knowledge creation activity. The technology infrastructure plays huge role as enabler and catalyses the knowledge creation and managing the knowledge for organisational growth. The technology is used for further knowledge management processes such as codification, categorization, dissemination, mode of access, archival, reuse, etc. It also creates a platform where in the knowledge workers feel at use in creating communities of practice, networking among others to create and share best practices. Organisations across all the industries have realised the importance of having a suitable technology platform and have deployed it to manage their organisational knowledge. Microsoft SharePoint is one such collaboration platform deployed for organisational knowledge management activities and our article tries to give an in depth understanding of various features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). The scope of this article, however, is not to carry out any comparison with any other proprietary or open source software solutions. Integration with other databases across the network, single sign-on, active directory (AD) enabled access, role-based access to information, etc are some of the features that enable organisations to use MOSS 2007 for their institutional knowledge management (IKM) activities. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM): Before understanding the concept of Knowledge Management it is essential for us to know what Knowledge is. It was Aristotle who had created distinction between know-what and know-how. Since then, the academicians, researchers and industry practioners have been struggling for a definition for the term Knowledge that can be globally accepted. However, some of the most commonly used definitions for Knowledge are 1

2 Knowledge is identified, classified, and valid information. Knowledge is information in contextualized action. Many management researchers and academicians have been stressing the importance of knowledge, over the years. Peter Drucker had declared that knowledge is just not another resource like labour, capital, but it is the only important resource today. Toffler had also had the same opinion, and expressed that the knowledge is the source of the highest power and is the key to the power shift that lies ahead. Nonaka and Takuchi have focused on how Japanese companies have stayed ahead and gained competitive edge over their competitors, by leveraging on their knowledge assets. Knowledge, though the word is simple, but it is very complex in its nature and theorists have been working in defining and classifying the knowledge for various industries. The focus and definition of what knowledge is, will vary from one organisation to another and hence it is very specific to the context and environment in which it is getting created and will be reused. Academicians and researchers across the different disciplines have debated the meaning, definitions, and dimensions of knowledge and knowledge management (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). They have also argued that the importance given to knowledge management, is due to the transition from information revolution to knowledge revolution, increased globalisation, competition across the firms, speed of information generation and knowledge aging, dynamics of both product and process innovations, etc. (Picot, 1998). Keeping the complex nature of Knowledge in the mind, various definitions of Knowledge Management are published in the research literature. Knowledge Management is the process of critically managing knowledge to meet existing needs, to identify and exploit existing and acquired knowledge assets and to develop new opportunities. Source: Quintas "Knowledge Management is about enhancing the use of organisational knowledge through sound practices of information management and organisational learning." Source: Broadbent (1998) Thomas Davenport, et. al., give a more comprehensive definition of knowledge management and its implications. Knowledge Management is concerned with the exploitation and development of the knowledge assets of an organisation with a view to furthering the organisation s objectives. The knowledge to be managed includes explicit, documented knowledge and tacit, subjective knowledge. Management of this knowledge entails all the processes associated with the identification, creation and sharing knowledge. This has made organisations to explore the various enterprise content management software and platform to address their needs. IT giants such as Microsoft, IBM, etc have utilized this opportunity, created range of products and introduced those products and platforms for organisations to implement any of them. Organisations had felt the necessity of having systems for the creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories, and to cultivate and facilitate the sharing of knowledge in order to transform them into learning organisations. KM TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES: Knowledge management covers three main knowledge activities knowledge generation, knowledge codification and knowledge transfer. The power of knowledge management lies in allowing organisations to explicitly enable and enhance the productivity of these activities and to leverage their value for the group as well as for the individual. The amount of knowledge created, shared and disseminated would depend on the environment in which knowledge workers operate; organisational culture that each and everyone subscribes to, and the technology that the organisation has deployed. The environment and the organisational culture is driven by human resource and the tools and technology deployed are more of external sources and act as mere enablers and catalysts in the overall knowledge management process. Ruggles (1997) defines Knowledge management tools as Technologies which enhance and enable knowledge generation, codification, and transfer. The tools are not always computer-based, as the traditional tools such as pens, papers; etc can also be utilized for generating knowledge. However, we have limited our scope only to the technological tools, due to their pace with which they have evolved, their dynamic capabilities and the impact that they create it for the entire organisation. Tools and Technology, today, has not only helped the people the way they work but also facilitates knowledge management. This has been made possible mainly because of the technology capabilities available today compared to the ones that were available 10 years before. Technology companies are working on creating software and tools that can support tasks and activities such as codification, information gathering, collaboration, workflow, search, etc. Some of the tools are just the next versions of document management or document storage where as some of the tools that are created with advanced technology to manage complicated knowledge processes, security, etc. Some allow easy indexing and categorization where as others are useful for information retrieval and collaboration. Knowledge management tools are different from traditional data or information management tools. Data management tools are used to generate, access, store, and to analyse the data, usually in the form of facts and figures. Some of such examples are data warehouses, data search engines, data modeling, etc. Information management tools allow organisations to manipulate information. Automated information search and retrieval agents and document management technology are some such examples of information management tools. These tools were found to be incapable of capturing the complexity of context and richness of knowledge. The technology infrastructure for Knowledge Management is aiming at 2

3 a scope not just the traditional information retrieval, storage, and management, but also to facilitate knowledge sharing and enhancing the collaboration. A number of technology tools have been developed and introduced in the industry to help the organisations to manage their knowledge management processes and activities. The literature published on tools and technologies over the years have been highlighting that there is no single technology solution for complete knowledge management activities and process. Some might offer good platform to disseminate while others might be good in terms of categorization. Some of the technology solutions capture unstructured text while there are other products that can capture structured data. Some of the examples, by function, are listed below Dissemination - e.g., TIBCO, Vitria, Open Horizon, etc (middleware) Search & retrieval e.g., Verity, Excalibur, Infonautics, Alta Vista, etc Categorisation e.g., Dataware, Intraspect, Fulcrum, GrapeVINE, (enterprise products), Inference, WineCite, KnowledgeX (business function-specific) Unstructured text capture e.g., Lotus Notes, Dataware, Intraspect Structured data capture e.g., Oracle, IBM, Sybase, Microsoft Source: Forrester Research, The Forrester Report, The Third Skill, December 1997 It is imperative to note that the decision lies with organisations to choose the right tool and technology as they are the best ones to know which function is the most important for their institutional knowledge management. Some organisations give importance to knowledge dissemination where as others feel that collaboration is the only key to enhance their knowledge creation activity. Organisations make calculated decisions to implement the technology based on their scope of IKM and leverage on custom built applications for other needs that were not addressed by the chosen and deployed platform. Knowledge Management Technologies Evaluation Organisations after understanding the importance of the Knowledge as valuable assets have started exploring best ways to capture and manage the knowledge that is generated within their organisations. They have started identifying the important knowledge artefacts that create high impact and add immense value to the organisational growth. An artefact is an object that conveys or holds usable representations of knowledge. The access mode and level of access to share the knowledge is also defined by the project team as per the knowledge management strategy defined for the entire organisation. The KM Strategy guides the team to evaluate the software, tools and technologies that meet up their requirements at the organisation level. The parameters to choose relevant technology and software would vary from organisation to organisation. Following are some of the parameters* that most of the organisations would evaluate while choosing the platform Comparison of features available against our requirements outlined in the scope of KM Strategy for the organisation Cost of the platform/software Stability of the platform/software in the industry Scalability of the product Scope of Customisation Support available post deployment Major clients Reference checks Like any other software products, even KM technology platform solutions** are available in open source (e.g., Drupal, DSpace, Knowledgetree, etc) and are also offered by proprietary software (e.g., Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Lotus Notes, EMC Documentum, etc). Some of the solutions are based on client-server technology and some others are web based solutions. Some of the technology platforms allow organisations to choose hosted model where as some of others offer onsite product deployment. The parameters mentioned here are only tentative and need not be comprehensive. These are only few examples and may not be comprehensive, scope of this article is not to evaluate all the software, hence have chosen very few names. The need for knowledge management initiatives is much more than mere archiving knowledge and documents/records management. Collaboration among employees/workers has been identified as one of the key aspect of knowledge management across the industry. Most of the collaboration, even today, continues through s that are exchanged among the knowledge workers, attaching the files, etc. Organisations continue to face problems in managing these s, and users find difficulty in tracing the latest document, etc. Practices such as these have been pain points for an enterprise to address. Knowledge artifacts such as documents, files, threaded discussions, etc are not readily useable. The security compliance and privacy has been always a concern for both organisations and knowledge creators. The IT giants have embraced collaboration platform technologies to address these concerns. 3

4 This article attempts to showcase SharePoint technology and platform fostering collaboration. It also makes an attempt to cover the various versions that the Microsoft has released to enhance features related to collaboration, effective search and other use friendly features. MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT: Microsoft Corporation needs no introduction in today s technology-oriented society. Microsoft has been creating the building blocks for a people-centered dynamic knowledge environment for over 30 years. The latest versions of Microsoft Office system, Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft server technologies offer the richest tools for knowledge creation, collaboration, content management, enterprise search, and unified communications, within the familiar Office interface that people already know and use. It has created many customer- centric products that have enabled organisations to find creative solutions to their business problems using the software products created by Microsoft. From the range of products and services that Microsoft offers, the Office Suites solution is widely accepted by organisations for their business activities and processing their transactions. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is one such collaboration platform at an enterprise level helping organisations to maximise the productivity among employees by creating the environment to collaborate, share the best practices, create communities of practice, and work towards the organisational growth. Microsoft.com describes MOSS 2007 as, It is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organisational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. This version of 2007 has enhanced features of collaboration and easy to deploy/use platform and hence has become one of the most suitable platform for organisations to use for their institutional knowledge management activities. Microsoft categorises Office SharePoint Servers into 6 functional areas Collaboration: The collaboration features available in MOSS 2007 such as Team sites, Document workspace, Discussion forum, etc help keep teams connected and productive by enabling access to the people, documents, and information so that knowledge workers can take more well-informed decisions within their roles. Easy user navigation, web interface, web 2.0 features such as RSS feeds, personal alerts, etc make users stay connected for enhanced collaboration. Portal: The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet presence Web sites, and divisional portal sites. These features have not only helped the organisations deploy intranets but also facilitated their employees to have an easy environment to share the information across the organisation and manage their internet presence websites more professionally and effeciently. Search: The search component is one of the most important aspects of any collaboration platform that is evaluated for IKM. This component has been significantly improved in MOSS 2007 as compared to SharePoint 2003 release. The enhanced Search feature provides a consistent and familiar search experience, increased relevance of search results, new functions to search for people and expertise, ability to index and search data in line-of-business applications, and improved manageability and extensibility. Search for people facility enables employees to reach out to other employees to find the solution to their problems, and create better communities of practice. Enterprise Content Management: Windows SharePoint Services provides core document management functionality - major and minor versioning for keeping a track on the changes being made on a working document, check-in/check-out document locking so that the duplication is avoided while set of people want to work on the similar document, rich descriptive metadata for increasing the efficiency and relevancy of search, workflows for automating the various sequential and parallel processes that happen mostly through various custom built applications, and role-based-access controls at the document library, folder, and individual document levels for protecting the knowledge worker s interest of his intellectual property. Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on these capabilities to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing. Forms Driven Business Process: The infopath that is bundled with Office 2007 is used to create forms to streamline formsdriven business processes with easy-to-use, XML-based electronic forms that integrate smoothly with existing systems. This security-enhanced, client/server platform provides rapid solution creation and deployment, centralizes form management and maintenance, and helps to extend business processes to customers, partners, and suppliers. Business Intelligence: Provide business intelligence (BI) capabilities to every employee, so they can share, control, and reuse business information in order to make better business decisions. The BI features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 provide Web and programmatic access to published Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets, programmatic reuse of critical line-of-business data, and easy development of Web-based BI dashboards that can incorporate rich, data-bound key performance indicators (KPIs), Web Parts, and published spreadsheets. 4

5 Benefits of SharePoint: Corporate website of Microsoft has outlined 10 benefits of having MOSS 2007 deployed in any organisation 1.Provide a simpler, familiar, and consistent user experience: Office SharePoint Server 2007 is seamlessly integrated with familiar client desktop applications word, excel, powerpoint presentations, , and web browsers to provide a consistent user experience that facilitates people to simplify how people interact with content, processes, and business data. Out-of-box functionality of integrating with custom-built applications enhances the usage of MOSS 2007 environment. 2.Enhance employee productivity: The in-built simple workflows such as approval, seek signature, etc allow employees automate day-to-day transactions to help track and report common business activities such as document review, issue tracking, etc. The in-built workflows do not need any programming or code development; thus, facilitate end users who are not much tech-savvy to use these features for easing their work and enhancing the productivity. 3.Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content: MOSS 2007 helps organisations ensure to control sensitive business information and manage it effectively by specifying security settings, storage policies, auditing policies, and expiration actions for business records in accordance with compliance regulations. Seamless integration of MOSS 2007 and desktop applications ensure that the policy settings are applied onto client applications, making it simpler for employees to be aware or and comply with regulatory requirements of the organisation. 4.Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value: Business users and content authors can create and submit content for approval on intranet or Internet sites. Managing multilingual content is simplified through new document library templates that are specifically designed to maintain a relationship between the original version and different translations of a document. This feature adds lot of vale to the global organisations whose content is available in multiple languages and without this feature, it would have been tedious and expensive for them to publish and manage the sites across the languages. 5.Simplify organisation-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems: In a study on the "Hidden Costs of Information Work" (Doc #201334, April 2006), IDC found that organisations can spend up to $14,000 per knowledge worker per year searching for information. MOSS 2007 enables users access to business data found in common line-of-business systems like SAP, etc. Users can also create personalized views and interactions with business systems through a browser by dragging configurable back-end connections. Enterprise-wide Managed Document Repositories help organizations store and organise business documents in one central location for better indexing and quicker retrieval. Improved access to information has always proved advantageous to enhance the employee productivity. 6.Connect people with information and expertise: Enterprise Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007 not only incorporates business data along with information about documents, people, and Web pages to produce comprehensive, relevant results but also has features like duplicate collapsing, spelling correction, and alerts that improve the relevance of the results. With these features, information can be retrieved more easily with more appropriateness. Over the decades, right information to right people at the right time has been the key to organisational collaboration and growth. 7.Accelerate shared business processes across organisational boundaries: Without coding any custom applications, organisations can use smart, electronic forms driven solutions to collect critical business information from customers, partners, and suppliers through a web browser. Built-in data validation rules help you gather accurate and consistent data that can be directly integrated into back-end systems to avoid redundancy and errors that result from manual data re-entry. 8.Share business data without divulging sensitive information: Organisations can choose to give employees access to real-time, interactive Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets from a Web browser through Excel Services running on Office SharePoint Server These spreadsheets can be maintained and efficiently share one central and up-to-date version and at the same time protect any proprietary information embedded in the documents (such as financial models). 5

6 9.Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location: Office SharePoint Server 2007 makes it easy to create live, interactive business intelligence (BI) portals that assemble and display business-critical information from diverse sources, using integrated BI capabilities such as dashboards, Web Parts, scorecards, key performance indicators (KPIs), and business data connectivity technologies. Centralized Report Center sites give users a single place for locating the latest reports, spreadsheets, or KPIs. 10.Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise: Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on an open, scalable architecture, with support for Web services and interoperability standards including XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The server has rich, open application programming interfaces (APIs) and event handlers for lists and documents. These features provide integration with existing systems and the flexibility to incorporate new or existing legacy applications that can run on non-microsoft platforms. The scalability and the support available for Microsoft platforms is never an issue and IT giants like Wipro, Infosys, TCS, etc are certified gold partners and offer consulting, implementation and support the existing deployments. The beta version of MOSS 2010 is released and has many more advanced features to support organisational initiatives in managing their business transactions more efficiently. Microsoft has always created the products that ease the end users of both stature techno savvy and non-tech savvy, to automate their business activities in order to reuse the available information, create and share the best practices. CONCLUSION: Organizations that succeed in knowledge management are likely to view knowledge as an asset and to develop organizational norms and values, which support the creation, and sharing of knowledge. Deploying the right technology infrastructure has always played a major role in the success of institutional knowledge management. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, with its user friendly features have created easy-to-use environment in which knowledge workers can create knowledge, foster knowledge sharing, collaborate to exchange the best practices and last but not least work towards creating a learning organisation. REFERENCES: 1. Broadbent, M. (1998) "The phenomenon of knowledge management: what does it mean to the information profession." Information Outlook, 2(5), Davenport, T. and Prusak, L. (1998), Working knowledge: how organizations manage what they know., Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge. 3. Forrester Research, The Forrester Report, The Third Skill, December IDC: The Hidden Costs of Information Work, April 2006, IDC # Microsoft Office SharePoint Server features, benefits and technical literature is taken from 6. Nonaka, Ikujiro (1991). "The knowledge creating company", Harvard Business Review, 69, Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H. (1995), The Knowledge-creating Company How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 8. Quintas, P., Lefrere, P., Jones, G. (1997), "Knowledge management: a strategic agenda", Journal of Long Range Planning, Vol. 30 No.3, pp Ruggles, R.L. (1997), "Tools for knowledge management: an introduction", in Ruggles, R. (Eds), Knowledge Management Tools, Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston, MA, pp.1-8 6