Bridging the Knowledge Gap. A White Paper from

Transcription

1 Bridging the Knowledge Gap A White Paper from

2 The Knowledge Worker Since its rapid adoption by corporate America in the early 90s, the Internet has made a tremendous impact on the way people work. Whether by allowing people to work remotely, to retrieve hard-to-find information, or to collaborate with teams around the world the Internet has become a critical tool in many workers daily lives. The biggest impact of the Internet can probably be seen among a group known as the knowledge worker. More and more, it is becoming evident that it is knowledge that ultimately separates a company from its competitors. The knowledge in worker s mind, plans and actions all play towards a company s ultimate success or failure in the marketplace. According to The Gartner Group, Knowledge assets in the virtual workplace are concentrated in the skills, experience, creative talents of the workforce and the collective learning of the enterprise that is embedded in knowledge repositories a major implication of knowledge worker dominance is that power will shift to the knowledge-worker. The bottom line is that employees need to be able to make better, more informed decisions, in consultation with all stakeholders, in less time. -Knowledge Management Magazine And this power shift will become more intense in the years ahead. Gartner estimates that by 2002, knowledge work will characterize the majority of jobs in a great number of industries with more than 50 percent of job activities based on the events and knowledge at hand. Gartner also estimates that the very unstructured nature of the knowledge worker s job will demand a flexible work and by the end of 2001, virtually all knowledge workers and most managers will hold jobs where more than 50 percent of their activities are undefined and determined by the employee based on the events and knowledge at hand. How does one measure or capture knowledge? The question is relevant both to the Internet Age and to the knowledge workforce it has created. More often than not, this commodity called knowledge, this competitive edge as it were, is locked in silos ranging from the brains of employees to scattered s, Web pages, MS Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, databases and a myriad of other files. So the question really becomes: how do you unlock the value of knowledge trapped in these silos? The Portal Solution The first answer came in the form of the corporate intranet. Designed as a means to create a streamlined, unified approach to making knowledge easy to access and use many companies developed in-house solutions attempting to capture corporate knowledge through this vehicle. But companies found that the intranet, while helpful, was just not sufficient for unlocking the collective intellectual capital and knowledge of workers. While they served their purpose of making information easier for users to access and view, they were hard to maintain and even harder to adapt to changing business needs. Intranets provided only a static view of information, offering a what you see is what you get option to employees. Any changes had to be made by one or a few individuals trained in HTML coding and could only be accomplished on a periodic basis. Copernus, Inc. February,

3 These companies found they needed a solution that took the intranet one step further a solution that could provide a single interface to link both internal and external data, data that was either structured or unstructured. Enter the Corporate Portal. The introduction of the Corporate Portal opened new doors for capturing, harnessing and sharing corporate information providing a means to search, analyze and report. The corporate portal was designed to provide a structured, centralized repository for key corporate knowledge. By accessing the corporate portal, workers no longer had to reinvent the wheel; the information they needed was at their fingertips. But, lo, the corporate portal was found to have its shortcomings, as well. For the most part portals offered a single view of all the different silos of information on a single screen. While this greatly aided knowledge workers in accessing information, these silos still existed the portal did not provide the ability for knowledge workers to easily manage and share information in a flexible that met their knowledge needs. Next came web-based collaboration tools. These tools grew out of the need for workers to rapidly share, collaborate and work in a team to accomplish a specific, defined task. With these tools, workers could create their own areas on the Web to define projects, assign team responsibilities and track the progress of specific tasks. These tools allowed collaboration among teams to thrive, while providing an easily accessible, virtual work. Worldwide KM Services Market The intranet, the Corporate Portal and a variety of collaboration tools known collectively as the portal mix marketplace -- continue to thrive today Spending ($Billion) According to the research firm Ovum, the portal mix marketplace will develop into a $7 billion industry by Furthermore, IDC estimates that the US knowledge management services market is expected to grow 43 percent, totaling $4.8 billion by The worldwide total could grow 51 percent, resulting in a market of more than $10.2 billion within the same timeframe. Is the Problem Being Addressed? The Gap So, has the corporate world finally been given a solution to capture, harness and share its most important asset its knowledge? Do the corporate intranet, the corporate portal and collaboration tools provide everything today s worker needs? According to a recent article in Infoworld, Corporate Intranets and EIPs Copernus, Inc. February,

4 (enterprise information portals) have helped many organizations get a grasp on their corporate information. Portals in particular have attracted a lot of attention for their capability to identify, refine, and deliver personalized data from various applications. But EIPs rely mostly on CRM (customer relationship management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications for their data, meaning they don t dig into unstructured data sources such as and spreadsheets. Infoworld even concedes that the supposed answer to this challenge the Enterprise Knowledge Portal (EKP) -- is both costly and time-consuming to set up. So what do today s knowledge-workers need? The primary challenges facing knowledge workers today are speed, flexibility and interactivity. In the growing world of digital information, simply providing on-line access to content is no longer an option even if that online access is through a single screen. Today s knowledge workers demand content that is not only specially focused on immediate needs, but is also highly personal, interactive and flexible. The portal solution was enough when knowledge worker needs were highly processed, hierarchical and structured project-oriented tasks. But with the rise in dynamically determined projects, today s knowledge worker needs a solution that can provide the power and flexibility necessary to react to a constantly changing. Furthermore, while portals were designed to give users a single view of all their information, they did not take into account that most knowledge workers play several different roles in accomplishing their responsibilities and need an ever-changing mix of different views of information and data. This has led to the rise of knowledge workers being confronted with a myriad of multiple, disparate portal views. A fully built out Enterprise Information Portal, then, is simply a collection of portals a business information services portal, a subject matter expert portal, a collaboration portal, a competitive intelligence portal, and so forth. To be truly effective, however, knowledge workers need much more than a grouping of information silos at their fingertips. They need a tool that bridges the gap between the corporate intranet, the portal and collaboration tools providing a flexible virtual work that allows for the rapid capture and sharing of knowledge in an easy-to-use. They need a solution that allows them to integrate information from these disparate portals into a single view directly focused on the changing situations and challenges they confront on a daily basis. The Copernus Solution The Copernus solution to these challenges is WebSpace a web-based virtual workspace that enables organizations to package, manage and share relevant information and knowledge with speed and flexibility. WebSpace makes portal information actionable and fills the void created by many of today s e-content (collaboration) systems. The WebSpace interactive Webware lets knowledge workers rapidly assemble information from diverse sources, place it in context and instantly share it with others to develop solutions, take action or make decisions. Extending the value of the corporate portal, intranet, extranets and other knowledge management systems by adding the power of Web-based navigation in a virtual workspace, WebSpace accelerates the velocity of knowledge and information collaboration among work teams by letting them: Copernus, Inc. February,

5 Quickly collect information from corporate portals, intranets, extranets, the Web, network folders and databases, individual desktops and hard drives; Place this information in a central location and instantly share it with others; Link and relate any item with anything else to create context and knowledge; Quickly create multiple, focused workspaces without needing technical expertise or assistance from the corporate IT department. WebSpace offers knowledge workers a central, unified view of the digital information they need to access and share with colleagues. Context The Heart of WebSpace Value At the heart of WebSpace s true value in helping enterprises unlock collective intellectual capital and knowledge is its ability to let individuals create personal context of the information they are using. Context is the relationship and meaning that exists between disparate sources of information and data and is unique for each individual based upon their personal expertise, experiences and perspective. To illustrate this concept take the data point, 24. In of itself it is meaningless. Expanding it to include the stock price is 24 today, adds more meaning while, our stock is going through the roof, it s at 24 today! paints an entirely different picture. However, the context of this information will mean two entirely Copernus, Inc. February,

6 different things to an individual who bought the stock at $15 per share and one who bought it at $50 per share. The problem with most groupware and collaborative tools is that they only provide the ability for presenting information from a single perspective. As in the example above, depending upon the view of how the information is presented from a starting point of $15/share or $50/share will dramatically influence the context of how others perceive it. With WebSpace, however, each user has the ability to structure the information based upon his or her individual view and in the context of what that information means to them. This ability to give individuals the power to create their own context and to change it at will as situations change creates a rich and powerful collaborative ability and creates the for true knowledge exchange. WebSpace Customer Benefits To the user, it s obvious how the ability to quickly collect, harness, link and make information relevant makes the very nature of their jobs easier. But how do these capabilities translate into real business benefits for the customer the users employer? What are the business benefits of adopting WebSpace? Taking a higher-level view, there are several very tangible benefits to any company choosing to adopt a WebSpace solution. These include Reduced Financial Investment, Decreased Time-to-Deployment, Faster Path to Quality Knowledge and Increased Potential for Revenue-Generating Opportunities. Reduced Financial Investment: Because of its own investment in developing the underlying technical architecture, capabilities and delivery options, Copernus reduces a company s internal investments and resources in developing a collaborative knowledge sharing solution. Conservative estimates of internal costs to replicate WebSpace capabilities in a single application (software development, maintenance and improvements; custom templates and tool creation; data storage etc.) approach $1 million dollars. With a standard WebSpace deployment requiring only a fraction of these costs, companies realize substantial savings in technology investment WebSpace is extremely robust, flexible and scalable, offering the ability to develop focused solutions for almost any enterprise collaboration or knowledge management need. Copernus, Inc. February,

7 money that can be redirected to more strategic and core areas. Decreased Time-to-Deployment: The true key to the Copernus solution is the product s ease-of-use and flexibility. Once a company signs on to use WebSpace, it only takes 30- to-60 days for the solution to be fully deployed. Compared to the 12-to-18 month timeframe involved in developing an in-house solution, it s obvious that companies clearly gain savings in terms of time when they deploy WebSpace. Faster Path to Quality Knowledge: Because Copernus WebSpace operates in an open, flexible structure, knowledge workers are able to more quickly converge around an issue, problem or opportunity. According to Delphi Group s Tom Koulopoulos in his article Corporate Instinct: Building a Knowledge Enterprise for the 21 st Century, the biggest obstacle facing knowledge-workers is the sheer amount of time it takes for them to sift through relevant knowledge. The most useful solutions are those that provide flexibility and immediate relevancy to the information at hand and, in addition, adapt naturally as business processes and data changes. According to Koulopoulos, The information that is used to capture memory accumulates, always increasing. It doesn t regenerate on its own. In fact, when it takes months to sift through, more information can lead to less knowledge. Knowledge depends less on the amount of information than on the number of connections that link the information. Thus, as opposed to portal solutions alone, companies note a dramatic decrease in the time it takes for knowledge workers to take action or develop a solution when using Copernus WebSpace. Revenue-Generating Opportunities: In today s increasingly competitive marketplace, decreasing time to market to capitalize upon opportunities or respond to competitive challenges translates into direct, measurable bottom line revenue impacts. Increased Productivity: Recent studies indicate the average knowledge worker spends an average of 25% of their time or two hours a day simply finding and sharing information. WebSpace s ability to dramatically decrease this unproductive time translates into potentially millions of dollars of efficiency gains by giving workers more time to concentrate on core activities that will deliver added value to the company From a functional perspective, WebSpace delivers solutions that meet the knowledge management expectations corporations are demanding today: Corporate Expectation* Enable access to relevant information WebSpace Functional Benefit Ability to integrate links to external information Ability to place data in context of Domain Item Ability for data to exist in multiple locations Built-in search Ability for proactive notification through , WAP, etc. Copernus, Inc. February,

8 Corporate Expectation* Increase productivity Save end users time Enable better, faster decision making Enable more efficient communication with employees WebSpace Functional Benefit Ability to augment data with files Palm/WAP delivery Ability to remove artificial limitations imposed on how information is organized Ability for data to exist in multiple locations Built-in search Access to relevant data while on the road Ability to collaborate with others in same Ability to work with aggregated data Ability to directly share information with end user without third-party intervention Ability to specialize a domain to the end user s current working Ability to provide flexible solution to evolve with changing business Reuse information created by one person or for a specific problem in different area and/or by different person Ability to integrate links to external information Ability to place data in context of Domain Item Ability for data to exist in multiple locations Built-in search Mobile delivery Ability to collaborate with others in same Ability to work with aggregated data Ability for proactive notification through , WAP, etc. Ability to augment data with files Palm/WAP delivery Ability to remove artificial limitations imposed on how information is organized Ability for data to exist in multiple locations Ability to collaborate with others in same Ability to work with aggregated data Ability to view documents without need for Copernus, Inc. February,

9 Corporate Expectation* Allow for more efficient collaboration Give users access to information they don t know exists Create and/or maintain a competitive advantage Enable more efficient communication with suppliers and customers Decrease IT backlog WebSpace Functional Benefit native application Ability for live update of information Ability for data to exist in multiple locations Ability to collaborate with others in same Ability to work with aggregated data Ability for live update of information Ability for Peer-to-peer Ability for Enterprise sharing Security Administration Tool Ability to view documents without need for native application Ability for proactive notification through , WAP, etc. Ability for Peer-to-peer sharing Ability for Enterprise sharing Ability for proactive notification through , WAP, etc. Ability for Peer-to-peer sharing Ability for Enterprise sharing Ability for data to exist in multiple locations Ability to collaborate with others in same Ability to work with aggregated data Ability for live update of information Ability for Peer-to-peer sharing Ability for customer to put information into their content Ability to augment data with files Palm/WAP delivery Ability to collaborate with others in same Ability for Peer-to-peer sharing Development in data-driven runtime Copernus, Inc. February,

10 Corporate Expectation* Function basically the same as our current intranet WebSpace Functional Benefit Ability to brand Ability to customize Ability for Portal-based delivery * Source: The Delphi Group The Unique Nature of WebSpace But what makes WebSpace so different from any other collaborative or portal tool on the market today? The answer is true flexibility, adaptability and ease-of-use. WebSpace truly enables today s knowledge worker to work the way s/he thinks, not forcing them to work where information may be stored or be constrained because of its type or structure. Collaboration: With WebSpace, users can share information from their virtual workspaces with colleagues and give them access to deliver their own information and opinions. There are no messages to create or attachments to worry about. Adaptability: The flexible WebSpace platform allows virtual workspaces to be adapted to just about any. More importantly, the creation of virtual workspaces can be done in real-time, meaning these sites require a fraction of investment in time and money as opposed to a portal or intranet. Direct Relating: In a WebSpace, anything can be related to anything else, and the same item not just a copy or shortcut can reside in multiple places simultaneously. Additionally, changes to one instance of an item are automatically reflected in all other instances of the same item. These intuitive grouping and change once, update all capabilities free users from having to remember how or where information is stored allowing them to concentrate on the task at hand. Ease-of-Use: In WebSpace, information can be added easily and organized in a virtual workspace simply by dragging and dropping the item where it is needed. Users are no longer bound by complicated, multi-step processes or pre-defined organizational structures. Who Uses WebSpace? WebSpace goes far beyond the standard portal or collaboration tool. For the corporation, WebSpace enhances portal investments, ensuring more effective teamwork and information management. For both information publishers and professional services firms looking to penetrate the corporate enterprise, WebSpace provides new revenue streams delivering a platform onto which new value-added products and services can be developed. WebSpace offers a unique opportunity to information publishers, content providers and knowledge services providers as well. By providing the unique advantage of being able to offer content in an interactive, personal virtual workspace, WebSpace allows their customers immediate use of the information necessary to support their business activities. WebSpace can transform the on-line information site of the information publisher, content provider and knowledge service provider into a highly valuable, collaborative workspace that helps Copernus, Inc. February,

11 knowledge-workers accomplish their day-to-day activities. And since information from virtually anywhere can be incorporated into WebSpace, these services firms now become a comprehensive source of total business information allowing these companies to obtain brand equity value reaching far beyond core content. Core User Scenarios Knowledge-worker: The relevance of anything to users depends on how they relate it to the other things they know. With WebSpace, knowledge-workers can take core content and based on a specific need relate it to a current task, challenge or opportunity and quickly move forward. These types of challenges are seen by knowledge-workers everyday. Take the marketing team of a leading software developer, for example. One day, the team is riding the top of the market with the industry s most powerful software solution. A day later, this can all change, as in the case of a new competitor releasing a product that suddenly makes their products seem like old news. Sales start to drop, and the executive team sees the threat and the urgency to react quickly. But how do you respond? By using WebSpace. With WebSpace, the marketing team s turnaround time is dramatically reduced, allowing them to respond quickly and effectively to this real-time threat. WebSpace houses information from any source so the marketing team can quickly organize it in a way that allows for rapid action. This particular WebSpace for the marketing team might include: Links to competitor Internet sites and on-line competitive product information Audio and video files from focus group research s from regional sales reps in the competitor s test markets containing competitive data Adobe files of sales sheets a staff member captures from the competitor s site Text files containing the list of the types of features and functions needed in the next product release to regain market advantage. The end result clearly is faster knowledge and increased worker productivity. By using WebSpace, these workers can leverage the velocity of knowledge to minimize market share loss and reclaim dominance. Increased worker productivity is the key to WebSpace. By ensuring that no one loses an or document, works off an old file, or is left out of the loop, WebSpace greatly enhances worker productivity and ensures that no time is wasted in reacting to competitive pressures. Information Publisher/Professional Services Firm One of the key differentiators of WebSpace is its ability to provide additional revenuegenerating streams for both information publishers and professional services firms. The Copernus, Inc. February,

12 flexibility and ease-of-use of WebSpace provides these purveyors of knowledge with a unique platform on which they can develop value-added services for their customer base. Say you are part of a legal team preparing for trial. Your firm subscribes to a legal information publishing service. Attorneys and paralegals use this service to find similar rulings to support their client s case. With WebSpace, the legal team quickly copies relevant briefs and specific quotes and places them directly into the framework of their case brief as it is being developed. This information is then augmented with research from the Internet, files from individual PCs, the firm s intranet and other sources. No longer do associates or paralegals run to the printer to gather dozens of papers and then sort through them to find relevant points. Nor need they search through stacks of rulings to find one that is vital, yet misfiled. The team saves time and improves organization by using the same WebSpace to collaborate on their findings and plan their case strategy. By offering WebSpace in conjunction with its legal information, this publisher gains brand equity and a competitive advantage by providing unparalleled value to the legal team. Conclusion In today s rapidly changing marketplace, knowledge is king and those who have quick and easy access to it will end up winning the game. Although knowledge workers have continued to transition from solution to solution in an effort to find the tools that match their jobs, no one solution has been able to meet all their needs. Copernus WebSpace is geared toward providing that answer. By extending the value of the corporate portal and filling the void left by many of today s collaboration applications, WebSpace bridges the knowledge worker gap. When used in conjunction with top-of-the-line portals and content management systems, WebSpace can act as the glue that today s knowledge worker needs to hold together the vast amounts of information to get his/her job done. Providing unmatched flexibility and ease-of-use, WebSpace finally is the answer for those companies and their knowledge workers who are looking for the ultimate solution that helps them bridge the knowledge gap. To learn more about the power of WebSpace, visit us on the web at Craig Jolley Director of Marketing and Communications Copernus, Inc. February,