A recent report by Ovum Research says the e-knowledge market is being driven by a number of deep trends, among which is the recognition that intellectual capital - in all its forms - is a vital asset for all organisations, and therefore needs effective management.
Intellectual capital management can be defined as the process that combines human knowledge and experience (both implicit and explicit), as contained in structured and unstructured content, with the information and data in an enterprise for the purpose of exploiting greater value. Implicit knowledge is contained in the experience, knowledge and relationships of employees, customers and partners, and their interactions with information, and with each other through business processes. Explicit knowledge is contained in hundreds of documents in various formats, including database records, Web content, e-mail and messaging, application managed content, in XML format, and in the organisation of data (taxonomies). The growth of both is exponential.
The biggest challenge to companies is the impact info glut can have on costs and productivity.
Garth Wittles, District manager, Verity in SA
Managing the information glut is where the challenge comes in. Unmanaged intellectual capital is a liability because it can engulf employees - the Institute for the Future says 60% of knowledge workers feel overwhelmed by the amount of information they have to deal with, given that some company intranets in 2003 were as big as the entire Internet was in 1997.
The biggest challenge to companies is the impact info glut can have on costs and productivity.
The Information Bank of America says Fortune 500 firms will lose up to $500 000 an hour due to lack of information; research firm IDC states that the Fortune 500 will lose $31.5 billion by 2003 due to rework and inability to find information; and KPMG has found that companies lose $12 500 per employee due to duplication each year.
What is required to manage these challenges is a comprehensive set of intelligent content services built on a flexible architecture that allows the integration of best-of-breed technology and applications through proven interfaces, and provides a consistent experience for the end-user. By providing a broad range of integrated access components, including search, browse and recommendation, intelligent content services can provide companies with the following benefits:
* The extraction of content structure using taxonomies, automatic classification and domain expertise;
* The secure capture, aggregation and normalisation of content regardless of type or location;
* Lower total cost of ownership, and simpler and shorter implementation cycles than multiple products; and
* Faster and more significant return on investment.
A flexible, open toolset also has the advantage of providing a consistent experience for the end-user, leveraging content from diverse sources with a single set of search and navigation tools, following uniform content access and use procedures, and improving productivity and reducing training costs.
In real terms, intelligent content services enable employees, customers and partners to locate information they know exists, respond to questions, quickly and accurately, uncover unknown information assets, evaluate content to make better decisions, and sell and buy more effectively online.
Another challenge is to find a system that works. While various vendors may promise to provide an effective intellectual capital management system, you must be sure to ask whether the system on offer normalises content regardless of format, location or structure; whether it makes content accessible and usable across companies, geographies and applications; and whether it can solve real company-specific business problems.
Why intelligent content services?
De-centralised content creation processes result in multiple repositories that create information silos, non-uniform information creation tools, a wide range of information access tools, systems and security models, and nonexistent/inconsistent tagging. The impact on user productivity and success is immense: users remain unaware of all information assets; access to multiple applications is time-consuming; and decisions and actions across the enterprise are inconsistent.
While companies may expect content management systems to provide integrated access to their information as and when required, these systems typically cover only 5% to 15% of an organisation`s information. They exist mainly as standalone applications used by only a small subset of users, and they lack the interfaces for true application integration.
Where content management systems create well-defined information silos, intelligent content services connect information silos. The latter exploits these processes to increase the value of content across the enterprise, while the former merely enforces functional processes and workflow around specific content.
By deploying intelligent content services first, you can gain an understanding of all existing information assets, and thus provide high-value enterprise-wide benefits sooner. Only then should you determine which would benefit from content management.
Deploying intelligent content services
The deployment of intelligent content services requires the following approach:
* Connect data and content that is internal and external to the enterprise;
* Extract structure, objects, concepts, ideas and relationships within that data and content;
* Secure access to all "entities" based on who is retrieving them, and where, when and how they are being retrieved; and
* Monitor new data and content, and alert the appropriate end-users and applications.
Stage one of the deployment cycle should focus on providing basic access. Begin with data discovery as a low-risk, logical starting point. Look at what content you have, where it is located, and in which applications. Ask how much value there is in it. Then implement the basics to provide more effective "locate" and "uncover" tools to end-users. Do this by indexing one or more repositories, providing full-text search, and implementing a simple taxonomy.
During stage two, you can enhance user access. Present results with parametric selection, implement a thesaurus, predefine concepts that are automatically or selectively invoked, and index and integrate additional content sources.
Introduce evaluation at stage three. At this stage, you can also expand to include advanced end-user tools, introduce relational taxonomies, division and department views, geography views and subject views (HR policies, engineering documents, and so on).
Because intelligent content services manage intellectual capital within and beyond the organisation, they provide a strong return on investment, while empowering users across the organisation. Employees need to spend less time looking for information and more time gaining knowledge from what exists, or is being added each day. The value very often comes, not in what we know, but rather in what we don`t know. Through the use of integrated search functionality, alerting and indexing of information according to standard taxonomies can have a very positive impact on the bottom line.
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