Best Practices in Enterprise Knowledge Management

Andy Moore ...... 2 Passing the Cringe Test: Has KM Made It to Prime Time? Once upon a time, saying the words “knowledge management” was the fastest way to get thrown out of a meeting. And not only would you be ejected, you would never be invited back. . . . Paul Sonderegger, Endeca ...... 4 People Judge Relevance. Machines Calculate Evidence. Does the man make the machine? Or the machine make the man? A pilot can't fly without a plane. A doctor can’t diagnose without a centrifuge. . . . Daryl Orts, Noetix ...... 6 How to Correctly Design and Implement a Dashboard A dashboard is a vital tool for monitoring the daily health of your organization. From a sin- gle interface, decision makers have access to key performance indicators (KPIs). . . . Hadley Reynolds and Silvija Seres, FAST . . . . 8 Building the Search Center of Excellence Search is strategic; however, the strategic potential of search is not captured by the act of acquiring a powerful search platform alone. . . . InQuira ...... 10 Implementing KM: Practitioners Share Best Practices Most customer service organizations today will admit that effective knowledge transfer is the most crucial element to resolving customer problems. . . . Brandon Lackey, BEA, and ...... 12 Mistakes to Avoid and Principles for Success Michael Behounek, Emerja Many organizations today still struggle to get value from their knowledge management (KM) efforts. Even companies that have been benchmarked as the “best practice” can easily fall. . . . Jeff Dirks, SchemaLogic ...... 14 Knowledge is Power: Best Practices in Semantics Management Knowledge is power. The meaning of the phrase is even more applicable today as companies around the world are dealing with an overwhelming amount of data. . . . Anand Chopra, KANA ...... 16 Answering Customers’ Questions the Intelligent Way Enterprises face a difficult challenge when simultaneously improving the quality of service and reducing costs. More products and rapid change substantially increase the amounts of information. . . . Gordon Taylor, TOWER Software . . . . . 17 Knowledge at the Point of Decision A small, two-legged robot stands atop a glass-topped coffee table. On its two dimensional world, it has to contend with a potted plant, an old TV Guide and several coffee cups. . . . Laurent Simoneau, Coveo ...... 18 Enterprise Search: The Foundation for Risk Management If you can’t find it, you can’t manage it. Unfortunately, many executives have discovered this too late in the game—when they face legal troubles or a corporate scandal. . . . Jon Parsons, XyEnterprise ...... 19 Realizing Measurable ROI with Multi-Language Content Management What is content management worth? That can be a philosophical question. If you ask a content author, you’ll hear about the way content creation and review is made easier. . . . Dan Dube, DocZone.com ...... 20 Hosted XML Content Management: Is It Right for You? Publishing organizations have long recognized the value of migrating content to XML to attain the benefits of content reuse, reduced localization costs and single-source publishing. . . . Gregory F. Roberts, Lockheed Martin . . . 21 Who is that “he?”—Using Pronouns and Anaphors in Text Extraction Text extraction is a powerful tool to find and categorize elements in unstructured documents. These elements, or entities, are connected together to form the relationships, facts and events. . . . Andrew Cohen, KNOVA Software ...... 22 Beyond First Call Resolution Knowledge management (KM) initiatives are one way of improving technical support organizations, driving support margins through efficiency and increased customer loyalty. . . . Chip Gettinger, Astoria Software ...... 23 The Hidden Costs of Product Information Publishing Manufacturing enterprises have placed a sustained focus on information management solutions to support and augment the design, development and production process. . . .

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KMWorld November/December 2006 Andy Moore is a 25-year publishing Passing the Cringe Test professional, editor and writer who concentrates on business process Has Knowledge Management Made It to Prime Time? improvement through document and content management. As a publication By Andy Moore, Editorial Director, KMWorld Specialty Publishing Group editor, Moore Andy Moore most recently was editor-in-chief and co-publisher of KMWorld Magazine. He is now publisher of KMWorld Magazine and its related online publications. Once upon a time, saying the words crete,” insisted Sally Hicks, marketing “knowledge management” was the fastest manager at Noetix. “Our biggest dashboard Moore acts as chair for the “KMWorld Best way to get thrown out of a meeting. And not customer is Florida Rock. Their name says Practices White Papers,” overseeing editorial only would you be ejected, you would never content, conducting market research and writing it all—they move rocks. It’s not sexy. But the opening essays for each of the white papers be invited back. they allow their customers to log in through in the series. That was then, but this is now. I asked a a secure dashboard and get a few basic panel of experts not only whether KM was pieces of data, and it’s saving hundreds of He has been fortunate enough to cover emerging finally ready to pass the “cringe test,” but man-hours per week. Their customers areas of applied technology for much of his career, ranging from telecom and networking what it would take to propel KM to even don’t know the terminology of ‘knowledge greater prominence as an enterprise set of through to information management. In this role, management.’ They just want a copy of an he has been pleased to witness first-hand the solutions. And I was surprised—and invoice.” decade’s most significant business and pleased—at the reactions. “We are able to now talk about knowl- organizational revolution: the drive to leverage “One of the big failures of knowledge edge management without the audience organizational knowledge assets (documents, management, and the reason it had the rep- rolling their eyes,” said Sivija Seres, records, information and object repositories) to utation it had, is that it tries to solve prob- FAST’s VP of strategic business develop- improve performance and improve lives. lems at too much of a macro level,” said ment, “but we have learned a lot. People Moore is based in Camden, Maine, and can be Brandon Lackey. Brandon is the global have been told one thing at a marketing reached at [email protected]. solutions director for BEA Systems. “They level, but it’s difficult to achieve those tried to build a database of everyone’s things when it scales greatly and gets more knowledge, and it can’t be done. The suc- complex, and more features creep up into cessful systems may go in under the basis the original specification,” said Silvija. The KM Formula of knowledge management, but they “Recently, the technology—not the core, address very specific business problems.” If KM is now accepted among polite but the functionality—and our understand- So can you “talk about KM” during company, what’s holding up its widespread ing of how to set things up from the begin- these meetings? “You can, in pockets,” adoption? “We always come back to the ning has reached a level that we can be noted Paul Sonderegger, the principal same fundamental thing: people can’t get really proud of.” strategist and “evangelist” at Endeca. the information they need to do their jobs,” Unmet expectations is a common theme “There are companies that are more said Sally Hicks. “Even if IT is helping get dependent than others on the movement of in technology deployments, of course. But information to people, they don’t get it information in order to affect the bottom maybe it’s worse in KM, because the goals quickly enough, or it changes. Sometimes line. Take a professional service organiza- are often so ambiguous. “The problem with the users don’t even know what it is they tion—a consulting company, for instance. asking users to describe what they want is want; they just know they need something Its whole ability to leverage the work their like the old saw about Henry Ford,” in order to make a decision.” consultants do depends on their ability to remarked Paul Sonderegger. “If Ford had The theme of “information+decision= take information others have created and asked people what they wanted, they would knowledge management” is practically apply it in another context. In that kind of have said ‘faster horses.’ Luckily, there is a universal. “What’s the connection between environment, yes...you can absolutely talk rising generation of managers who have a information and action?” asked Paul, entirely about knowledge management.” greater baseline of familiarity with technol- rhetorically. “It’s the assessment of the prob- Tim Shetler, vice president, marketing ogy than the departing generation. They’re lem and the appropriateness of available at InQuira, thought his company knew the still not technologists, but they have new solutions. Before you can do anything logisti- difficulty in the terminology: “We deliber- ideas about what they want from their cally—like shipping something from one ately named our product ‘Information infrastructure.” place to another to fix a problem—someone Manager’ to avoid any issues with the term Lowell Anderson, VP marketing at has to assess the problem, and become satis- ‘knowledge management.’ We discovered SchemaLogic, agreed with that assessment. fied they have identified the right solution. they don’t exist! We thought there would “There’s definitely an increased awareness And that’s ALL about decision-making. It’s be some tarnish around the term. But every of the capabilities that a focused KM strat- the information being brought to the person RFP I look at uses the phrase ‘knowledge egy can bring to an organization. As that allows us to talk about the application management.’ The end users don’t have we become familiar with collaboration of knowledge.” that baggage.” techniques, people are becoming more Of course, as is often the case, it’s easi- It’s probably a matter of whom you ask, comfortable with moving away from fixed er said than done. “As customers spend sig- and what type of organization they work standards as a way to govern knowledge. nificant amounts of money deploying for. “The term ‘knowledge management’ Open collaboration effectively becomes the information-access networks, they are real- doesn’t make sense to a guy pouring con- standard,” said Lowell. izing they aren’t working as well as they

S2 KMWorld November/December 2006 possibly could,” said Lowell. “They are back and say ‘No, this is so much more ties for KM to leverage emerging Web connecting different repositories and con- than that. You need to make sure the technologies and concepts. “Certain tent silos, but they don’t have a common processes are open and the right people are organizations, such as telcos and media understanding of the terminologies that in place.’” All agreed that Brandon’s view companies, are very keen to figure out how describe the information residing in those is correct, but utopian. “Business wants a to make money from Web 2.0,” declared content silos. There are also complex inter- quick fix, and that’s been the failure of Silvija, “and apply the whole social aspect relationships among those terms they have knowledge management: there isn’t one.” of information. We need to provide them no way to model.” “IT will end up owning and running the with the tools to position themselves in Sally Hicks agreed: “The terminology system, so it’s OK for them to be in that space.” issue is huge. If you’re working with a charge,” added Sally. “But they need to Brandon Lackey agreed: “I’m excited database, and there isn’t a term that exactly have the input and buy-in from business, about Web 2.0, because it builds communities matches ‘table 1’ in the database, there is and listen. And the end users also have to of like-minded contributors who share implic- absolutely no way you’re going to get what take the time to work with IT and ask for you need. In many cases, the user isn’t even exactly what they want up front.” it knowledge, but in doing so it’s being cap- sure he HAS the information, much less be tured and made searchable. So while they’re able to find it using strict database terms.” solving specific business problems, they’re And it doesn’t appear that the average also building a valuable knowledgebase...just technology tools provide much help; a “Every RFP uses the in a subtle and implicit way.” more integrated solution is required. “A lot “People are putting KM systems in place of customers feel that ‘search’ by itself is which are quite capable at organizing and dis- not as big a problem as content or knowl- phrase ‘knowledge tributing knowledge,” added Lowell. “But edge,” said InQuira’s Tim Shetler. “Most of how do they enrich those systems in real time our customers now come to us looking for with knowledge from the employees’ minds? both. It’s a much broader solution area.” management.’ The There’s a tremendous amount of interest in “A useful lens to look at this through is using the concepts of Web 2.0 to use collabo- the long tail,” said Paul. “Within an enter- ration to enrich and expand the information prise, there will be a number of requests for end users don’t have within these systems.” information that everyone asks all the It’s popular to think of KM technolo- time—total blockbusters. Then there’s the gies as being “transparent” and totally body of requests that are kind of in the mid- that baggage.” automated, but some of the panel thought dle, relatively common but not block- just the opposite. Sally said, “What’s dif- busters. But then you’ve got an almost infi- ferent now from five or 10 years ago is nite number of requests that occur seldom- that users want to ‘do it themselves.’ Back ly... maybe only once. So any kind of ‘mas- “The more ambitious of our customers then, they just said: ‘Give me a report, ter schema’ will fail.” know they have to view it as cross-functional and cross-divisional. They see it as a platform, give me a number.’ Now they want to be empowered.” Getting in the Door and on top of that they keep growing proj- ects,” explained Silvija. “They are starting “People are concerned with the quality Perhaps because of the complexity; per- ‘centers of excellence’ in greater numbers. of information. And they have become haps because of the ambiguity of the benefit, But in order for them to succeed, you need spoiled, because there are so many more KM is a tough sell. “Selling knowledge man- support from quite a high level.” solutions. How do you provide them with agement systems is harder than selling sys- the information they want, even if they tems that help people make money,” said What’s Next? can’t express what it is they want?” won- Silvija. “You have to provide a very strong dered Silvija. ROI argument. You have to help customers Tim Shetler detects a “mood shift” I guess that remains to be seen. It’s cer- understand how it will either make them more among KM system users and purchasers: tainly true that a “one-size-fits-all/it slices, it effective, or save money,” she said. “The resurgence of KM is driven by the dices” solution is probably a thing of the past. “The difficulty begins when you want to distribution of workers, and work, both Even with search, it is rare to find a vendor roll it out. You have to convince the IT person geographically and over time. For compa- that only uses one type of technology. It’s a at every division or office. For them this is just nies like that, knowledge management is combination of text with semantic under- a headache; they have to replace something something you have to do just to run the standing on top of a taxonomy...as KM gets that’s already in place and working with business. But there’s another change: peo- better and enters the mainstream, it also has something that will take time to get right. In ple are looking for ways to affect their top become extraordinarily more complex. order to grow a system to a very large scale line. Sure, people are still looking for ways That’s what the KMWorld White Papers with very advanced features, you need to have to cut costs, and get ROIs from cost cen- are for. It is no longer possible to explain a nicely staged process, where they first get ters, such as their call-center operations. KM in a simple “blurb” or describe in a something that works really well at a basic But people are tired of doing that; they’re colorful brochure. Information manage- level, then add new features and grow the sys- looking for ways to raise the top line— ment solutions are not only complex, they tem in a controlled way.” ‘Give me a 2% increase in marketshare.’” are usually multi-dimensional, solving “When it works right,” added Brandon He continued: “An enterprise knowledge- Lackey, “IT recognizes that the business sharing initiative has a lot of hard-to-quan- many different problems, depending on problem has to be solved by the line-of- tify, soft-dollar benefits. That’s hard to how they are applied and where the needs business stakeholders. IT should coordi- justify. But if you can demonstrate a hard- of the organization lie. And don’t forget: nate, and see themselves as the enablers. So dollar return, it’s much easier to spread solving one problem only opens the oppor- much of knowledge management is people when the case is proven.” tunity to face the next one. But that’s what and process; if the business says to IT The most interesting turn in our con- knowledge management solutions have ‘Make me a repository,’ IT should push versations revolved around the opportuni- always done best. ❚

KMWorld November/December 2006 S3 Paul Sonderegger is Endeca’s chief People Judge Relevance. strategist. Before joining Endeca, Sonderegger was an analyst at Forrester Machines Calculate Research for six years. His research focused on experience design and search Evidence. Paul Sonderegger technology. Sonderegger’s research into search included information By Paul Sonderegger, Chief Strategist, Endeca retrieval theories and technologies. But it was examining those approaches through the lens of user experience that showed which ones actually help people find what they’re looking Does the man make the machine? Is Relevance Irrelevant? for. In addition to publishing numerous reports Or the machine make the man? on these topics, Sonderegger helped hundreds The familiar framing of the information- of executives apply research to solve real access problem is how to help people find business problems. A pilot can’t fly without a plane. A doctor the right information at the right time. But can’t diagnose without a centrifuge. A pho- we need some measure of “rightness” before we can characterize the tools we need. tographer can’t create without a camera. And better than without. The central function of “Relevance” is the technical term for the except in the simplest circumstances, the re- information access technology is to produce central measure of “rightness” in informa- verse is also true. But why? Couldn’t you evidence that informs human judgment. tion retrieval. Unfortunately, relevance defies break down flying, diagnosis and photogra- We summarize this as: phy into a set of rules that would allow the logical rules. You know this if a search machine to make the same decisions the per- engine ever returned to you a document that ◆ People judge relevance son would have made if he had been there? was “72% relevant.” This is like a flight com- ◆ Machines calculate evidence No. There is something more to the human puter saying the plane is 72% on course. decision-making process than simple logical Relevance is subjective because it’s rela- Context Informs Relevance rules can account for. tive to the person’s goal. For example, if I tell This fact is a central problem for tra- you that the movie tonight is at 7:30 PM, So what can a technology do that would ditional information-access technologies, is that relevant? If we’re going to the help people better determine relevance? including keyword search, databases and movies, then yes. If not, no. How can a piece First, let’s look at how context helps people determine meaning. Take this simple exchange: Host: “Would you like some dessert?” Guest: “It would fill me up.” “We should consider each person the How does the host figure out if the guest wants dessert or not? If the host knows that his guest doesn’t like to sleep on a full stomach, expert and provide more effective tools for then the answer is no. If the host knows that his guest likes to eat until satisfied, the answer is yes. This context lives outside the literal dialogue in the mind of the host. It completes reaching their goals.” the proper meaning of the guest’s statements. But how does the guest know the host will make the proper interpretation? He’s actually relying on the host to have this context in mind and, therefore, interpret his statements accurately. business intelligence (BI). Each of these of information be both relevant and irrele- This is how human communication “machines” intends to help an individual vant? It depends on what the user is trying to works. It’s based on the resolution of ambi- find the information she needs to make a accomplish. Relevance is in the eye of the guities through best efforts and educated decision at a unique point in time. This is beholder. guesses. But both parties have to be working one of the most difficult technological Just because relevance is subjective with the richest context-processing machine problems of our age, and one of the most doesn’t mean we must give up hope in find- available—the human mind. Both guest and valuable to solve, but too often we’re ing it. On the contrary, it must be host use observations about the current asking the centrifuge to do the work of the central focus of information access tech- environment, knowledge of the audience the doctor. Instead we should consider nology. But it does reveal why we should- and personal experience to attempt to each person the expert and provide more n’t ask the machine to determine communicate effectively. The vast majority effective tools for reaching their goals. relevance for us. It can’t. Fortunately, of the time it works. And the application of But how do we evaluate which tools are people are experts at judging relevance— these contextual facts, taken from the envi- the right ones for the job? and with help from machines, we can do ronment and the head, is the key.

S4 KMWorld November/December 2006 If we are to make humans the determi- nant of relevance in an information access application, it is context that helps them judge information. But how do we get from “Adaptivity is the dynamic calculation content to context?

Relationships in the Content Inform of relationships among relationships in the Context in the Head In the man/machine exchange of infor- mation access, only one party is reasoning current results set.” with the flexibility and inventiveness of a human being. To make the machine play a helpful role in the dialogue, there are two basic approaches: facets. And in a strange twist, the full-text through the app—whether a keyword index of a document can be thought of as just query, a navigation selection, a circled re- 1. Mimic human judgment with a dynamic facet of that file. gion on a map—the platform must show software rules But don’t relational databases work this him the results and all the possible, but 2. Use software rules to inform way today? Not quite. People easily conceive only the valid next steps. human judgment of dimensions that cut across a “rectangular” database. Take a customer database; it’s These requirements call for an architec- The first works well in constrained, static tural capability called adaptivity. Adaptivity user scenarios. For example, a digital camera straightforward to find out which customers is the dynamic calculation of relationships sensing low light will leave the “shutter” open bought a particular product in the past year. But it’s much more difficult to find out which among relationships in the current results set longer, just as a photographer would. But combinations of products were bought in the based on the possibilities in the data, the there’s no setting for capturing, say, a child’s last year by customers in a particular region— joy of accomplishment. And if there were user’s actions and any business rules. a sensible question, based on dimensions that such a setting, would you trust it on the day of Information access applications built on cut across the original database structure. your child’s big game? Search engines such a platform show a user all the results to That’s what BI is for. Unfortunately, BI can attempting to calculate relevance are over- a query plus all the information about those only support the questions the developers reaching just as much. These algorithms are results, creating greater context for the knew ahead of time would be asked. But peo- really just counting—whether it’s the number user’s judgments. For example, a product ple are much more flexible than that. They of times the query term appears in the target engineer looking for titanium bolts for a come up with unforeseen questions and documents, the number of links using that lightweight chassis design searches for “tita- unpredictable ways to express otherwise mun- nium bolts.” The results include all the tita- term which point to a given Web page, or dane requests. And, they want to take into something based on probabilistic or other sta- account information in different forms from nium bolts, of course, as well as all the tistical calculations. In each case, the raw cal- records to documents. That’s what search is dimensions by which this list of bolts could culations fail to capture what the indexed for. But, of course, traditional search engines be refined—length, weight, finish, thread information is about. Worse, the mechanism is don’t maintain relationships from the systems pitch and so on—plus the quality-assurance a black box. When the user gets results that they index. And we’re back where we started. reports including data on titanium bolts, appear irrelevant to him, it’s hard to tell why with the appropriate refinement dimensions. his best-attempt query failed. A New Architecture Calculates And as the engineer selects refinements or The second approach works well in searches within the results, or both, all the dynamic, unpredictable scenarios. Think of Relationships Among Relationships information on the screen dynamically a doctor in an emergency room. A patient updates, driven entirely on the possibilities arrives complaining of weakness, shortness Just as modern planes, medical tech- that exist in the data. The result is the richest of breath and numbness in his extremities. nologies and cameras give pilots, doctors possible presentation of the evidence, guid- A blood test shows low oxygen saturation and photographers more flexibility and and a chest x-ray shows fluid in the lungs. control, a modern information-access plat- ing the engineer to his goal. Neither of the machines that produce this form must do the same for employees, cus- Machines should not pretend to do data can draw the conclusion that the tomers and partners. Such a machine must: things they can’t. And they can’t judge rel- patient was poisoned. But the doctor can. ◆ Accept messy, real-world enterprise evance for a particular user with a specific The tools provide the doctor with facts that information. The platform must be able to goal. Instead, the machine should calculate better inform her judgment. But it’s the index enterprise data and content that the relationships among relationships in the doctor who puts the whole picture together. comes in all its different formats, sizes data and content, fueling the context for In information-access technologies, data- and quality. decisions, making experts of us all. ❚ bases and BI tools are much closer to this ◆ Preserve all the relationships in the approach. They store data in specific struc- Endeca, headquartered in Cambridge, MA is a next-gen- original systems. The relationships in the eration information access company uniting the ease of tures, allowing them to maintain the factu- databases, enterprise apps and documents search with the analytical power of business intelligence. al relationships inside. The key is to point are pre-existing investments the platform The Endeca Information Access Platform combines the machine at the smallest indivisible unit must exploit. patented intellectual property, breakthrough science and of information and then give the user the ◆ Calculate all the dimensional relation- a deep focus on user experience to help people find, tools to see those pieces as a whole picture. ships. The facets in each record and doc- analyze and understand information in ways never That unit is the facet—an explicit charac- ument are the basis for connections across before possible. Leading global organizations like ABN teristic of a thing. Facets are everywhere— otherwise completely different assets. AMRO, Boeing and Cox Newspapers rely on Endeca metadata on documents, user-contributed ◆ Guide users through constantly shifting to increase revenue, reduce costs and streamline tags and fields in a database record are all contexts. Each time the user takes a step operations through better information access.

KMWorld November/December 2006 S5 Daryl Orts is responsible for How to Correctly managing the growth and development of the Noetix Dashboard Design and Implement offering, bringing more than 10 years of technology and leadership experience to a Dashboard Daryl Orts Noetix. Orts joined Noetix in early 2001 and managed the development of NoetixViews for Oracle Applications for two years. He also A Step-by-Step Guide managed the development and launch of the first two releases of Noetix for Siebel CRM. Prior to joining Noetix, Orts was vice president of By Daryl Orts, VP of Advanced Solutions, Noetix Corp. applications R&D for Onyx Software as well as vice president of engineering for Luminous Corporation. Earlier in his career, Orts held software management and development Adashboard is a vital tool for monitoring the your dashboard project by striking a bal- positions at Adobe Systems, Frame Technology daily health of your organization. From a sin- ance between the primary user’s needs and and IBM. gle interface, decision makers have access to what you can afford to deliver. key performance indicators (KPIs)—action- Requirements gathering and prototype— able information that can be used to effectively Interview the key stakeholders to determine ◆ Determine how to “persist” data when his- guide and track business performance. their needs and expectations. To keep the torical trending information is desired, but At a high level, it may seem relatively dashboard project within scope, map these unavailable from the transaction database; easy to build a dashboard. Companies that needs and expectations to the pre-established ◆ Define the queries needed to retrieve each feel they have a good handle on which KPIs. To increase the likelihood that the data element; and performance indicators are of strategic ◆ Determine drill paths. importance to the organization may think 3. Build and validate: The “real” collecting, summarizing and consolidating development begins at this stage of the the supporting data shouldn’t be that diffi- project. Several tasks occur here, typically cult. However, such oversimplification “It may seem can lead to a failed project before it ever in parallel and closely coordinated with gets off the ground. each other. The successful implementation of a relatively easy to Front-end implementation—Create the dashboard is complex and requires a dashboard user interface. Evaluate what step-by-step process: a methodology that graph and chart types best represent the considers all aspects of the project life build a dashboard. data to be displayed and make decisions cycle. This series of tasks—plan, design, regarding grouping data to provide the build and deploy—will be similar, greatest visibility for cross-analysis. regardless of the technology or vendor However, such Query implementation—Create the chosen. When comparing proposals from queries to retrieve the necessary information multiple vendors or the cost of a “do-it- from the appropriate databases. This step can yourself” project, it is important to oversimplification be particularly complex and time consum- include all of these steps. Correctly ing, especially if there are multiple data designed and implemented, a dashboard sources for the various dashboard elements has the potential to bring immediate and can lead to a failed including data from customized enterprise considerable return on investment (ROI) applications for ERP, CRM or SCM. to your organization. Configure scheduling, refresh and secu- 1. Plan: Dashboard development project.” rity—To ensure the dashboard content is begins in the planning phase. Identify the up to date, queries need to be configured to project team members, their roles and run regularly. At the same time, it is impor- overall project objectives. When working tant to establish and implement security rules to display the appropriate information within a tight timeline, populating the final dashboard will meet users’ expectations, dashboard is the most critical area of con- take advantage of available tools and for users with different levels of access. Dashboard validation cern. Take care not to underestimate the technologies that lend themselves well —As with any complexity of the databases in which the to prototyping. software project, when the effort reaches data resides. Accessing the data from 2. Design: Once the team approves “code complete,” both the technical team a myriad of tables requires technical the dashboard’s content and appearance, and the primary users must test the dash- resources with detailed knowledge of the the next step is to incorporate major board to ensure it meets the requirements underlying table structure and consider- design aspects: outlined in the project plan. able SQL skill. Define the project budget 4. Deploy and maintain: Once the and take into consideration the work ◆ Refine the user interface and control flow; dashboard has been built and tested, it is required to create the custom queries for ◆ Confirm the data sources for each then deployed into production and security the desired metrics. Set realistic goals for data element; requirements are implemented. With the

S6 KMWorld November/December 2006 Florida Rock Institutes Customer Self-Service Dashboards

Founded in 1945, Florida Rock Industries, Inc., is one of them see receipts or checks that have been posted to the nation’s leading producers of construction aggregates, their accounts. Finally, it gives them a list of local Florida ready-mixed concrete, concrete block, Portland cement and Rock locations if they need to do more business. pre-stressed concrete. The company is also at the forefront Essentially, Florida Rock’s customers are getting a great of technology in the construction materials industry. deal of information about their business in a matter When Florida Rock receives a customer order, it of seconds. assigns a “ticket” to each request for materials. The In addition, customers can link directly from their ticket acts as the proof of delivery. It is signed by the invoices to Florida Rock’s electronic document retrieval customer when the shipment is received and scanned system and pull out a PDF with the exact image of the into Florida Rock’s electronic document retrieval system. document, or drill down into the tickets that made up Once the signed ticket enters the system, Florida Rock that shipment or particular invoice, as well as make a adds the associated customer order to an invoice. There copy of their most current statement. can be one ticket or a hundred tickets on an invoice, so The Noetix Dashboard provides Florida Rock tying the ticket back to the invoice quickly and efficiently customers with a self-service tool to facilitate a more is critical for providing the kind of quality customer efficient business partnership. It is much easier for them service for which Florida Rock is known. The company to monitor their accounts and ensure their invoices are can field hundreds of calls per week from its more than paid on time, cutting back on overdue payments. “Our 8,000 customers looking for information regarding their customers require that all of the signed tickets be filed,” invoices. The process involved a customer going through said Dave DeVore, manager, application development, a telephone answering service to reach the correct Florida Rock. “If one ticket is misplaced and there is no person, who would then query an Oracle database or proof of delivery, payment is withheld on an invoice that Florida Rock’s electronic document retrieval system to could be worth several thousand dollars. The easy-to-use get to the needed information. This image or copy would Noetix Dashboard will help shorten the payment cycle by then be emailed, faxed or mailed to the customer. giving customers immediate access to all of the tickets Florida Rock also saw the need to make it more efficient and invoices associated with each account. We want our both for its customers and for its credit and accounts customers to have control over their businesses and get receivables (AR) departments, who spent several hours the information they’re after in a timely manner. Logging a day just supplying lost copies of documents. into these dashboards is certainly a lot quicker and easier than calling, going through the various levels, and Addressing the Challenge then waiting for a fax or image to come through.” In addition to the customer self-service tool, Florida Rock The solution involved a creative way to use the Noetix uses Noetix Dashboard internally. The company’s credit Dashboard as a customer self-service tool. Instead of department staff uses a dashboard to get quick customer having to call for information, customers are able to sign snapshots and access to associated statements, invoices on to a secure system that takes them directly to a and tickets without having to go into Oracle ERP. Florida custom-tailored Noetix Dashboard. It shows them their Rock also intends to roll out dashboards to its executives in AR buckets; allows them to view their most recent 50 HR payroll and receivables to monitor business operations open invoices and all the associated tickets, and lets from a single, intuitive view.

dashboard in production, or “live,” steps vendor or technology that is chosen. imperative to ensure that the entire scope must also be taken to provide for ongoing Creating the graphical front end is rela- of the project is considered. ❚ maintenance. Over time, requirements and tively quick and easy, but that’s merely the expectations for the dashboard will change shell of the dashboard. What you actually Noetix provides business intelligence tools that enable and the dashboard solution should be flex- see on your desktop pales in comparison to more than 1,300 customers worldwide to quickly and cost-effectively access the enterprise application data ible and open to allow for such inevitable the hidden effort—80% of the complexity they need to make important business decisions. Unlike enhancement requests. lies beneath the surface. All of the tasks most BI tools that require weeks of extensive manual listed above require planning, organiza- mapping to be set up and maintained, Noetix uses Final Note: Build vs. Buy tion, coordination, scheduling and solid patented technology to automatically discover and project management. When comparing produce metadata based on customers’ specific Building and deploying an executive proposals or considering a “build vs. buy” implementations of Oracle Applications or Siebel CRM. dashboard takes time, regardless of the decision for deploying a dashboard, it is For more information please visit www.noetix.com.

KMWorld November/December 2006 S7 A Sustainable Advantage These research examples show that the issues with achieving high-quality search go much deeper than a selection of tech- nology. Some of the problem is clearly related to the legacy of basic keyword Building the Search search deployments whose fatal lack of accuracy and relevance continues to disappoint users. Most modern platform offerings combine families of advanced Center of Excellence linguistic and statistical functions that are more than adequate to deliver highly accu- rate and contextually significant results in By Hadley Reynolds, VP Center for Search Innovation and a rich analytic framework with suggestive Silvija Seres, VP Strategic Market Development, FAST and intuitive navigation options. We maintain that many of the issues of search quality arise not from technology limita- tions, but from the unnecessarily limited Search is strategic; however, the strategic search. Forrester Research, for example, implementation practices which most firms potential of search is not captured by the has consistently reported breakdowns in have resorted to in deploying search. act of acquiring a powerful search platform site-search quality. Recent research shows Fortunately there is a constructive solution alone. Pioneering firms are now developing that 58% of 211 websites reviewed through to the challenges described above; we are see- a new kind of management approach mid-2006 failed to meet basic criteria for ing impressive results at a number of firms to help deliver maximum value across site search engine and search interface who are making search quality a priority. multiple search-driven applications: the quality. Failure rates for clarity and presen- Businesses as diverse as Merrill Lynch, “search center of excellence.” It is a tation of navigation options were in the Pfizer, McGraw-Hill, Autotrader.com and structured approach, utilizing a focused same range or higher. At the same time, the YouTube are dramatically raising the level of cross-functional team, and it is emerging as firm’s demographic research finds that the search experience they offer their online audiences. They are replacing “one-size-fits- a practical tool to drive search innovation findability and navigation are even more all” thinking with a management process that and deliver high quality online experiences. important to online site visitors than the quality of information on the site or the secures business acumen and measured range of functions available. investment strategies at the center of the search deployment. The new focus is on This is the age of search; search is Looking at information breakdown developing core organizational resources and becoming the de facto infrastructure for inside the organization, IDC Research has tailored governance capabilities that will finding and delivering information. It is found consistently that the cost of wasted time on the part of professionals searching deliver business value across multiple ubiquitous in new online business applica- but not finding information is a major search-powered applications. tions, driving revenue and capturing opera- tional efficiencies inside the organization. Any organization whose operations touch Search Quality Drivers the Internet, or important digital informa- Before we describe the approach in tion in general, is finding that delivering “Many firms more detail, let’s take a closer look at the better search is good for business. kinds of competitive and business drivers Yet despite the scale and importance of that lead these pioneer firms to deliver this trend, many companies can’t seem to have fallen into the best-in-class search. get out of their own way as they begin The Internet has made everyone more using search. For example, many firms demanding when it comes to search per- have fallen into what we refer to as the ‘one-size-fits-all’ formance and intelligence. Customers and “one-size-fits-all” technology purchase employees have all become acclimated to syndrome. In this mode, the enterprise the apparent effortlessness of Web search search problem is seen (at least by the on MSN or Yahoo! or Google. sponsors) as solved as soon as new “enter- technology purchase Self-service is no longer just for shops prise” software is installed on a production or gasoline “service stations.” Today it is server. In such cases, however, the value of also the accepted access model for infor- the solution often fails to impress users syndrome.” mation. Customers and employees now inside the company or customers and part- require, as well as expect, self-service tools ners outside, because it simply does not able to mine all the information sources seem to “get” their particular business sit- continuing cost to organizations. The most they should have access to and to deliver uation. This is because the core of all suc- recent 2006 “Hidden Costs of Information relevant results in a familiar and comfort- cessful search experiences is built on Work” report suggests that this cost able environment. understanding the enterprise business con- amounts to $5.3 million annually for an Organizations that can deliver the right text and the knowledge drivers that power enterprise with 1,000 information workers. information at the right time with the right each specific set of business interactions. Delphi Group reported that more than search behavior reap dividends from One indicator of the challenges posed 50% of professionals surveyed report being increased online sales and from empow- by this current state of the practice is that either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with ered employees. In order to gain these virtually all researchers into search quality the search experience in their firms, while returns, information access needs to go continue to report user frustration in only 15% reported that their firms had an beyond the “one box/one button” paradigm both external and internal applications of enterprise search strategy in place. and adjust user experiences to match their

S8 KMWorld November/December 2006 The COE practice brings together peo- ple with deep business-domain expertise, Typical Roles in a Search Project broad search-applications experience, cutting-edge software infrastructure knowledge, complex project-management skills and demonstrated facility in knowl- 1. Executive sponsor—budgets and 5. User interface engineers—design, edge transfer. This group has the ability to overall success of project. development and integration of search act as a central point of contact to facilitate front end with existing applications. 2. Business owner—representation of collaboration between lines of business, business/user community and clear 6. Hardware engineer—all hardware functional specialties and customer, definition and communication of their and O/S installs, in addition to DNS, service provider or partner resources. It requirements to the project. DB or other software. may provide the resources to staff each of these components of search projects: appli- 3. Program/project manager—all project 7. Network engineer—network config- cation architecture and design, project planning, resources, communications urations as required for the imple- methodology, best practices and stan- and deliverables. mentation. dards, user interface design, education 4. Information architect—content planning 8. Operations—daily operations of programs, support services and analytics and management (e.g. meta tags and search solution, including all first-line for continuous improvement. taxonomies). support. By putting a dedicated team in place, companies adopting the COE process gain the ability to: roles, the context of their questions, their turbocharge a diversity of search projects ◆ Identify core patterns of search success; vocabulary and their purchase or work pat- across the enterprise. ◆ Share best practices and facilitate innovation terns. Users do not want to know about the The development process for the COE in next practices; and multitude of different formats being con- takes place on a number of levels. In order ◆ Leverage search technology, knowledge sumed, analyzed, contextualized and per- for the COE to succeed in its management engineering and search infrastructure sonalized for consumption by the search and strategy dimensions, it must first and skills across the enterprise. platform—they just want the system “to foremost gather sponsorship and authority work” across this universe of information, at the senior-executive level. The COE gov- with the most suggestive and relevant ernance model establishes the interaction The Search Center results. The best of these results are, in fact, protocols between the COE and the various of Excellence Practice delivered by composite and intelligent business units and technology support Using the COE to create a repeatable business applications, built on the search groups of the enterprise. In order to align process, common business rules, standard platform and engineered to unify views of search projects with business objectives best practices and custom methods and an arbitrarily complex information “space.” and to leverage the benefits of knowledge components tailored to the business will With this new class of intelligent busi- sharing, experiential learning and technical drive down the cost and improve the suc- ness applications, “search” is moving far search expertise, the COE unifies execu- cess rate of implementing search projects. “beyond the box” and taking up a role that tive-level interactions among all the busi- ness units who are or will be making use of By providing a project office for search, is as central to today’s Internet-connected the COE practice can integrate training businesses as relational databases and search technologies. Within the operations of the COE itself, programs, business consulting and project ERP systems were to the pre-Web era portfolio prioritization, best practices exam- of IT. In the most advanced enterprise the key success factors are: (1.) ensuring that appropriate roles are identified to support the ples, advanced solutions “tiger teams,” and commerce implementations today, anticipated activities of COE projects (see implementation services, application “search” acts as the crucial business infor- sidebar, “Typical Roles in a Search Project”) monitoring and continuous improvement mation filter—bringing to life the “long and (2.) ensuring that the competency mod- services. These capabilities deployed within tail” value resident in both enterprise and els and interaction patterns for those roles are the context of an organization’s business Internet information. thoughtfully specified. priorities offer a fast-track approach to high Taking advantage of these new capabil- Search technology makes unique search quality. In our view, it’s time to adopt ities in search platforms requires an evolu- demands across the entire spectrum of tra- this approach to driving business innovation tion in internal processes and practices for ditional IT roles, from systems analyst to with quality search. ❚ aligning business goals with technology architect to developer to database adminis- management. It requires a new collection Hadley Reynolds works in Boston as a vice president and trator to user-interface designer. It also the director of the Center for Search of skill sets for developing composite introduces non-traditional knowledge engi- applications with disparate data. It requires Innovation at FAST. He has been an neering and customer-experience manage- industry thought leader for over a a change in thinking from data models to ment elements to projects and programs. decade, researching, speaking and consumption paradigms. The COE leverages resources from writing on new trends in search across the firm and potentially across the technology and business practice. Enter the Search Center of Excellence customer and partner universes. In order to deliver high business value and quality user Hadley Reynolds In adopting a “search center of excel- Silvija Seres works in Oslo as a experiences, the COE incorporates input vice president of strategic market lence” (COE) approach, organizations are and participation from line-of-business development with FAST. She holds an moving search from the level of technology managers, business-process designers and MBA from INSEAD in France and has detail to the level of business innovation business analysts, human-factors experts, extensive scientific background in and strategy. With a strategic approach and business-intelligence analysts, merchandis- algorithm design and optimization, executive-level support, they are adopting ers, marketers and other stakeholders of with a Ph.D. and Prize Fellowship from a centralized management capability to search applications. Silvija Seres Oxford University.

KMWorld November/December 2006 S9 5. Identify content gaps and dupli- cates, and scrub your content early. Implementing KM Eliminate redundancy and pieces of content that overlap. Although content scrubbing is an ongoing process, more scrubbing in the Practitioners Share Best Practices early phases of the KM project can help make content more usable and help improve user adoption since users are able to quickly By InQuira locate the right content and do not have to go through duplicate content. “Our content had always been organized Most customer service organizations to- stakeholders and end-users. Follow a commu- by department,” commented McBride. “For day will admit that effective knowledge nication plan that keeps all parties included the first time, a centralized knowledgebase transfer is the most crucial element to and responding. “You are going to be taking resolving customer problems. When done provided visibility to content overlaps people outside of their comfort zone and they between teams. Additional time to test and correctly, knowledge transfer accelerates need to understand what you are doing. You scrub responses that overlapped would have problem resolution processes, fuels cus- can never over-communicate with a project been beneficial in reducing the amount of tomer satisfaction and leads to greater or- like this,” said McBride. redundant or conflicting content.” ganizational efficiency. Organizations invest 2. Recruit the right people for the proj- 6. Define ROI measurement and in processes and technologies that enable ect. Identify and recruit the right people with reporting requirements early in the them to create, manage and publish knowl- the right skill sets from the start, making sure process. McBride emphasizes, “Make sure edge, and that allow them to find, retrieve their skill sets align with the assigned tasks you understand exactly what you are going and share the enterprise’s knowledge across and responsibilities. Maintain a consistent to look for to get to your ROI and define all support channels. Without formal knowl- vision throughout the implementation project. those reporting requirements as early as you edge management processes, companies A knowledge manager at a leading mobile possibly can.” Once live with the new system would be unable to share knowledge with communications company suggests that prac- and process, expect business stakeholders to their customers, partners and employees. titioners ask themselves “whether the people ask for reports comparing performance to When organizations consider investing in who defined the specifications have been expected ROI from the project. an enterprise-level knowledge management involved all the way through the implementa- According to a recently published report (KM) initiative, they generally conduct a tion. Sometimes as people change in a project, by ServiceXRG titled “Knowledge detailed analysis of how to effectively tackle it is easy to lose sight of what you originally Management—Strategies. Benchmarks and a project of such magnitude. Companies thought versus what the new folks thought as Best Practice,” “there are two distinct types of want to know how to best prepare for such they were introduced into the project.” knowledge management measurements; one projects, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to 3. Solicit end-user input in the solution type is focused on measuring the efficiency measure results that are generated from their design. Involve end users in content identifi- of the KM processes such as content cover- KM implementation. They scrutinize internal cation, design and testing. Consider involving age and quality content, while the other looks short-term and long-term needs, organiza- different representatives from different at the impact from knowledge management. tional objectives and resources, customer departments. “At Pitney Bowes, we created a Some impact metrics to consider include: needs, system requirements and technology role called ‘content ambassadors,’ which measuring deflection, staffing, change in first implications. Companies conduct knowledge included representatives from different contact resolution rates, resolution times, assessments, system assessments and devel- departments within the contact centers. A agent productivity and overall success rate.” op a roadmap by which to guide the initia- content ambassador’s job was to help identi- 7. Don’t underestimate the impact of tive. They consider the role of and impact on fy sources of content; validate, enter and test tangential benefits. For example, Jodi stakeholders, end users, partners, internal content; help design the user experience; and McBride explains how at Pitney Bowes, “we teams, customers and outside vendors. They provide feedback on which information didn’t anticipate how, having information try to anticipate and quantify the impact of should be made public for employees and available from a single source, was going to the knowledge management project in their customers. Without a doubt, their contribu- change how we trained. Our focus this year business processes, operations and ROI. tions led to greater user adoption,” said Pitney has been on redesigning the classroom expe- No amount of analysis and planning, Bowes’ McBride. rience to incorporate the use of KIP (Pitney however, will uncover every potential chal- 4. Encourage user adoption with incen- Bowes’ knowledgebase) and create more lenge or roadblock. Here, practitioners tives. Employees may be reluctant to move interactive training materials that better who have been through successful large- out of their comfort zones or embrace new engage the learner across multiple dimen- scale knowledge management initiatives processes. Help employees understand the sions. This is a dramatic shift away from typ- share their insights and lessons learned. desired results and how they will be meas- ical lecture-based training programs. This ured. Then, develop ways to recognize and shift in the classroom is not something we Best Practices reward individuals who adapt to the changes anticipated when we went live, but has been in the system to encourage its use. a positive experience nonetheless.” 1. Over-communicate. “You can never “Rewarding and recognizing employee 8. Know the needs of your end users. underestimate the change management efforts to share knowledge is a powerful Understand how language components requirements that go along with projects like way to encourage this activity. Consider impact search accuracy. Identify user search these,” according to Jodi McBride, director of periodic bonuses to individuals with exem- behaviors and consider search rules to knowledge and training services at Pitney plary efforts, peer recognition combined improve the user’s experience. “Understand Bowes. “You need a shared vision, supported with cash, and project work available to how people use the resources they have and driven throughout the company from individuals who actively share knowledge available today. Understand the slang for key the highest levels of the organization.” as three incentive strategies,” suggests concepts, and how people from different Communicate regularly throughout all Ladd Bodem, principal and co-founder of departments may approach the same infor- the phases of the project with business market research firm ServiceXRG. mation but from different perspectives. These

S10 KMWorld November/December 2006 About InQuira

The InQuira 8 suite of business applications ◆ Embedded reputation models to support ◆ Collaboration. improves companies’ Web self-service and performance evaluation for knowledge Email deflection. When customers are engineers; assisted-service resolution processes. With unable to resolve their own problems from a ◆ Tokenization to secure content and sections applications for knowledge management, Web company’s website, they will often submit of content for specific user audiences; and self-service, agent-assisted service, email their questions to the company through email. deflection and customer experience ◆ Configurable subscriptions to categories InQuira 8 for email deflection: management and analysis, InQuira 8 delivers of content and specific content items, ◆ Intercepts Web-submitted emails and a complete solution for resolving customer including newsletters and content from uses the subject line to search and re- support issues online and in the contact specific authors. trieve appropriate information to resolve center—applications that can infer the user’s Web self service. Customers and compa- the customer issue; needs and intentions and provide the right nies increasingly demand more sophisticated ◆ Deflects inbound service requests when information, tools, recommendations and and effective Web self-service capabilities to a customer clicks through the offered assistance in an efficient, orchestrated resolve customer support issues. InQuira 8 solutions and abandons the submission interaction that will resolve more issues and delivers that. Key capabilities include: process; deliver greater satisfaction and higher ROI. ◆ ◆ Unique ability to determine user intent from Passes service requests directly into the Knowledge management. Many cus- search and navigation behavior, and use that ERMS when an appropriate solution is not tomer support issues require research to insight to manage the customer experience found; and resolve, either by the agent in the contact cen- intent-by-intent, empowering companies to ◆ Captures Web self-service session history ter, or by the customer in the self-service chan- deliver a personalized resolution experience and passes it with the service request to the nel. A core function of support organizations is based on an understanding of what the agent in the contact center, allowing the to capture enterprise knowledge to create customer is trying to accomplish; agent to pick up where the customer left off. content designed to resolve customer issues. ◆ Packaged horizontal and verticalized Web Experience management and analysis. InQuira 8 provides full knowledge applications to accelerate implementation; Companies recognize that customer service is management capabilities, including: ◆ Industry-specific “intent libraries” to map an iterative business process based on ◆ Capturing content and content requests the resolution experience to pre-defined continuous analysis and refinement. InQuira 8 from within the resolution process; customer needs; offers several capabilities to manage the ◆ Authoring process that removes the unnec- ◆ Intelligent search and retrieval capabilities customer experience and measure the effectiveness of the resolution process and essary tagging and increases content reuse; based on patented natural language the creation and use of knowledge assets. ◆ processing technology; Full version control, with the ability to revert Capabilities include: back to a previous version, compare versions ◆ Industry dictionaries to improve search ◆ Intent libraries for retail banking, telecom and or view versions side-by-side; effectiveness; and automotive industries that automate the ◆ ◆ Diagnostic process wizards to troubleshoot Robust publishing workflow to ensure mapping of searches and navigation and resolve customer problems. content is effectively managed through behavior to industry intents. InQuira enables user-defined stages of development and Agent-assisted service. Contact center targeted and managed responses at the publication; managers are under constant pressure to intent level, resulting in a 10:1 reduction in ◆ Task management to ensure that each deliver effective, loyalty-inducing customer the number of managed responses users task is being completed by someone service at reasonable cost. InQuira 8 for would have to define; with the right role and skill; agent-assisted service includes the following ◆ The ability to guide an interaction and ◆ Configurable email notifications for all productivity-enhancing capabilities: present additional content and offers that tasks in the system directing attention to ◆ Embedded intelligent search, retrieval and result in higher resolution rates; and complete work; navigation from within the agent cockpit; ◆ Out-of-the-box data warehouse, star schema ◆ Multi-lingual content and translation ◆ Integration into leading CRM packages, and reports to analyze user interactions. In- workflow to update and distribute con- including Siebel and Clarify; Quira Analytics includes full ability to drill into reports to look at relationships of data for tent in multiple languages; ◆ Ability to associate retrieved content to in-depth analysis of results. The analysis that ◆ case resolution; Embedded natural language search (InQuira can be performed using InQuira analytics ◆ Intelligent Search) for more effective and Web self-service session history captured includes conversion analysis, case escalation useful retrieval of information from within the on service requests escalated to agents and email ROI, navigation usage, content gap knowledgebase and forum content; via email; analysis, content usage, content authoring, ◆ Discussion forums for community-based ◆ Integrated links to trigger knowledge creation customer feedback, surveys and process support; workflows from specific cases; and wizard usage. observations will provide excellent input for whether to expand the effort or to maintain these can be addressed. A knowledge man- creating the first round of search rules for the effort are based on your business needs ager of a leading mobile communications accuracy and efficiency,” said McBride. and the timing you are trying to achieve. company notes that, “you need to under- 9. Keep the end goal clearly in mind. 10. Consider the impact on existing stand the processes that will change and Periodically evaluate how well you are business processes. Identify and under- what is going to break or be different as adhering to your original specifications. It stand all the existing processes that will no you go into the implementation phase of is important to make sure that decisions on longer work with the new system so that your investigation.” ❚

KMWorld November/December 2006 S11 Knowledge Management through Portals challenges. In addition, the stand-alone appli- cation with other project-specific applica- tions was surfaced on a portal platform. User adoption rate more than doubled. 4. Assume knowledge is only in docu- Mistakes to Avoid and ments and data. If “content is king,” then the king is dead. Most companies are drowning in content and most of it is irrel- evant. The most valuable knowledge in an Principles for Success organization is “implicit knowledge.” As part of a KM initiative, a VP of an engi- neering firm launched a project to update By Brandon Lackey, Global Solutions Director, BEA and and maintain engineering standards. Michael Behounek, Managing Partner, Emerja LLC Believing that this explicit knowledge was the key to knowledge longevity and trans- ferability, the firm bought and installed a content management system. The system Many organizations today still struggle to technology cost assumption was found to suffered from low adoption. Further explo- get value from their knowledge manage- be off, and the original business justifica- ration revealed that the less-experienced ment (KM) efforts. Even companies that tion was now ambiguous. The team began engineers had trouble applying the infor- have been benchmarked as the “best prac- to build a new business case with a viable mation to their specific problems, and the tice” can easily fall from the top. So, how ROI but a different business sponsor was more experienced engineers only rarely can you get sustained value from KM ini- now required. The critical business owner needed it. A better solution would be to tiatives? There are several key factors for declined to participate and the project was provide a continual method of capturing valuable KM deployments. But first, let’s eventually cancelled. If a business case had real-time knowledge from threaded discus- learn from what has not worked. Here are been done before starting the project, the sions or instant messages, and indexing the the eight most common KM mistakes. correct audience, business owner(s) and salient points for quick retrieval and evalu- technology could have been anticipated. ation. Implicit knowledge would then be a KM Mistakes to Avoid 1. Build something and hope that they’ll come. This could be said for almost “If a business case had been done any technology project, but it’s particular- ly common in KM. Why? Management is looking for the quick-fix, a silver-bullet technology. It’s faster and easier not to get before starting, the correct audience, business the users involved. A global mid-sized company embarked on a project to help the organization efficiently match expertise with their customer support needs. Their owners and technology could have IT group built an expert locator system that was implemented using a traditional change management approach. In a project been anticipated.” status report to management, three months later, they found out only 72 out of the 2,500 target users had completed their pro- files. Six months of desk-pounding by 3. Deploy KM Enterprisewide. result of the collaboration and made explicit management got the total up to over 200 Knowledge in most situations is contextual. and usable in context. users. Subject matter experts claimed it Implementing an approach across the entire 5. Not integrating unstructured con- provided no value, and it took too much enterprise poses significant risk of failure. tent with the structured data. Since most time to update. It was also not tied to any According to research by Robert Francis companies have terabytes of unstructured other data sources that could be leveraged Group, up to 85% of all KM initiatives fail to content, they rely on search engines to to make the users’ jobs easier and to help achieve their business objectives. For exam- index the documents and users to find the them keep the information updated. It was ple, a large energy company’s IT group was information by keywords. Unfortunately, not until a portal was implemented that the asked to identify a technology solution for the user is often unaware of additional system began to reach critical mass. collaboration, in both teams and large groups, structured data that relates to this unstruc- 2. Implement technology tools without as part of the KM effort. Several technologies tured content. Most documents do not con- a business owner or a specific business were evaluated and one was selected for the tain the unique identifier that unlocks the problem. A Fortune 100 company felt it 50,000 enterprise users. Although the tech- door to the databases, applications and sys- had a reasonable understanding of the nology was best-of-breed, the standalone tems that contain a wealth of other relevant business problem. A project team was application was deployed to the entire enter- content. Most deployments do not take into commissioned to produce a new enterprise prise. Adoption was slow. The implementa- account the relationships between the data framework and a pilot for a community of tion team did not answer the fundamental and applications. Portals can help bridge practice. In the design phase, the team real- user question: “What’s in this for me?” The this gap more effectively by linking ized that the scope and the expected target result was a costly re-launch. This time, how- disparate data and content sources through users were off mark. So they adjusted ever, it was done on a project basis around an interface to seamlessly present the the design. One month later, the original core business groups with critical business aggregated results.

S12 KMWorld November/December 2006 This can take many forms—streamline business processes, reduce their workload or enable them to spend time on job-relat- “Executive support is critical ed initiatives with people inside and out- side the organization. Embrace technology as a key enabler. One of the key struggles for many compa- since it involves the assignment of people and nies is the variety of databases, content and applications. KM solutions delivered through portal technology can provide the initiative to tap these disparate systems and a change in process.” deliver information to the user in context. When combined with content delivery, search, business process management and collaboration tools for sharing and captur- 6. No perceived value to contributors for cannot be substantiated, the result is similar. If ing implicit knowledge, portals can deliver sharing knowledge. Often, organizations will the supposed $200+ million per year savings significant value for KM. expect contributors to share information resulting from KM efforts cannot be support- Integrate the process into the employ- based on benevolence or by mandate. ed by financial results, projects are eventually ees’ workflow. Weave KM processes into Unfortunately, business users can be stubborn terminated. Sustained improvement and the normal workflows and, where possible, about performing tasks that they perceive as momentum requires an ongoing cycle of simplify and optimize for the particular no-value-added. A mid-size professional financial measurement for KM efforts, and user. If the solution is extra work or a bolt- services company had identified their stan- should be planned for during the design stage. on, user adoption will remain low. dards and practices as a core intellectual asset Capture business metrics to determine success, drive improvement, and communi- and critical knowledge to the company. The KM Principles for Success problem was the standards were not being cate your achievement. Too often, the only captured metrics are for portal or application maintained by the senior consultants. Avoiding these eight common mistakes usage. Executives and users want to see Executives believed the solution was to make can help you reduce your risk of failure in value that relates to the business proposition, it easier for the consultants to contribute best KM. But what should you focus on? which can involve tools like business activi- practices by exposing it through the portal. Results for the organization can be ty monitoring and analytics. For example, a Unfortunately, no additional time was allot- achieved following these simple practices: portal community of practice to support ted and no recognition provided to the con- Solve real business problems. This may technician repairs would track and see tributor as part of the process. Given the sound like a no-brainer, but in the throes of improvement in failed repairs, average repair choice to work on an urgent and challenging a technology roll-out, managers may lose times and repairs per technician with high project or update documentation, the users track of the underlying business problems portal site usage. Having limited or no busi- chose not to contribute. Although manage- to be solved. Clearly stating the problems ness metrics weakens justification during the ment said it was very important, their behav- has further benefits in scoping the require- budget cycle or when a change in manage- ior was to reward the “fire-fighting” work, ments, managing deliverables and selecting ment requires a review of the project value. and not to recognize the captured knowledge quantifiable metrics. In addition, objectives We learn as much from our mistakes as necessary to prevent the fire. and benefits that are clear to users have a from our successes. The challenge is to 7. Selecting portal technology that is positive effect on the adoption process. take what others have learned, to avoid the too difficult to maintain and use. If a Secure executive commitment to KM. same mistakes and to produce a consistent, deployment gets bogged down in complex Executive support is critical since it repeatable KM program that delivers portal or application customizations, spon- involves the assignment of people and a significant business value. ❚ sors soon lose interest and the project is change in process. Gaining long-term com- bound to fail. The portal technology should mitment from executive sponsors comes Brandon Lackey is global solutions director at BEA. He have integrated, yet easy-to-use, compo- from solving their business challenges, assists organizations in aligning busi- nents to produce successful KM communi- delivering business value and, ultimately, ness objectives with their enterprise portal strategies. Before joining BEA, ties, such as: content directory, content gaining their trust. Keep them informed Lackey led the development of management, collaboration tools, search and have them play a visible leadership Halliburton’s worldwide portal that capabilities, personalization, application role in the launch. grew to serve more that 6,000 clients integration and business process manage- Own the process within a business unit and 20,000 employees. During ment. These components should be easily or organization. Unlike many support Brandon Lackey Lackey’s tenure, that portal received available, and integrated right after the ini- functions, KM needs to be embedded in the awards from Network World,the tial framework is established. business unit or support function. Having it DM Review and InfoWorld. Contact: 8. Failing to use business measures to “outside” the groups delivering the value [email protected]. drive improvement. Departments within an will only hamper widespread use. A small Michael Behounek is Emerja LLC’s man- organization (HR, IT, etc.) often find it diffi- KM core team within the business unit is aging partner. Before forming Emerja, cult to quantify impacts from a KM project. If required to help facilitate the solution and Behounek had 23 years in the energy you can’t quantify the business value, the help ensure similar processes and scalabil- industry. In 2001, he led the develop- project is guaranteed to fail. Companies once ity between projects. ment of Halliburton’s highly successful viewed as the “best” at KM have greatly Emphasize people and process. KM effort that resulted in a 563% return over a three-year period. He continues diminished their efforts over time or stopped Unfortunately, in many cases, projects are Michael Behounek to help companies deliver breakthrough supporting it mostly because of a lack of driven by the technology. One secret to get- performance by using collaboration quantifiable business results. In other cases, ting people to participate and collaborate is to solve complex business problems. where a business value is calculated but to ensure they get value from doing so. Contact: [email protected].

KMWorld November/December 2006 S13 Jeff Dirks has more than 20 years of Knowledge is Power success in both early-stage companies and established market Best Practices in Semantics Management leaders. Dirks brings an extensive background in operational By Jeff Dirks, President and Chief Executive Officer, SchemaLogic execution, spanning Jeff Dirks strategy, enterprise sales and services, distributed enterprise-system software Knowledge is power. Though said in the lifecycle changes—a name, a feature, a engineering and financial operations. 16th century by author and philosopher, Sir color or price, for example—then search- From 1998 to 2003, Dirks served in various Francis Bacon, the meaning of the phrase is ing and finding all the information across executive capacities at CapitalStream, including even more applicable today as companies the enterprise related to that product can be president and chief operating officer, where he around the world are dealing with an a chore, if not impossible. Business seman- architected the business and technical overwhelming amount of data stored on com- tics management provides organizations strategy that sparked company growth and puters, servers, flash drives, PDAs and other with a dynamic registry to model, govern, market-share leadership. storage devices scattered throughout the publish and collaborate around a consensus enterprise. The information, email messages, of terms and term relationships that define Prior to CapitalStream, Dirks was vice president documents, spreadsheets, presentations, the products, services and organizational of product delivery at HK Systems, a leading graphs, photographs and other content trapped knowledge of the enterprise. supply chain management software company. From 1992 to 1998, Dirks rapidly advanced at in information silos across the enterprise, con- Business semantics management is FourGen software, progressing from tain a significant amount of knowledge that emerging as a core component of service- development team lead, group product can benefit the organization. Unfortunately for oriented architecture (SOA), which distributes manager and director of consulting before many companies, much of this information applications that perform services on demand. serving as vice president of engineering for remains untapped, unsearchable and trapped For many experts, SOA is the future of General Electric Supply’s worldwide supply chain in disjointed systems. software, where applications, used internally management upgrade. Enterprises have deployed a complex or externally, are delivered as services. web of information management systems, Companies such as SchemaLogic of applications, operating systems and data- Kirkland, WA, have developed a business semantics with regular and consistent bases, to manage and deploy data and semantics management solution that models updates. Semantics-as-a-service can be content. However, the resulting informa- complex business semantics relationships deployed behind the firewall or as a Web- tion-access systems are unable to exchange and provides those models to subscribing sys- based application. As enterprises move information in an efficient, dynamic tems as a service within the context of an towards SOA and Web services environ- fashion because they lack a common SOA. Referred to as “semantics-as-a-service,” ments, semantics-as-a-service has emerged understanding of the business semantics the solution provides a single source for as a business-critical solution that can help to that describe the information contained in creating, managing and distributing enhance knowledge management. The evolu- the various content silos. Marketing may corporate semantics. tion of semantics management from a manu- have one way to describe a new product, Semantics-as-a-service can be delivered al time-consuming, cumbersome process to while IT, shipping, public relations and as a real-time service to enable organizations real-time through semantics-as-a-service is a research and development may each have to instantly update their semantics models revolutionary concept that is changing the others. When something in the product as changes happen, or manage their way companies are managing their informa- tion assets and their businesses. Increasingly, companies are finding that developing a truly effective enterprise lexi- con requires the participation of all stake- holders in a company, from the purchasing manager to the CTO. Semantics-as-a- service allows organizations to collaborate and leverage the knowledge and expertise of a variety of sources, including subject-matter experts, business users and domain experts to develop a semantics model that describes the corporate lexicon, provides up-to-the minute know-how and makes knowledge accessible across the organization. SchemaLogic’s centrally managed solu- tion and Web-based collaboration service helps to develop corporate semantics models that can be used enterprisewide to describe their business, products, services and overall corporate knowledge.

S14 KMWorld November/December 2006 With semantics-as-a-service, organiza- tions can: “Information-access systems ◆ Build a common framework to facilitate collaboration and governance for all uses across the enterprise; are unable to exchange information ◆ Control the power of business lexicon/ information; ◆ Unlock the corporate assets of brands, because they lack a common understanding of products, services, human capital and know-how for competitive advantage; ◆ Leverage communities of participation to the business semantics.” make intelligent business decisions based on improved data quality, collaboration and business agility; and Kellysearch: Managing Search In both the IBM and Kellysearch exam- ◆ Manage the corporate memory of business ples, information that has typically been While IBM focused on using business decisions for compliance. difficult to manage or out of reach, is now semantics management to manage its available to everyone, driven by semantics- collective knowledge about its human as-a-service. Delivered through an SOA IBM: Managing Human Resources resources, Kellysearch, the largest busi- framework, semantics-as-a-service provides ness-to-business (B2B) search portal in IBM is well known for its worldwide organizations with the flexibility and scala- Europe, was faced with a growing taxono- team of 190,000 employees spread my that its infrastructure could not bility to meet the demands of their growing throughout more than 160 countries. As adequately manage. businesses, manage the contributions from one of the world’s largest organizations, The company’s growing taxonomy includ- all areas of the enterprise and increase the IBM is also one of the richest sources of ed more than 200,000 phrases and 400,000 speed of change. data and human capital. With thousands of sub-phrases that were attached to more than 2 Knowledge can be a variety of things to employees spread across scores of coun- million businesses. Unfortunately, the compa- different companies. For some, it’s the tries, the ability to connect the company’s ny’s current infrastructure and manual taxono- magic sauce or company trade secrets; for human resources with the specific and my processes were not capable of scaling to others it is the intellectual property found relevant job listing data is vital to helping manage the growing amounts of data, which in approved patents. Today’s enterprises IBM and its service contract outsourcing resulted in an increase in time-to-market for need a common semantics model to man- operate more efficiently. developing and publishing advertiser informa- age information across the enterprise. With no easy way to catalog employees tion to the Web. Semantics-as-a-service is emerging as a and sort them into a glossary of technical Kellysearch, a division of Reed business-critical application, and for com- skills for easy access, project managers had a Elsevier, needed a knowledge management difficult time finding the required obscure or panies like IBM and Kellysearch, has solution that could drive queue time become a mission-critical application for unique skills within IBM’s talent pool, and down and improve the speed and quality as a result, IBM recognized an over-reliance their services-oriented architectures. of search results in order to increase More than 400 years from its origin, the on contractors, which were creating margin market share and the revenue stream of its phrase “knowledge is power” couldn’t be problems for service contract budgets. The online model. Kellysearch turned to the truer. The ability to unlock the corporate company initiated a worldwide collaboration semantics-as-a-service model to link effort for its enterprise taxonomy in which search with content to drive revenues and assets of human capital and products for the semantics that describe employees’ move the classical advertising print busi- competitive advantage; to make business skills, roles and categories are described in ness to the paid search market on the decisions based on improved data quality, a corporate-wide semantics model. The Internet. collaboration and agility; and to better resulting expertise taxonomy is published to Kellysearch now has the capability to manage information and knowledge for the IBM’s corporate expertise portal to enable establish and build corporate semantics by benefit of the entire enterprise is true power. ❚ organizations across IBM to locate and initially harvesting data from Kellysearch’s manage corporate expertise as an efficient multiple company and product listings. The SchemaLogic is a leading provider of business semantics and dynamic process. information is then rationalized so that it is management (BSM) solutions. BSM provides a frame- As a result of initiating this effort to bet- established, evolved and distributed across work that enables companies to model the structures and ter manage the information about its consult- Kellysearch. The variances in naming relationships of business semantics that define corporate ants and employees, IBM was able to reduce terminology among companies are quickly knowledge and content. SchemaLogic facilitates dynamic its dependence on outside contractors by 7%. resolved to a common set of terminology, changes to the business semantic models through a The company now has worldwide collabora- making it easier to match global B2B Web-based governance and collaboration process that tive management for its global enterprise queries for specific goods and services. By enables participation across organizational, corporate taxonomy, making it easier to find the right implementing a business semantics solution, and industry boundaries. person or skill set for specific assignments. embedded knowledge is monetized via The company also increased the utilization an improved search and ad-revenue model. SchemaLogic enables enterprises to increase competitive rate for consultants, and improved the prof- Kellysearch now has the ability to advantage and reduce operational costs through better itability of service engagements. IBM’s quickly expand internationally to accelerate information management, increased data quality and more agile, intelligent business decisions. SchemaLogic Opportunity Marketplace, a Web-based serv- revenue; business processes have been has licensed its solution to some of the best known and ice, which employs the enterprise taxonomy streamlined and content contributors empow- largest companies in the world. and features a searchable database of its ered; and enhanced search results have global talent pool, saves IBM an estimated increased the quantity and quality of leads to For more information about SchemaLogic, call 425-885- $680,000 a year. paid advertisers. 9695 or visit www.schemalogic.com

KMWorld November/December 2006 S15 With more than 30 years of experience Answering Customers’ in management of enterprise software companies, Michael Fields has Questions the spearheaded successful sales organizations at a number of large corporations, Intelligent Way Michael Fields including Oracle Chairman and CEO U.S.A, where he served as president, The Importance of Multiple Search Methodologies and Applied Data Research and Burroughs Corporation. In addition, he was a founder, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of OpenVision Technologies, By Anand Chopra, Director, Product Marketing, KANA Inc., which was acquired by Veritas in 1997. Currently, Fields serves on the board of directors of Imation Corporation and ViaNovus. He has also served on the advisory board of the Ford Motor Company Customer Service Division Enterprises face a difficult challenge when sophisticated search and retrieval method- from 1999 through 2001. it comes to simultaneously improving the ologies that guide users through the quality of customer service and reducing issue resolution process so first-time service costs. More products, growing prod- self-service users and highly experi- uct complexity and rapid change substan- enced agents can quickly find the right the average user up to speed on without tially increase the amounts of information information including: requiring much background knowledge of required to answer customer questions and ◆ Case-based reasoning combines NLQ troubleshoot problems. Paradoxically, this the actual system.” with clarifying questions. The user enters growth of information availability increases Reporting and tracking capabilities a text string that yields a solution set and the difficulty of finding relevant solutions. should complement these methodologies to a series of targeted questions to further For enterprises to improve self-service dynamically score and rank potential solu- narrow the problem definition. Based on adoption rates, increase call center effi- tions by popularity based on users’ experi- the user’s answers, case-based reasoning ciency and improve response accuracy, ences. Users provide feedback with each narrows and reorders the solutions in they need solutions that help agents, cus- search on the helpfulness and accuracy of the order of relevance. tomers, partners and suppliers find ◆ Decision trees guide users through struc- solution, which is incorporated into future answers more efficiently. The traditional tured diagnostic scripts. Each time the search results so that solutions are scored methods of search and retrieval use key- user answers a question, the decision tree higher or lower on subsequent similar word, simple text and Natural Language dynamically presents new questions and queries. Paul Kinsella, VP worldwide cus- Query (NLQ). In many cases, search-based narrows down the number of possible tomer response at Creative agrees, stating, knowledge management solutions empha- solutions until the most appropriate “with the knowledgebase feedback mecha- size their ability to sift through multiple solution is identified. nism, we can update and revise content to enterprise systems to present results. This ◆ Expert modeling ranks potential solutions typically generates long hit lists with many reflect customer choices and preferences.” in order of relevance to the problem as irrelevant entries. Another failing of As the management of and access to determined by subject matter experts. Expert this approach is that results are presented knowledge grows in importance, so does models define precise relationships between indiscriminately. The user does not know if the ability to deploy a comprehensive, yet problems, causes and solutions. the information is accurate or current, maintainable knowledge management increasing the possibility of an incorrect or Using this wide range of search and solution that increases customer accept- out-of-date answer. Unfortunately, these retrieval capabilities, enterprises can offer ance of self-service, enables call center methods are best suited to expert users who multiple levels of guidance and allow users agents to answer inquiries more quickly, are familiar with the content and terminology to select those techniques that best match accurately and consistently and enhances and know which words will most quickly their skills and preferences. However, the the value and use of information stored in yield a correct answer. Novice users without search methodologies should be blended enterprise systems. By providing multiple domain expertise cannot easily apply the ter- seamlessly so that users do not have to search methodologies, enterprises can minology precision these techniques require make a conscious decision about which empower users of all levels to diagnose and and, frequently, people need guidance to find method to use. For example, users can resolve problems with ease. ❚ the answers to a question. begin a session with a text string search, Call center agents, customers and and then be presented with a series of ques- Anand Chopra brings 10 years of sales, marketing and partners can all benefit from knowledge tions that combine aspects of case-based consulting experience to KANA. As director of product management solutions that organize and reasoning, decision trees and expert model- marketing, Chopra is responsible for driving effective structure access to information, with ing to quickly refine the general descrip- marketing programs and creating strategies for intelligent guidance that matches each tion into a specific problem description. advancing the KANA eService Solutions in the user’s level of sophistication and skill. In KANA customer John Harrigan of marketplace. Prior to joining KANA in 2003, he held addition to keyword, text and NLQ search, Siemens states, “What attracted us was that instrumental positions at leading companies such as a knowledgebase should deliver a set of these are the kind of tools that you can get Oracle, Commerce One and Ernst & Young, LLP.

S16 KMWorld November/December 2006 What a Robot Really Wants Gordon Taylor is a senior technical consultant for TOWER Software North America, Knowledge at the Point makers of TRIM Context. For the past 10 years, he’s been working on of Decision solving enterprise information Gordon Taylor problems across the private and public By Gordon Taylor, Senior Technical Consultant, TOWER Software sectors, as a software developer, solutions architect and research and development project manager. Since joining TOWER five years ago, his work has ranged from developing ECM A small, two-legged robot stands atop a most enterprise architects are including a software to planning and configuring large ECM rollouts for government and regulated industry. glass-topped coffee table. On its two dimen- central structured repository as part of their sional world, it has to contend with a potted He lives in Virginia with his wife and four information architecture. ECM systems, children and no robots. plant, an old TV Guide and several coffee cups, built on solid data-storage solutions, are along with the ever-present danger of plum- the platforms that facilitate these sound meting over the side onto the carpet below. As information management policies. the robot navigates its way around, a constant At the heart of these information sys- Nowadays, thanks to advances in data evaluation process occurs inside its software tems, is metadata—data stored about the storage, the science of information manage- “brain.” First, information is collected through data you store. By monitoring, storing and ment and the implementation of these systems its sensors. Secondly, that information is ana- indexing specific information about your in ECM products, the transition from data to lyzed, using a decision tree to determine the business content, ECM vendors allow their information is largely a solved problem. optimal course of action. customers the ability to easily find any Getting from information to knowledge is What do the adventures of this robot have piece of information, and its relevant busi- much more difficult. Knowledge includes the to do with knowledge management? It’s more ness context, quickly and efficiently. These “how” aspect of a problem. Returning to our important than you might think. You see, right systems are built on information manage- robot, it’s the analysis of the information that before the robot takes its next step—once this ment policy and principles that have been tells it “how” to proceed. simple two-stage process is completed—the around for a long time. Current efforts at solving this problem are robot could be said to “know” something. It’s So, if your organization has a sound ECM varied, and you'll probably recognize them as collected all available information and policy and system in place, it’s not likely to the more modern features provided by ECM vendors: collaboration, which allows people to discuss and share information in order to “Poor analysis will lead to bad facilitate progress; and workflow, where pre- scriptive, best-practice knowledge as defined by a business process analyst provides “how” decisions, regardless of the quality of information. Content management tools, like blogs and wikis, all provide additional information supplied.” published content around a topic—more published analysis to help people decide which step to take next. analyzed it. Knowledge is created through fall off the coffee table because of poor Tools like these are striving to bridge analysis of information. quality information. The next generation of the conceptual void between information So the effectiveness of our robot enterprise systems will focus on how to man- and knowledge. While the jury is still out friend—or if you like, how “smart” it is— age the analysis of that information base to on how effective they are, the challenge depends directly on two things: the accura- support your decision-making process. is considerable. The next time you need cy and relevance of the information sup- The DIKW Model is an information to evaluate a system for inclusion in your plied; and the effectiveness of the evalua- hierarchy that’s frequently cited when try- enterprise architecture, consider how tion process. Poor information, through ing to address this problem. The model was well it bridges this gap. Think like a faulty sensors or too few sensors, will originally recorded in a 1932 poem called robot. Do I have the right information result in an inaccurate picture being fed to The Rock from TS Eliot: available? Will this system enable me to the decision-making processes. Poor Where is the life we have lost in living? make better decisions? Without a careful analysis will lead to bad decisions, regard- Where is the wisdom we have lost in approach to both aspects, you could end less of the quality of information supplied. knowledge? up on the carpet. ❚ Now I’m sure you saw this analogy Where is the knowledge we have lost in coming, but face it—your enterprise is information? exactly the same. To create a smart enter- In the modern, slightly less poignant TOWER Software, a leading enterprise content manage- prise, you need to have a stable, reliable implementation of the DIKW model, we ment (ECM) provider to government and regulated information base and the analysis tools that find four layers: industries, delivers award-winning information manage- ment solutions. Our product, TRIM Context 6, enables allow you to create valuable knowledge— Data; organizations to have compliant, secure and accurate knowledge that fosters good decisions. Information; information available to make confident business deci- Information management has been Knowledge; and sions. TRIM Context 6 won AIIM E-DOC Magazine 2006 refined over the years, to the point where Wisdom. Best of Show award for ECM suites.

KMWorld November/December 2006 S17 Laurent Simoneau has more than a Enterprise Search: decade of experience developing and bringing to market The Foundation for innovative search products. He comes to Coveo from Copernic, where he was the chief Risk Management Laurent Simoneau operating officer and responsible for orchestrating the company’s enterprise products division spin-off into Coveo. Prior to being COO, By Laurent Simoneau, CEO, Coveo Solutions, Inc. Laurent served as CTO of Copernic for six years, during which he guided product strategy and directed the research and development of core technologies. If you can’t find it, you can’t manage it. enterprise search has a strong emphasis Unfortunately, many executives have dis- on knowledge management, intellectual covered this too late in the game—when property, e-discovery and compliance, it they face regulatory compliance penalties, becomes the foundation for comprehensive California Department of Insurance respon- legal troubles or a corporate scandal. Today, risk management. sible for regulating all insurance companies there is no question that managing security Whether it is to meet regulatory compli- operating in California, the compliance task risks and complying with government reg- ance requirements from Sarbanes-Oxley requires managing insolvency, asset distribu- ulations related to information security can (SOX), to the Health Insurance Portability tion, claimant lawsuits and disbursements. be a daunting task for any organization. In and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or to The office also has to routinely determine if fact, many enterprises now have a mandate respond faster to e-discovery requests, com- an insurance company can be rehabilitated to implement technologies and applications panies of all sizes today need to be able to and continue its operations. This requires the that ensure all employees, not just corporate search through literally gigabytes and ter- CLO to keep extensive forms, policies and management, can access appropriate abytes of stored data wherever it resides. In change control documentation on an intranet information securely. other words, companies have to find what available to both employees and state Having a comprehensive, highly secure they are looking for, every time, all the time— enterprise search capability—one that fills their future may depend on it. auditors. And to ensure compliance, it must the gap between specialized search sys- keep all processes and change controls tems and Web-focused search tools—can current, and make sure each step in any be a key business asset, and is essential to The Role of Search in Compliance procedure is well-documented and imple- effective knowledge management for cor- For the California Conservation and mented without deviation. porations and government entities. When Liquidation Office (CLO), a division of the According to CLO’s Mohammed Mojabi, the IT networks operations manager, “As a highly regulated entity, we are in a constant state of audit so we need a search engine that The Role of Search in Litigation is highly secure, highly accurate, yet easy to use for both users and auditors.” With CES, users and auditors quickly In today’s litigious world, compa- on a combination of applications includ- find current forms and documented proce- nies must respond not just quickly, but ing Microsoft SharePoint, SQL Business quickly enough to litigation requests Analytics and Coveo Enterprise Search dures, reducing the time it takes to find and for electronic evidence...or face heavy (CES) for back-end processing on the act on information by up to 35%. In court-imposed sanctions. The problem? data. CES is the foundation application addition to the time and money saved, CES e-discovery is literally like finding a that allows ProSearch Strategies to minimizes compliance violations and needle in a haystack. access volumes of information in a results in far more efficient audits. ❚ ProSearch Strategies, a discovery, manageable, structured format. analytics and workplace tools company “We’re using software-as-a-service focused on the legal market in areas of and SharePoint as the secure portal Find information. Understand Information. Act—much litigation, due diligence and compliance, structure on the front-end, and SQL faster. Based on industry standard ASP and .NET faces these issues every day. During its business analytics and Coveo for technologies, and winner of the 2006 Microsoft Partner due-diligence process, it follows a highly back-end processing on the data. This Regional Winning Customer Award, Coveo Enterprise accurate automated process to minimize solution has enabled analysts to Search delivers the best value in the marketplace with the manual review of documents—which consolidate and eliminate time- out-of-the-box document level security, unparalleled is time-consuming, error-prone and consuming analytic tasks, decreasing accuracy, consumer style ease of use, and an expensive. For a recent case, ProSearch processing time by 30%, and allowed implementation cycle of less than 24 hours. Whether it’s had to search through some 27 researcher-reviewers to make more to meet regulatory compliance, improve customer terabytes of unstructured data and need- document decisions per hour, while response, protect intellectual property or improve ed an accurate technology solution that maintaining the ease of use for casual organizational efficiencies up to 35%, Coveo Enterprise would enable it to hone in on the right searchers,” says Trevor Allen, CIO of Search enables organizations to find, understand and data, quickly. ProSearch Strategies settled ProSearch Strategies. take action on critical information located anywhere in the enterprise.

S18 KMWorld November/December 2006 Jon Parsons has more than 20 years Realizing Measurable of experience automating the creation, management and ROI with Multi-Language delivery of content in multiple forms. Currently he works in product marketing at Content Management Jon Parsons XyEnterprise. Prior to that, he was a writer, editor, tools developer and publishing consultant for a large computer manufacturer. Long an By Jon Parsons, XyEnterprise advocate of generic mark-up and an enthusiast for XML, he has served on the board of directors of OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, and is a What is content management worth? assigned cost that can be readily determined frequent speaker at industry events. for your business. And, typically, translation T costs are rising—not because the per-page hat can be a philosophical question. If rates are increasing, but because more and you ask a content author, you’ll hear about more content needs to be translated. the content management system can identi- the way content creation and review is made Product lifecycles grow shorter. Many more fy all the related units in other languages that easier and more efficient. If you ask a proj- variations of products are introduced. New ect manager, you’ll learn that content man- products are added to those already there. must now be retranslated to capture the new agement makes it possible to identify bot- The increasing amount of content required or changed content. If the base unit is brand tlenecks and monitor the progress of to support these products means that new, the system can also determine the need component pieces in an information set. If more must be translated and, inevitably, for creating new objects in the target lan- you ask a production person, you’ll discover translation expenses rise. guages. Such a content management system that delivering to different data formats is So, in calculating the ROI on introducing now a more automated and reliable process. can then create a project and send the new content management, you CAN get an objec- Ask an IT person and they’ll talk about in- content along with the older translated ver- tive metric to start with—the amount you cur- tegration with existing enterprise infra- sion off to the translation process. rently spend on translation. This starting point structure. While all of these answers are When the translated units return, they are is good for either projecting what you will save true, none of them really assigns a dollar put in the repository and managed with all value to content management. Finding a over a given period or analyzing the results of a pilot project designed to show what you can the others so that when an information set concrete way to measure ROI for content in the target language is published, it is easy management can be a challenge. achieve. But still, that’s only half the story. to verify that all units are at the current ver- One place to look for a metric to meas- How do you measure what your savings are, ure the value of content management is in or what they could be? sion and in synch with the source language. the rising costs associated with delivering This approach to controlling translation product-related content in many different Translate Once, Translate Right costs is demonstrable and in use today. How languages. The global economy is here. does this approach provide a metric for Products that were once marketed and sold The answer lies in the ability of multi- measuring ROI? By using it, you can read- in areas that required only one or two lan- language content management to control what ily determine the percentage of content that gets translated. If you have content that evolves guages are now being offered worldwide. is reused and not translated. The translation Suddenly the Pacific Rim, Eastern Europe, from one product release to the next, chances costs that would have been expended pro- India, China, and Brazil are growing are not everything in the content related to that markets for many kinds of products and product changes. Some things do. Maybe many vide one good measure of your ROI. If that services. To reach them and sell to them suc- things do. But not everything. alone justifies your investment cost, then the cessfully, content such as marketing and The key to controlling translation costs other less readily measurable benefits of sales information, product documentation, is to translate only those things that have multi-language content management come services manuals, warranty policies and changed. Your savings come from not trans- along for free. ❚ many other kinds of content must be avail- lating those things that haven’t. Factor in the able in each of the many languages spoken savings in time and resources and that there. Translation is the key. And time-to-mar- number grows exponentially. XyEnterprise is a leader in content management and ket is critical. The required content is already But in order for this approach to work, multi-channel delivery, providing solutions to industry in one language. It just needs to be put into your content must be managed in granular leaders in technology, financial services, publishing, the languages needed for your new markets. units, sometimes called “minimum revisable manufacturing, government and aerospace/defense. units.” An XML-based approach like the The company continues to innovate to deliver products The Rising Cost of Translation Darwin Information Typing Architecture that support an evolving marketplace—including (DITA) calls them “topics.” Once your con- distributed workflows, multi-language content manage- But translation is expensive. Whether tent is authored in such units, a content man- ment, interactive electronic delivery and standards such you translate in-house or use a translation agement system can determine when one of as DITA and S1000D. Their solutions help workgroups of service, whether the process is aided by those units changes. When that content goes all sizes simplify and expedite the automated creation, a translation memory system or not, no through the review and approval cycle and management, delivery and reuse of content across matter how it gets done, translation has an becomes ready for the next edition, a tool in the enterprise. [email protected]

KMWorld November/December 2006 S19 Dan Dube is the managing director Hosted XML Content of US operations for DocZone.com. Dube has 20 years of experience in Management: business process re- engineering and implementation of standards-based content Is It Right for You? Dan Dube management systems, including three years as the founder and president of Lighthouse Solutions, an XML systems By Dan Dube, Managing Director, US Operations, DocZone.com integration company. He led the successful deployment of approximately 50 XML-based content management and publishing systems around the world in a variety of industries, and designed and managed the implementation Publishing organizations have long rec- solution, the customer pays a subscription of XML-based automated localization systems ognized the value of migrating content to fee to use licenses on the system. The that are currently used at several Global XML to attain the benefits of content reuse, vendor has to perform to the specifications 2000 companies. reduced localization costs and single-source of a service level agreement (SLA), or publishing. But, many of these organiza- there are typically financial penalties to tions have never been able to justify the high pay. SaaS is gaining acceptance as an a contract is signed, before the system is even cost and long implementation cycles re- alternative business model, led by the installed. Usually, the customer is responsible quired to install an in-house XML content popularity of applications like WebEx and for the system deployment (often working management system (CMS). Salesforce.com. with a consulting/integration firm). The ven- Recently, a new alternative has Any organization can benefit from an dor charges 18% to 20% annually for soft- emerged—the “Software as a Service (SaaS)” SaaS business model, regardless of its size: ware support, and is not accountable for implementation failure, even if the system is model, which offers a hosted XML content ◆ Small-to-midsize business: For small- never actually used in production. management environment on a subscription to-midsize businesses, SaaS allows access By contrast, an SaaS vendor is respon- basis. According to research firm InfoTrends, to software that might otherwise be too sible for configuring the environment and more than 40% of their survey respondents costly or complex to implement or support. delivering a turnkey application. License would either “prefer” or “definitely consider” ◆ Enterprise: For larger organizations, fees to an SaaS vendor do not start until the a hosted content management solution. SaaS allows departments to avoid having system is production-ready, and there are to make large capital expenditures and financial penalties for failure to meet the having to pay for internal support costs. Software as a Service: metrics in the service level agreement. Large corporate environments typically Many “traditional” CMS vendors are con- What is It; Why Should I Care? turn to SaaS to support short-term sidering (or announcing) that they will now projects, software that will only be used The SaaS business model is essentially support a hosted model as an alternative deliv- occasionally or by a small number of em- designed to offer a full-featured solution in ery mechanism. Most of these companies will ployees and for applications that need to a hosted environment. The software appli- struggle, because they will now be held more be available outside of a firewall to part- cation sits in a centralized, secure data accountable for a successful production ners, contractors, suppliers or customers. center and is served up to end users com- implementation and will have a difficult time pletely via a browser. Rather than buying Traditional CMS vendors typically charge adjusting to having to wait for payment. It will and implementing an expensive in-house most, or all, of the purchase price at the time also be very hard for these companies to give up their ongoing profitable maintenance revenue. (For example, 45% of Oracle’s Example of an SaaS CMS: DocZone.com revenue comes from maintenance.) Implementing or upgrading a content DocZone.com provides the first commercially available XML content management environment is a significant and management platform available exclusively with the SaaS “on-demand” business risky undertaking, and there are many options model. Our customer base spans many industries, from automotive to available for consideration. But if you hardware/software manufacturers to healthcare solution providers to utilities. properly define your business needs, stick Some examples include: with solutions that conform to standards, start with a small pilot project and look for rapid ◆ A European automotive company is using DocZone to facilitate the creation, ROI models (such as SaaS), your chances for localization and automated publishing of glove box manuals in up to 30 success will increase dramatically. Choose languages, including bidirectional languages such as Arabic; wisely—the rewards are well worth it. ❚ ◆ A global healthcare company is implementing DocZone to manage the editorial, localization and single-source publishing of technical manuals, Web-based DocZone.com is a privately held company headquartered training materials and HTML help from the same set of source content; and in Heemstede, the Netherlands, with a wholly owned US ◆ A localization provider is using the DocZone platform to facilitate its translation subsidiary headquartered in Bedford, New Hampshire. DocZone.com has direct employees in the Netherlands and content optimization services to its end-user clients, allowing them to pass and US, as well as a close network of development on significant savings for translation and desktop publishing of multilingual and integration partners. DocZone.com is a KMWorld content and making it a more competitive player in the localization industry. Trend-Setting Product of 2006

S20 KMWorld November/December 2006 Gregory Roberts holds a bachelor’s Who is That “he?” degree in historical linguistics from the University of Illinois and a master’s Using Pronouns and Anaphors in Text Extraction degree in sociolinguistics from Georgetown University. Over the By Gregory F. Roberts, International Sales & Marketing, AeroText, last 10 years, he has Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems and Solutions Gregory F. Roberts been helping to develop extraction capabilities for most of the industry’s major Text extraction is a powerful tool to find and typically other entities or noun phrases. extraction tools. His expertise has been applied categorize elements in unstructured docu- Look again at our previous example. to both government and commercial markets, both in and outside the United States. For the ments. These elements, or entities, are con- he[Ali Ghufron] was the operational last six years, Roberts has been expanding the nected together to form the relationships, facts chief of the organization extraction capabilities of AeroText for Lockheed and events in a document. Oftentimes, the sur- Martin, having played an active role in the tool’s face forms of an entity are not sufficient to cap- An anaphor reference capability can initial creation. He is now one of Lockheed ture and glean all of the necessary information enhance a text extraction tool. Relating ref- Martin’s leading experts in knowledge for further analysis. Text extraction needs to be erents to their anaphors provides additional management and data extraction. able to capture and link three underlying pieces information when discovering relation- of information to rightly categorize elements ships, facts and events. Now consider the in a document: pronouns, anaphors and infer- previous example when one knows the example. Since he is a pronoun that refers able attributes. This article will first describe referent to the organization. to males, one can assume that the entity how leveraging pronominal information im- Ali Ghufron is also male. Reconsider our proves text extraction. Second, I’ll explain how previous example. anaphors are useful to text extraction. Finally, this article will describe how inferable attrib- “An anaphor he[Ali Ghufron, GENDER=Male] utes are used to further enhance text extraction. was the operational chief of the reference capability organization[Jemaah Islamiah] Pronouns We now know that the male Ali Ghufron is the operational chief of the Jemaah Very often in a document, a relationship Islamiah, even though the relationship was occurs that cannot be determined solely from can enhance a text never explicitly stated in our document. its surface structure. Pronouns, such as he, she and it, are only valuable if they can be related back to the entities which they refer. Consider extraction tool.” Structured Language the following example. In this article, I showed how leveraging he was the operational chief of the he[Ali Ghufron] was the operational pronominal information can provide more organization chief of the organization [Jemaah meaningful results to a text extraction tool. This phrase has little value for text Islamiah] I also demonstrated how anaphors add extraction unless one can determine who A relationship that Ali Ghufron is the value to text extraction by making relation- the he refers to. Once a text extraction tool operational chief of the Jemaah Islamiah is ships become more apparent. Finally, I can determine pronominal reference, now apparent. But is there any more infor- described how a text extraction tool could relationships between entities become mation we can glean from this example? use inferable attributes, either implied from more apparent. Now consider the previous the entity itself or by merging the attributes example when one knows the pronominal Inferable Attributes of all the various occurrences of the entity, referent. to further enhance text extraction. These he[Ali Ghufron] was the operational Inferable attributes are those things are just a few examples of how the under- chief of the organization about an entity that can be determined from lying structures of natural language can other bits of the document or are implicit in This gets us closer to understanding, be used by text extraction tools to enhance the entity itself. For example, the gender of the value of extracted information for but we still need to know who the organi- a name like John Smith can be inferred to real-world applications. ❚ zation references. be male simply because one knows that the name John tends to refer to males. Headquartered in Herndon, VA, Lockheed Martin’s Anaphors However, some names are ambiguous Integrated Systems & Solutions (IS&S) was formed in when it comes to their attributes. From our June 2003, in response to the increasing demand for Anaphors are referents to some other example, the gender of the name Ali is solutions that promise a comprehensive, real-time entity within a document. Another type of ambiguous. The name is used for both information picture for faster, better informed decisions. anaphora that is not discussed in this article males and females. One could merge the Developed with more than 20 years of Lockheed Martin is exophora. Exophora is when the referent attributes of all occurrences of an entity experience, AeroText is a high-performance data requires real-world knowledge and lies out- together to make a composite entity. We extraction engine and development environment that side of the document. While pronouns men- learned that the pronoun he is linked worldwide companies and governments use to find and tioned above are also anaphors, referents are together with Ali Ghufron in our previous correlate relevant information in text documents.

KMWorld November/December 2006 S21 log info to the engineer before they start the troubleshooting process. Beyond First Call 5. Develop your future state: Only for some of the problems can wizards collect log and configuration information. Resolution Specifying the set of applicable problems for which this is possible is a pre-requisite to quantifying the benefit. Diagnostic and Measurement Practices for KM 6. Quantify the benefit: Develop word equations to specify the savings. For exam- ple, the potential savings from collecting logs automatically is (% of time engineers By Andrew Cohen, Ph.D., Sr. Director of Business Consulting, KNOVA Software spend collecting sys files) X (% of time sys files are needed) X (% of time the collec- tion could be completed in a wizard) X (% of time cases are submitted online). The Knowledge management (KM) initiatives get the appropriate information from the result of this is an efficiency improvement are one way of improving technical support customer? What is the average elapsed for your engineers. Similar word equations organizations, driving support margins time that cases are open, and what are the assess the reduction in elapsed time cases through efficiency and increased customer cut-off points for customer delight and cus- are open. loyalty. However, it is one thing to imple- tomer pain? 7. Run a continuous improvement ment different practices in KM in your 3. Perform a diagnostic: We often find process: Using technology to solve prob- organization and another to know that the that the multiple iterations required before lems requires ongoing effort. Make sure troubleshooting can get started do not need practices are contributing to your organiza- you are assessing which problems are likely tion’s bottom line. In what follows, we to apply to this process. Set 30- to 90- and outline best diagnostic and measurement practices for judging the effects of new KM 120-day assessment periods and add/ practices. modify/delete wizards as necessary. Increasing “first contact resolution” “Increasing You can see that low FCR is a proxy for (FCR) is often one of the first goals speci- a host of underlying processes. Measuring fied in a project. Organizations often your process today and theorizing how your believe a significant reason their satisfac- new processes will help you close gaps that tion is low and costs are high is that calls first contact underlie problems can help remedy core or cases are not solved on the first contact. problems. Continuing to improve and They regularly point to long elapsed times benchmark processes allows you to know for cases, poor satisfaction scores and resolution is often how changes improve your organization. lowered support margins as indicators that they need to improve the expertise of their Over time incrementally improving and front-line support personnel and the benchmarking improvements will help you explicit knowledge that supports their one of the first goals reach your customer satisfaction and efforts. As we shall see below, this is only efficiency goals. ❚ partly true. Pursuing this path alone may not fully address the FCR problem and the specified in corresponding cost/satisfaction issue. Andrew Cohen, Ph.D. is the senior director of business Following common best practices, let’s consulting at KNOVA Software. His team is responsible examine the situation: for business strategy and process re-engineering in a project.” pre-sales, implementation and post-implementation 1. Map and model current process: For services. Prior to joining KNOVA, Cohen ran the knowledge complex technical support centers, there are management and distributed learning research team at multiple interactions or activities, often IBM Research’s Cambridge lab. Cohen received a Ph.D. including three or more touch points with the in cognition and learning from the University of Toronto customer, before any troubleshooting starts. to be handled by an expert. In the vast and has a Masters of Science and BA in physics. Support engineers may require logs, configu- majority of cases, there are technology ration and sample files just to start their solutions. In our experience, we can auto- KNOVA Software is a leading provider of intelligent assessments. Adding expensive experts to mate the collections of the knowledge customer experience solutions that maximize the value your front line will only exacerbate the required to initiate troubleshooting. Self- of every interaction throughout the customer lifecycle. problem. The experts will have to go through service wizards can walk the customer or Built on an adaptive search and knowledge management the same set of iterations and activities with front-line agent through the critical infor- platform, KNOVA’s suite of applications helps companies customers before they get started. mation required to initiate troubleshooting. increase revenues, reduce service costs and improve 2. Establish metrics: Measuring first 4. Set clear goals: Monitor the underlying customer satisfaction. Industry leaders including AOL, call resolution alone does not give you the processes. Monitor your customers’ and Ford, HP, Novell, Reuters, McAfee and H&R Block rely on whole picture. In this case, you need to agents’ quantity and success with the wizards, KNOVA’s award-winning applications to power an measure the number and content of the the elapsed time cases are open and how often intelligent customer experience on their Web sites, and iterations. How much time and over how the users (customers or agents) get the correct within their contact centers. For more information, many iterations does it take an engineer to visit www.knova.com.

S22 KMWorld November/December 2006 content in static documents stored on file- servers in a business group is crippling in The Hidden Costs of an age when agility to respond is critical to success. Product Information A Standards-based Approach Astoria Software has helped leading or- ganizations realize efficiency and cost-savings in how they create, manage and deliver their Publishing product information. Most start with the adoption of a single-source information model, relying on a centrally managed By Chip Gettinger, Vice President, Customer Service and Support, Astoria Software content repository. This centralization of con- tent in an XML repository delivers flexibility as an organization creates, tracks, updates, translates and publishes content and manages M its re-use over time. Besides automation tools, anufacturing enterprises have placed a exponentially. The volume of content rises as organizations are adopting information stan- sustained focus on information management product lines are extended, the velocity of dards such as the OASIS Darwin Information solutions to support and augment the de- content accelerates as product lifecycles Typing Architecture (DITA). This standard sign, development and production process. shorten and the variability in information supports a single-source information model The associated product and manufacturing grows as products are customized and with the creation and management of content information that parallels the production internationalized. The strain on the organiza- “topics” that are easily re-used. Content process is closely managed, tracked and tion’s product information processes is topics, along with metadata and product con- reviewed to optimize the overall product apparent in squeezed product documentation tent attributes are managed independently, but lifecycle opportunity. deadlines and missed launch dates, informa- maintain relationships with each other. DITA’s Increasingly, many organizations are track- tion inaccuracies that trigger legal liability granular topic-based approach, in concert with ing and measuring the product information and increased redundancy costs as content an XML content repository, delivers inherent chain beyond the direct manufacturing process. is updated and transformed for multiple flexibility in the creation of documents, The findings? This extended chain is much languages and delivery formats. and supports efficiencies throughout the longer, broader and costlier, with a decentral- Enterprise customers now identify and author-to-publish process. ized network of product information creators measure where value and costs are created and consumers. The critical nature of this chain or diminished throughout the product infor- As demand for new products continues to is evident as most content flows directly to the mation lifecycle. From original content cre- put pressure on content groups, the need for creation of customer-facing product informa- ation, to review and translation cycles, to more cost-effective management of the infor- tion, from sales and marketing content, to prod- document assembly and delivery, there are mation lifecycle becomes critical to business uct documentation and operations manuals, and four specific areas identified within organi- efficiency. Solutions such as Astoria’s have to customer service and support information. zations where content value and cost is helped Fortune 500 companies streamline their Some estimate the current costs of content likely to be measured: re-use of content; col- product information processes and reduce creation, management and delivery throughout laboration and review workflow cycles; lan- costs, from $3 million to $300,000 in docu- the organization accounts for up to 6% of the guage translation processes; and publishing. mentation translation costs alone for one costs of goods sold for any one product. What is clear is that the more an organi- Fortune 500 manufacturer. It starts with an zation can eliminate a redundant, standalone organization’s capability to re-use content, to effectively collaborate, and to automate multi- Volume, Velocity and Variability approach to product information processes, the better the cost-efficiencies across the language, multi-format publishing. Finally, it As companies add to and customize prod- entire content lifecycle. For many, the means adopting a single-source information uct lines, the associated content costs grow old model of writing and locking valuable model and content management solutions that can effectively manage the entire process in a measurable and cost-controlled way. ❚ Technical Document Publishing On-Demand Chip Gettinger is a long-time executive in the informa- tion publishing industry and is a regular speaker at con- tent management and publishing industry conferences. A manufacturer’s technical publication departments are most affected by the As vice president of services and support for Astoria velocity of new product innovation, and the volume of demand for new content Software, he advises customers on best practices in delivered in more formats and languages. product information management. Gettinger is also involved with OASIS, the XML standards board, and is To address this need, Astoria Software introduces a new end-to-end XML leading the first DITA specialization committee for med- content management solution now available as an on-demand offering. This ical manufacturing. Astoria, based in San Mateo, CA, and best-in-class solution delivers an XML authoring tool, an XML content management founded in 1994, is a leading provider of XML content repository, workflow, a built-in DITA Workbench for simple transition to the DITA management solutions for the dynamic publishing of product documentation and content. standard and a composition engine to output to any delivery format—print or digital. This entire solution is accessed from the Web via a third-party hosting provider, To learn more about how Astoria has helped leading organizations including Siemens Medical Solutions, eliminating the need for any hardware or services investment, and supported and Texas Instruments, NCR Teradata and more, visit serviced by Astoria. For more information, visit Astoriasoftware.com/OnDemand www.astoriasoftware.com/kmworld, or via email at [email protected].

KMWorld November/December 2006 S23 For more information on the companies who contributed to this white paper, visit their websites or contact them directly:

Fast Search & Transfer, Inc. Noetix Corp. Astoria Software 117 Kendrick Street, Suite 100 5010 148th Avenue NE, Suite 100 66 Bovet Road, Suite 280 Needham MA 02494 Redmond WA 98052 San Mateo CA 94402 PH: 888.871.3839 PH: 866.4NOETIX PH: 650.357.7477 FAX: 781.304.2410 FAX: 425.372.2942 FAX: 650.357.7677 Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected] Web: www.fastsearch.com Web: www.noetix.com Web: www.astoriasoftware.com

BEA Systems, Inc. InQuira Inc. 500 Sansome Street 851 Traeger Avenue, Suite 125 San Francisco CA 95111 San Bruno CA 94066 SchemaLogic Inc. 620 Kirkland Way, Suite 100 PH: 800.817.4BEA (US toll free) PH: 650.246.5000 Kirkland WA 98033 Contact: [email protected] FAX: 650.246.5036 Web: www.bea.com Contact: www.inquira.com/contact.asp PH: 425.885.9695 Web: www.inquira.com FAX: 425.883.0117 Contact: [email protected] Web: www.schemalogic.com

Coveo Solutions Inc. 120 Hawthorne Avenue, Suite 100 KANA Software Palo Alto CA 94301 181 Constitution Drive PH: 800.635.5476 Menlo Park CA 94025 FAX: 650.475.8024 PH: 800.737.8738 Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected] Web: www.coveo.com Web: www.kana.com TOWER Software 12012 Sunset Hills Road Two Discovery Square, Suite 510 Reston VA 20190 PH: 800. 255.9914 or 703.476.4203 DocZone.com FAX: 703.437.9006 21 McAfee Farm Road KNOVA Software Contact: [email protected] Bedford NH 03110 10201 Torre Avenue, Suite 350 Web: www.towersoft.com PH: 603.488.5008 Cupertino CA 95014 FAX: 603.488.5009 PH: 800.572.5748 Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected] Web: www.doczone.com Web: www.KNOVA.com

Endeca Technologies, Inc. Lockheed Martin Corporation XyEnterprise 55 Cambridge Parkway Integrated Systems & Solutions 101 Edgewater Drive Cambridge MA 02142 13560 Dulles Technology Dr. Wakefield MA 01880 PH: 617.577.7999 Herndon VA 20171 PH: 781.756.4400 FAX: 617.577.7766 PH: 703.466.1268 FAX: 781.756.4330 Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected] Contact: [email protected] Web: www.endeca.com Web: www.aerotext.com Web: www.xyenterprise.com

Produced by: Kathryn Rogals Paul Rosenlund Andy Moore KMWorld Magazine 207-338-9870 207-338-9870 207-236-0331 Specialty Publishing Group [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

For information on participating in the next white paper in the “Best Practices” series, contact: [email protected] or [email protected] • 207.338.9870

www.kmworld.com November/December 2006