Creating a Cross-Corporate Knowledge Pool

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Creating a Cross-Corporate Knowledge Pool - Amdocspedia

Avigdor SharonEnterprise Knowledge Architect

IT, Global Knowledge Solutions Group

October 2009

Information Security Level 1 – Confidential © 2008 – Proprietary and Confidential Information of Amdocs2

What is this presentation about?

> Learning from the experience of Amdocspedia - creating a cross-corporate space for sharing knowledge and experience

> How to move from local silos and methods of managing professional information to one shared and consistent pool

> Allowing teams to work locally but affect

globally

> Increase knowledge sharing between groups

> Make professional information easier to find

> How to make sure content is up to date,correct and relevant

> Making it easy to write and use content

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About Amdocs

> The market leader in customer experience systems innovation

> A broad portfolio of offerings which spans all business processes and business- and operational-support systems (customer experience systems)

> Unique combination of software, consulting services and global

strategic sourcing (managed services)

> Helping customers to deliver a simple, personal, valuable

customer experience at every point of service in more than 1.3

billion experiences every day.

> A global enterprise

> Amdocs' customers are among the largest, most innovative communications companies in the world.

> Learn more at amdocs.com

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About the speaker

Avigdor Sharon, Knowledge architect, Amdocs Global Knowledge Management

Internal knowledge & collaboration services portfolio

Implementing knowledge sharing & collaboration vision, methodology and processes

Facilitator, Association of Knowledge Work (kwork.org)

Board member, Israel Knowledge Management Forum

Member and forums facilitator, Smart People magazine(www.smartpeoplemagazine.com)

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Who’s using Amdocspedia?

> Phase I – implemented for product and technology experts in one major group

> Enthusiastic adoption - 18000 visits monthly by 1500

professionals, Over 400 new content pages per month

> Phase II – corporate-wide

> Increasing use of tags to organize and access pages

> Merging professional tip collections

> Creating “homepages” and simulating hierarchical content structure in a flat content realm

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How is it built?

> An enhanced wiki knowledge base

> KWizCom WikiPlus - an extension of the MOSS 2007 wiki

> Developed as a co-project between Amdocs and KWizCom

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Why did we implement it?

> Professional knowledge sharing across unit boundaries

> A single, shared, cross-corporate knowledge base instead of

many separate knowledge silos

> Professional know-how and good practices sharing between

related projects

> Matrix organization. Many expert

groups. Distributed worldwide

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How did it start?

> The initiative started both top down and bottom up

> Corporate KM methodology, directive from business unit managers

> Requirements from experts in the work groups

> Some teams employed local solutions, each different and unique. There was need for a comprehensive solution

> Started an integration and implementation process, working with groups to meet their needs, yet bring all toa consistence

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The journey

Study of needs, mapping groups, managerial leadership, knowledge champions, round table meetings

• Feb. 2007

Starting “out of the box” SharePoint Portal 2007 wiki – Amdocspedia 1.0

• April 2007

Step by step implementation, working with groups, Defining requirements with knowledge champions and users

• April 2007

Designing WikiPlus

• June 2007

Development

• August 2007

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The journey (Cont’d)

User pilot of Amdocspedia 2.0 with leading knowledge champions and “power users”

• In parallel with ongoing use of Amdocspedia 1.0

• Fine tuning of usability and configuration

Migration of content and switch to Amdocspedia 2.0 (Wiki Plus v1.0)

• April 2008

• Amdocspedia 1.0 still available but read only

Upgrading to Wiki Plus v1.2.50

• Sep. 2009

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An integral part of the knowledge solutions portfolio

> A suite of integrated tools and processes

> Clear guidelines - what to use, for which purpose

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And the “One Intranet” architecture

Project & Workgroup Sites(Collaboration Platform)

Amdocs Intranet Portal

Enterprise Content ServicesDocument Center, Forums,

Amdocspedia, Search, …

Business

Unit

Portal

Amdocs Business

Network

(Wigloo)

Groups(Communities)

Business

Unit

Portal

Operational

Sites

Discussion Forum

EventsCalendar

Document Folder

wiki pages (Tips, How-to)

The Mall

Travel

Genie

Global Support

Online forms

Learning Services

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Amdocs Knowledge Champions Network

Group Management

Dept. Knowledge

Trustee

Project Trustee

Project Trustee

Project Trustee

Dept. Knowledge

Trustee

Project Trustee

Project Trustee

Project Trustee

KM & Portal Leaders

> Management - sponsorship and guidance

> Managers and Knowledge Champions – Leaders and drivers

> Local Trustees – use as part of ongoing work

> Knowledge champions create and structure the main pages, other

people add tips and other information gradually

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Example 1 – Making user guides more effective

> Moving guidelines from online help and documents into interactive tips cards

> Integrating pages using a consistent template and internal “breadcrumbs”

> Taking screenshots and embedding them inside the Wiki articles using the immediate image copy & paste capability

> Readers can rate tip cards, discuss them and even add to them

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Example 1 – Making user guides more effective

Readers can subscribe to

changes in this pageAnd make comments or

discuss it

Or rate it

They can even contribute to it

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Example 1 – Making user guides more effective

Internal breadcrumbs simulate multi-

level structure

Quick and easy to follow “help

cards”

Tags allow for intuitive

categorization

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Example 2 – Creating shared good practices & tips collections

> Merging disparate tips collections from multiple local collections into global collections

> Using tags for even more intuitiveresearch

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Example 2 (Cont’d)

Automated table of contents

Edit only a specific section

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What you can use the Wiki for?

> The wiki is a very flexible media – it can have different uses and can be tailored to your unique needs

> A place for organizing work guidelines and learning materials

> A knowledge base for customer support

> An interlinked “encyclopedia” / dictionary

> Professional knowledge sharing between experts and projects

The wiki is actually a large shared notebook that everyone can write

into or read. Its flexible organization (folksonomy) make associations

between content items easy and intuitive

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Using the Wiki – the challenge

> Make it simple and appealing - embedded into the way people work, part of the regular work process, not an extra effort

> Replaces other means of recording and sharing information with easy to use, shared and interactive tools – yet people need to learn a new approach

> Need to drive experts and teams to understand they benefit from sharing

> The wiki evolves intuitively over time – need to resist the temptation to define and plan everything in advance

Simplicity and flexibility do not come easily. It is a different state of mind

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A learning experience

> Sharing success stories

> Round tables between teams, learning from experience

> Shaping good practices on the basis of accumulated experience

> Constant content improvement cycle - using, reviewing, learning, fine tuning

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Recap - New features in Amdocspedia (compared to MOSS 2007)

> Intuitive and flexible categorization, using multiple tags

> Multiple tags for pages

> Master tag cloud and tag index

> Easy email and RSS subscriptions for pages and/or tags

> A discussion area for each page

> Improved content editor

> Easily add images, create links and attach related files

> Create and manage tables

> Create image maps

> Create table of contents and edit sections within a page without editing the whole page

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More features…

> A library of master wiki page templates

> One step duplication of pages to create similar pages

> Content lifecycle management

> New reporting capabilities, such as report of the top contributors

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Adding images

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Adding and managing links

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Adding tags

> Plan tags carefully to allow for intuitive categorization but avoid needless “noise”

> Auto completion, based on the existing tags

> Can add multiple tags, separated by commas

> New tags will appear in the tag index

> The most used tags will appear in the tag cloud

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The tag index

> Quickly browse and discover topics

> Subscribe / unsubscribe to any topic

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Content lifecycle management

> Every page has an owner

> Owner can assign otherpersons as owners

> Review cycles

> When a page is edited, the review cycle resets

> If the date of the review cycle is approaching, an email alert is sent to the owner

> If the review cycle expires and there is no review and editing of page, the page is marked as “out of date”

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Content lifecycle management (Cont’d)

> A page that was not updated or approved after its review cycle (usually 6 months) has expired

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Making sure content is up to date, correct and relevant

> Every page has an owner

> Knowledge champions network

> Knowledge champions subscribe to tags to receive email alerts

about page changes in their areas of expertise

> Every change is saved as a version, with the name of the person who did the change

> Page owners and Knowledge champions can remove incorrect

new page versions

> Rating and comments by readers

> Content lifecycle management – review cycles

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What made it a success?

> Quick implementation, early gains

> Think with the users, plan together with them, use it yourself

> Integrating the wiki and placing it in context of:

> How people work

> Business needs

> A comprehensive suite of solutions

> Focused planning, define what to use the wiki for and what not to use it for

> A partnership model

> Worked with leading managers and knowledge champions within the groups - network, round tables, both top-down and bottom-up

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What made it a success (continued)

> Creating an intuitive network of topics

> Taxonomy as part of the content

> Tags and wiki links instead of rigid trees

> Combination of central high level control and full contribution ability to all users

> One shared environment, but still with a “local” feed

> Group and category homepages

> Interlinks between related pages

> Use tags effectively to create a sense of local areas although

the structure is flat and wide

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Thank you