Knowledge management at Lane4

This document aims to summarise the current KM challenges at Lane4 and provide solutions and recommendations to solve them. Our objective is to:

‘produce a really great knowledge management system that is really user friendly, not for its own sake but a KM system that drives collaborative behavior and increases connectivity.’ (Austin Swain)

History

Lane4’s file system has evolved over time into a large repository of archived documents buried in a complicated file structure. This provides users with a familiar approach to finding files but takes up additional time in locating the correct version of a file. There is an enormous amount of duplicated content on the server which results in uncertainty over which are the correct versions of a document.

Email is used extensively to share documents and files, adding an additional layer of duplication. Email is a useful tool but conversations are not captured across the group. Additional time is spent searching for email conversations and attachments.

Previous solutions

iBox – as a search tool iBox creates tagging information or metadata that helps improve document searches. After a substantial investment, the ROI has not been as great as expected. iBox has a small user base who are prepared to search the data, and its success is dependent on the tagging of documents. This solution is possibly not best aligned with the culture of Lane4.

Current challenge and business case

Desire by the board to raise the level of knowledge sharing and collaboration at Lane4. Limited funds available for this but possibility of investment if the business case can be made strongly enough. Tim Osborn enlisted to investigate knowledge management platforms suitable for Lane4 (with support from James Maddison).

Collaboration overview

Many platforms offer differing solutions which target different users and sizes of organisations. The key technologies Lane4 might employ are:

Microblogging – live ‘twitter’ style updates to encourage connectivity and awareness of what other parts of the business are up to.

Wiki – solution where everyone can create and edit pages of content

Intranet – replacing the portal we used to have with user profiles, news but with less static and more dynamic content

Each of these technologies would add something to Lane4, but the overriding aim is to ensure that a solution is accessible and integrated into the culture and values of Lane4.

Feedback so far

User feedback – ‘too many clicks’ – people want content quickly and easily.

iBox too hard to search as filtering the information model takes longer than searching through the folders themselves – tagging is a chore.

Cultural challenge around engaging people to use a new system. Very tough to change a user mindset and engage people in something they don’t find interesting.

Information isn’t current, we don’t know what the latest content is or what other people are working on.

Consultation

I obtained feedback from the heads of each knowledge pool on the state of knowledge management at Lane4. These conversations suggested that there is a lack of awareness of what is going on currently in the business, in terms of clients and best practice. Linking teams and people together would improve this and promote knowledge sharing. We need some way of better connecting people to the latest documents and content and of encouraging informal collaboration. There was a definite sense that content needs to become more dynamic, and that key documents and useful information would need to exist on the site. At the same time, we need to ensure people can still work using conventional folder structures as this provides an easy and familiar way to access content.

Evaluation of social software platforms

This has been a useful exercise as using these systems has given a clearer picture of what would actually be useful to Lane4. They key priority which has emerged is the ability to capture and share conversations that happen across the business. The right tool needs to be tightly integrated with Microsoft Office as this is the medium we work with.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant report has been helpful in identifying who the key players are. These have each been evaluated in terms of usability and functionality.

One of the key players that emerged was ThoughtFarmer. This software is currently being trialled by the Management Training team. Initial feedback has been that the system is easy to use and looks the part. Providing a social intranet-based site is something Lane4 has been missing for some time. We would need to be clear on exactly which features we would use and introduce these gradually to the userbase. Version 4.0 is due for release in summer 2010 which promises to bring greater integration with MS Office and document previewing, which is the main disadvantage of the system so far. The cost would be £5900 for a perpetual licence for the lifetime of the product (100 user minimum licence). There is a discount if purchased by 24th June of ?.

Jive SBS 4.0 – one of the key players in the market but unfortunately their software is targeted at the enterprise level (1000 users+) limiting their relevance to us. The Express version of the software retails at $300 p/m and would give us some discussion/collaboration functionality.

SocialText 4.0 – interestin group and collaboration tool. Promising but concerns over the functionality and usability of a site based entirely on wiki code (not good for a non-technical audience).

Confluence – great integration with office (embedding files straight into pages). Lack of social collaboration and conversation features raise questions over the value add. Steep learning curve and usability issue again.

Recommendations

Lane4 should implement a system that captures the informal conversations that happen across the business. These conversations should be tightly integrated with the content (word, pp docs etc.) that they link to. Groups and teams should be easy to set up to improve well-being and identity.

Priority to connect US and Asia offices to the central hub. A hosted solution installed on Lane4 servers would need to be rapidly accessible for these users, and this should be factored into any decision.

Implementation to date

Improve and slim down existing iBox tagging model to simplify finding content.

Have engaged the Ops team in creating a folder of current models and frameworks in a language they understand. This frees them from the resource library and speeds up the process for new starters.

Investigating how to provide slide libraries of branded powerpoint slides to quickly assemble presentations – solved Slideboxx works well and is gathering positive feedback. Detail required here from Ops.

Management Trainers evaluating ThoughtFarmer. Initial feedback has been positive around the social and communication aspects of the site. Concern over what it would be used for, but interestingly users have come round to the idea as the trial has continued.

In summary

I believe implementing the ThoughtFarmer solution would bring many exciting and interesting business benefits to Lane4. It would be relatively straightforward to implement the solution and engagement in the basic functionality of the site would be high. In the future, upgrades would be supplied to us free of charge in the first year. The new features would further improve the integration of the site with our current way of working. The web 2.0 market is evolving very rapidly and consequently we need to be careful about when to ‘take the plunge’. I feel with the freedom around upgrades that this decision should come sooner rather than later.

How ThoughtFarmer features map on to the Lane4 business case

What follows is a summary of ThoughtFarmer features from the company website, and how these map on to the Lane4 business objectives for knowledge management.

Features

Security

Protect sensitive or confidential pages

A drag-and-drop interface makes it a snap to apply page viewing and editing permissions. Share your page with just a few people, or with a few predefined groups, or with everyone. Apply security settings to an entire section, a specific page, or a single document.

What this can do for Lane4 – we can configure access to specific users with complete freedom over who can view certain pages. This will really help with associate access that we may provide in the future.

Integrated

Powered by enterprise-standard Microsoft technology

ThoughtFarmer installs on your servers, on enterprise-standard Windows Server 2003 or 2008 and SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (Express, Workgroup, Standard or Enterprise). It integrates with your Active Directory for two-way synchronization of user profiles, security groups and distribution lists. It supports single sign-on with Windows Integrated Authentication. It also integrates with Exchange to manage mailing lists.

What this can do for Lane4 – all content would be accessible immediately as everything is happening locally. Users don’t need to go to another site and log in with different details. Groups can be auto created from our email distribution groups.

Document management

Attach files and photos to any page. Revision history is stored. Bulk upload is possible using the TF Uploader Windows client.

What this can do for Lane4 – we can easily upload key documents to the site and relate them to individuals, making them easier to find. We can encourage comments and discussions on files and people. Pages can be created with models which will allow consultants to become more familiar with them.

Individual communications

Project blogs Create a blog Create department blogs, employee blogs, project blogs and maybe even a CEO blog! Use them for

project reports, status meetings, and for sharing your latest insights and ideas. What about creating a concept design blog, or using it to show off the latest iteration on a product you’re creating?

What this can do for Lane4 – blogs encourage users to communicate with each other and share their experiences. This will remove both physical and time barriers which prevent us connecting which each other. We currently run town hall type sessions – this will be the glue that binds us in between those times. Teams could update each other on their projects. Thoughts from Ade, etc. could be incorporated into people’s daily updates which would encourage discussion. This would all keep momentum going on projects as teams update each other on progress.

Discussions

Get discussions started with a forum

Create dedicated discussion forums. When someone replies to your comment, you’re notified via email or RSS.

Alternatively, use Discussion Capture: ThoughtFarmer’s unique system for automatically tapping into discussions taking place via email groups.

Share your thoughts with comments

Add inline comments on any ThoughtFarmer page, profile, or document. Comments are easy to add so you can focus on sharing your ideas and suggestions.

What this can do for Lane4 – in essence the ability to create discussion forums will give people a voice. Questions can be asked and expertise tapped into – most importantly the content is stored and accessible. TF can also be set up to take the discussions from an email discussion group and put them straight on to the site. This will really help with buy in and engagement.

Strengthen Workplace Community

ThoughtFarmer includes a comprehensive people directory with detailed employee profiles. ThoughtFarmer associates content with people: see who’s behind a page, and see what else they’ve created. Content is more meaningful in a social context.

Robust employee directory

Find the right person

Employees often spend a significant amount of time trying to find people within the organization. ThoughtFarmer helps you find the right person — fast — with our new and improved People Directory. Use filters such as Last Name, Location, Team, Project, Areas of Expertise to narrow down your search.

Browse your organizational chart

ThoughtFarmer’s interactive org chart browser shows you the relationships between people, groups, departments and locations.

Employee activity stream

ThoughtFarmer’s interface for tracking recent activity (sometimes referred to as a “workstream”) makes it a cinch to see what’s going on at your company and on your team. Activity is intelligently aggregated and grouped so you can quickly filter to just the projects you’re interested in.

What this can do for Lane4 – Lane4 has always been a social company – connecting all our expertise and sharing what people do and how they do it will help us feel more connected. Justin’s social side of things will impact well-being positively. Associating content with people will make things more meaningful and allow people to see content progressing.

Email discussion list archiving

Work with e-mail, not against it With ThoughtFarmer, you can harness the power of e-mail in your organization instead of fighting against

it. Discussion Capture With a few clicks, you can connect new or existing email distribution lists to ThoughtFarmer. Discussion

Capture monitors all email discussions, automatically creating pages from emails and indexing the contents for search. Rich formatting, images and attachments are all preserved. Conversations are threaded together and user profiles are linked up, providing additional social context.

Optional Microsoft Exchange integration lets you manage distribution list membership within ThoughtFarmer or Exchange.

Send an e-mail to ThoughtFarmer, and it will automatically create a wiki page with the e-mail contents for you.

Signals via Email – ThoughtFarmer generates emails to alert you of changes to content. You can also opt-out of emails and subscribe via RSS.

What can this can do for Lane4 – this feature will make it really easy to populate the site, reducing the content we have to duplicate to keep things moving. We can use our existing email system to move specific discussions straight on to the site – this will be a great time saver. The ‘email ThoughtFarmer’ feature will allow people to ask questions and get responses straight from our ‘experts’.

News and company wide comms

Relevant news, tailored to your audiences

Spreading relevant news across your company has never been easier.

You can create multiple news sections around your intranet, including on the home page. Using ThoughtFarmer’s Group features along with Personal Home Pages, you can tailor news for each discreet audience at your organization. For example, you can ensure that engineers see the latest from the engineering blog, support staff see new bulletins on changes to back-office procedures, and everyone sees the latest from the CEO’s blog.

Who can publish news? That’s up to you. You can adjust security settings on a section-by-section basis, ranging from wide open, democratic publishing to highly curated sections editable only by the communications team.

What can this do for Lane4 – we would integrate all company communications into TF. Email comms would be replaced by a news feed (see above). We could also target news to groups reducing the ‘noise’ of irrelevant comms.

Search

ThoughtFarmer has a fast, accurate, configurable search engine that searches pages, people, text within documents, and even group emails (via Discussion Capture).

On an intranet, you’re often searching for something you know exists, but you just can’t remember what it’s called. ThoughtFarmer Search Filters (sometimes called “Faceted Search”) let you quickly narrow down to just the page you’re looking for: easily filter by page type, author, date, or tag.

ThoughtFarmer also supports Scoped Search: limit your search to just a specific section of your intranet.

What can this do for Lane4? – I believe the search function will work better than iBox. TF searches in emails, for people, inside files, etc. The bonus is there will be fewer files on here as only the meaningful ones will have been sifted out of our server folders. Filtering by people and area would be an easier way to search than iBox – a more lane4 way?

ThoughtFarmer feedback

Lisa – could see the potential but not initially

Fiona – haven’t had the time to use it but loved what I saw