Collaboration addresses the factors that drive effective, business decisions and actions required by today’s fast-paced global business environment. Achieving the next level of effectiveness is now necessary to respond to a demanding economy that shaves profit margins to the slimmest rate and is constantly asking companies to perform at a higher level of efficiency and proficiency. A CEO of a leading international company recently stated his number one problem was no longer information; it was collaborating and sharing the information. Leveraging the organization’s assets to the greatest degree possible is no longer the noble cause of ambitious executives on a quest for self-actualization. Rather, leveraging knowledge assets is an every day reality of business in the 21st century. Business people interact with information in many forms every day. Decisions are made based on a combination of these different forms of information, Strucutred/Unstrucutred vs. Tacit/Explicit. (See Figure 1) The structured information managed and produced by traditional information technology initiatives provides the single version of the truth. This one version of information truth is relied upon by the business to produce decision-supporting information. When the business calls for traditional decision support; structured, analytical information is required. However, unstructured information is becoming more and more important in making sound business decisions. Unstructured and tacit is often the type of information produced by interactions of people and information with regards to a particular topic or process issue. For example, an engineering design team at a power plant is discussing recovery strategy for a reoccurring pump failure. The conversation in the room is based on product test information just released by the supplier. These interactions are tacit, unstructured and many times undocumented. However, the discussion in the meeting that leads to a decision contains important knowledge assets that could be leveraged again in another design team meeting. How can this unrecorded information be stored for future use? Taking the interactions of people and information into account requires a construct where the interaction is considered as noteworthy as the information. Therefore, structured and unstructured, tacit and explicit forms of information must be recorded and stored in a repository or knowledgebase for future use. True collaboration applies all aspects of the information matrix shown in Figure 1. Fully engaging people with information through collaborative communities creates an optimally functioning organization. Various types of information exchange take place within these collaborative communities. The key to retaining the value of those interactions resides in the relationship between the information and the high value business processes utilizing the information. Figure 1
Information Exchange Matrix

The interaction with other knowledgeable workers along with increased access to information sets the stage for success in today’s marketplace. The interaction of people and information occurs within designated, related sets of activities that add value to the organization. The series of activities is commonly known as a business process. Business processes provide the context in which information is applied. For example, a customer’s profile is structured/explicit information that is used for differing purposes depending on the functional area. The service department may use this customer profile information to locate a customer’s address for the service representative. This information enables a physical visit to the customer and performance of a maintenance or repair procedure. The marketing department may access the same customer profile information to perform a mailing campaign. This process introduces a new product or up-sells a currently owned product or service recently purchased. Yet another functional area of the organization may be analyzing a profile to ascertain the frequency and type of interactions with the customer. The purpose is to develop a new customer relationship management strategy. The customer profile information is used to identify customers and assess product saturation. The same information taken and applied in different contexts provides value for the organization within defined business processes. The information alone has no significant meaning. The business process provides the meaning. The information must be the same for both the application in the service, strategy and marketing departments. However the context to which it is applied is different and achieves different objectives for the business. Business processes provide the shape or form to which collaborative efforts adapt within an organization. An existing business process allows the higher level of knowledge asset management to be implemented within a familiar construct. Beyond the initial application, process improvement efforts are of greater influence when the relationship between the process, information and the people is understood. Enabling the free flow of both structured/unstructured and tacit/explicit information exchange requires technological support. Achieving the purposes of an organization in today’s global economy requires the optimization of information and knowledge residing throughout the organization. Therefore, an architecture that maximizes explicit/structured information through data analytics ensures information availability, quality and reliability. Capturing the workforce’s tacit knowledge coupled with the unstructured/explicit information in which is contained a majority of an organization’s business intelligence is key. Content management applications with a knowledge repository storing unstructured/explicit information are an important supportive component of collaboration. An important consideration of designing the supportive technology to enable collaboration is the storage capacity required for such an undertaking. All of the organization’s knowledge assets will need to be retained in some format. This format must be retrievable, searchable and reportable. Ubiquitous information usage throughout the organization presents challenges that only a handful of vendors are capable of handling. When considering storage of unstructured information assets, sizing and capacity must take into consideration for future expanded use as information becomes intertwined with day-to-day business processes. More information, more queries and decreased latency will affect the technology requirements to meet business demands. Collaboration among the workforce within business context produces gains with the use of organizational knowledge assets. However, a collection if information is not knowledge. Nor is a collection of knowledge truly wisdom. For information to be an organizational asset, it must apply within a context through the collaborative efforts of knowledge workers. Only then, are you leveraging all your knowledge assets.

Other Posts by: Maribeth Achterberg

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