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09.24.09 Adding A Wiki Based Messaging System To Your Enterprise  By Bill Ives Here is another in a series of interviews with Samuel Driessen, Information Architect at Océ, about their Enterprise 2.0 implementation and adoption experiences. In this post I will cover their experiences with wikis and lessons learned. Earlier, I wrote out their micro-messaging experiences. Océ is a leading international provider of digital document management technology and services. Samuel is located in the Netherlands and his responsibilities include both the information architecture for structured information in applications such as PLMS and SAP and the unstructured information in places such as email and knowledge management programs. As I mentioned before, I really like this dual role. It makes so much sense to have these two information sources under the same architectural leadership. Usually knowledge management and IT data management are siloed, limiting the effectiveness of both. This is the first time I have seen this and I commend the vision of Océ. This excellent concept will be covered in my next blog post on Océ but the story today is about their wiki experiences. Samuel said that part of his role is looking for opportunities for taking Web 2.0 social media inside the organization. He also supports efforts started by others. In the case of wikis, a software engineering manager began the first effort. This manager wanted to create an internal version of the Wikipedia to share best practices and refine processes in their R&D group. He wanted a method to collect, make accessible, and keep current their R&D practices. This effort was a big success. Lots of people in the R&D group use it, if only to read the content. Samuel said this application is a great way to introduce wikis into an enterprise. He said that the use of a wiki with open editing privileges assumes that everyone in the enterprise is smart and can make intelligent contributions to the firm. Working together people can refine and improve processes in a bottom up way that creates a greater sense of engagement. This all happens at Océ. People assumed responsibility for their areas of expertise. They often followed updates to their entries. When there was change by someone else, it usually started a conversation over best practices. Sometimes management was brought into these conversations to get support and offer guidance. Any differences have been resolved without edit wars. Some people put in original content and others are good at cleaning up the format and language of contributions by others. Samuel said that the open platform of the wiki has trigged a sense of empowerment by employees. He also said that it works better as resource for this purposes as you can see content immediately and do not have to open documents that may or may not be what you need. At the same time, Samuel said that wikis are not the solution to everything. They have not been as useful for file sharing but that may, in part, be a limitation of the tool they are using. Samuel said that since they have other tools for activities such as file sharing and blogging, this makes the wiki better as it is only used for what it does best. He feels it is not a good practice to stretch wikis to tasks they are not designed for. There are three types of wikis at Océ now. The first one was the R&D wiki just described. More recently, a corporate wiki has been established to provide wiki functionality across the enterprise. It has four main sections: expertise wikis, department wikis, product wikis and project wikis. The expertise wiki includes a subsection that indexes abbreviations used in the firm. This index was the responsibility of one person who felt it was better to crowd source the task through the wiki. It has been successful and is a good example of an ideal task for a wiki. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog. |
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