Author:  Mike Sheridan, SVP of Strategy

Recently, while I was filling out my expense report, I realized that I had a question about something related to policy.  I wasn’t sure if I needed help from someone in HR or accounts payable, and I found myself wondering how I could identify the resident “expert” in my company who could quickly solve my problem. The truth - I wasn’t really in the mood to spend my morning trying to track down the right person to help me.

This got me thinking. If virtually everyone in a given company is at some point a “customer” seeking answers, there must be a better way for the enterprise to identify and manage its experts and expertise. The challenge is not just identifying skill sets but also in providing easy communications methods to leverage that skill. Like me, these other customers would want to find the right person, someone with specialized knowledge and the ability to quickly meet their needs. 

The challenge is though…how is the enterprise defining skills? And, is “skills” even the right terminology?   Most employees wouldn’t define themselves as having a specific skill set. They might say they have expertise in a certain area or knowledge of a certain type of function.  And, this of course impacts an organization’s UC strategy.

So, as IT starts to think about UC for knowledge management, some questions emerge:  (1) how to define people’s expertise, (2) how to manage that expertise, (3) how to ensure it is accurate, (4) how to make it available to the enterprise? and (5) how do I measure the effectiveness of its use?

To assess who knows what, some companies are using self-assessments, with social networking as an enabling technology. Self-assessments may also include identifying certifications or proficiencies that go beyond the typical resume items, to include specific industry knowledge or competitor experience. Or, enterprise search and data mining can be used to scan emails, blogs and collaboration tools like Microsoft SharePoint and look for keywords and name association.
 
When it comes to storing this information, HR systems may be a natural place to start, or perhaps enterprise directories like Microsoft Active Directory that already provide authorization and authentication services. External social networking services like LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook may even extend the knowledge base further.

Finally, when considering the best way to make information available, it’s often best to keep it simple. In the contact center, managers have used group assignments (one group = one skill). Over time, these skills and groups got very granular, enabling managers to rank a skill, so the best customers could be routed to an agent with X + Y skills and a 1 to 10 subjective ranking on both skills. Some contact centers are starting to move away from this more complex model. It is clear, from experience in the contact center that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.

The important thing though is to be sure to manage access to these knowledge workers.  In many cases they have other responsibilities that impact the success of the business.  So planning for scheduling, measuring and monitoring use of this knowledge will be just as critical as delivering it.

What innovative approach is your IT staff planning to take when it comes to UC for knowledge management?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Unified Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.