Learning outcome:
14.1. Identify the different ways in which companies collaborate using technology.
14.2. compare the different categories of collaboration technologies.
14.3. define the fundamental concepts of a knowledge management system.
14.4. provide an examples of a content management system along with its business purpose.
14.5. evaluate the advantages of using a workflow management system.
14.6 explain how groupware can benefit a business.
Teams, Partnerships, and Alliance
l Organizations created and use teams, partnerships, and alliance to :
- undertakes new initiatives
- Address both minor and major problems.
- Capitalize on significant opportunities (grab chances)
l Organizations create teams, partnerships, and alliance both internally with employees and externally with other organization.
l Collaboration System is a set of tools that supports the work of teams or groups by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.
l Collaboration system usually use technology to collaborates with other department.
l This is to make work be more easier because everybody share the information with each other.
l Business 2.0 collaborative mind-set generates more information faster from a wider audience.
l Organization from alliances and partnerships with other organization based on their core competency (strength of an organization)
- Core competency - an organizations key strength, a business function that it does better than any of its competitors.
- Core competency strategy - organization choose to focus specifically on its core competency and forms partnerships with other organizations to handle non-strategic business processes
- Hire or collaborates another people who have expertise in certain field such as Human resource people or finance.
l Information technology can make a business partnerships easier to establish and manage.
- Information Partnerships - occurs when two or more organizations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer.
l The internet has dramatically increased the ease and availability for IT-enabled organizational alliances and partnerships.
Collaboration System
l Collaboration solves specific business tasks such as telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications, and remote project and sales management.
l Collaboration system is an IT-based set of tools that supports the work teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information.
l There are two categories of collaboration which are :-
- Unstructured Collaboration (information collaboration) - includes documents exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums and e-mail.
- For example, Samsung share it mobile phone design with others organization such as Lenovo.
- Structured Collaboration (Process Collaboration) - involves shared participation in business processes such as work flow in which knowledge is hard coded as rules.
- For example, sharing a process in making a product.
l Collaboration system include :-
1. Knowledge Management System
2. Content Management System
3. Workflow Management System
4. Groupware systems.
Knowledge Management Systems
l Knowledge Management - Involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.
l Knowledge Management Systems - supports the capturing and use of an organization’s “know-how” throughout the organization.
l KMS can distributes organization’s knowledge by interconnecting people and digitally gathering their expertise.
Explicit and tacit knowledge
l Intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into two categories which are :-
1. Explicit knowledge - consist of anything that can be documented, archived and codified often with the help of IT.
2. Tacit Knowledge - Knowledge contained in people’s head.
- People experience and knowledge are very hard to get, to imitate or to duplicate.
- It is also the real competitive advantages meaning that, it is something that cannot be imitate, very personal and it is also considered as a personal assets of a person.
l The following are two best practices for transferring or re-creating tacit knowledge.
1. Shadowing - less experience staff observed more experienced staff to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work.
2. Joint problem solving - a novice and expert work together on a project.
- The expert itself will teach the novice how to finish a task by working with them as a team.
l Reasons or the benefits why organizations launch knowledge management program are:-
a. To increase profits or revenue
b. Retain key talent and expertise
c. Improves customer retention and/or satisfaction.
d. Defend market share against new entrants
e. Penetrate new market segments
f. Reduce costs.
Knowledge Management (KM) Technologies
l Knowledge Repository (databases)
l Expertise tools
l E-learning applications
l Discussion and chat technologies (held a forum through technology)
l Search and data mining tools.
KM and social networking
l Finding out how information flows through an organization
- Social networking - a process of mapping a group’s contacts (whether personal or professional) to identify who knows whom and who works with whom.
- For example, do a background searching on someone.
- SNA provide a clear picture of how employees and division work together and can help identify key experts.
- For example, can use SNA to find business partners to make a collaboration with them.
Content Management
l Content management system (CMS) provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of information in s collaborative environment.
l CMS marketplace include :-
- Document Management System (DMS)
- Digital Assets Management System (DAM)
- Web Content Management System (WCM)
Document Management System (DMS)
l Supports the electronic capturing, storage, distribution, archival, and accessing of documents.
l The info will be sharing in a shape of documents.
Digital Assets Management Systems (DAM)
l Similar to DMS, generally works with binary rather than text files, such as multimedia files types.
Web Content Management System (WCM)
l Adds an additional layer to document and digital assets management that enables publishing content both to intranets and to public web sites.
l It is more tending to website in keeping document.
l Organization partners can easily edit the info.
Working Wikis
l Wikis - web-based tools that make it easy for users to add, remove and change online content which can be easily organized and reorganized as required.
l Wikis users can generally alter the original content of any article.
l Business wikis are the collaborative web pages that allow users to edit documents, share ideas, or monitor the status of a project.
l Example , Wikipedia.com place all the information in one pages.
Workflow Management System
l Work activities can be performed in series or in parallel that involves people and automated computer systems.
l Work flow - defines all the steps or business rules, from beginning to end, required for a business process.
l Work flow management system - facilitates the automation and management of business processes and controls the movement of work through the business processes.
l For example, control the work flow when collaborate the job with partner.
l Messaging-based workflow systems - send work assignment through an e-mail systems.
l Database-based workflow system - stores documents in a central location and automatically asks the team members to access the document when it is their turn to edit the document.
Groupware system
l Groupware technologies.
l Groupware - software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling, and video conferencing.
l Groupware system advantages are :-
I. Facilitating communication (faster, easier, clearer, more persuasive)
II. Enabling telecommuting
III. Reducing travel costs
IV. Sharing expertise
V. Saving time and costs in coordinating group work.
Video conferencing
l Video conference - a set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmission simultaneously.
Web Conferencing
l Web conferencing - blend audio, video, and documents-sharing technologies to create virtual meeting rooms where people ‘gather’ at a password-protected web sites.
Instant messaging
l E-mail is the dominant form of collaboration application, but real-time collaboration tools like instant messaging are creating a new communication dynamic.
l Instant messaging - type of communications service that enables someone to create a kind of private chat room with another individual to communicate in real-time over the internet.
