judith meskill - soc.media.rocks

In The Sunday Times, Malta, there is an article regarding the recent NATO Forum on Business and Security--HP calls for closer collaboration between public and private sectors.
The following is an excerpt:
 
...Mr Mutell (vice-president of Global Security, Intelligence and Defence for HP) predicted that security systems, currently physical and static, will migrate to become digital, mobile and virtual. These systems will be reliant on integration, simplicity and manageability. Private sector expertise and investment will be crucial to deliver integrated solutions that provide secure information for global cross-border collaboration. The public sector can improve its efficacy and cost-effectiveness by leveraging best practices and best-in-class solutions from the private sector.
 
Mr Mutell cited initiatives, requirements, and challenges often shared by public sector and private sector organisations. These include modernisation and Internet adoption; spending control and optimisation; information integration and knowledge management; and restructuring and decentralisation...

News From USJFCOM: Collaboration at sea program helping to build a better battle rhythm
(ONBOARD USS MOUNT WHITNEY -- June 16, 2004) - How does a combined joint task force (CJTF) commander engaged in a war exercise ensure that more than 28,000 personnel from the U.S. and other allies quickly and efficiently manage information in a dynamic environment?
 
For Vice Adm. Gary Roughead, commander, Joint Task Force (CJTF) 950 - coordinator of Combined Joint Training Force Exercise (CJTFEX) 04-2, the answer is Collaboration at Sea (CAS).
 
...Joint commanders at sea need a broad spectrum of knowledge to manage the battle space and maintain an effective battle rhythm.
 
For commander, Second Fleet/NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic, knowledge management (KM) is big business. His role as a CJTF commander offers a unique challenge: to give multi-national personnel from Canada and the United Kingdom the ability to electronically move information across domains as seamlessly as possible.
 
...KWEB is a software application that operates under CAS. It is intended to facilitate group interaction and enhance the decision-making abilities of senior staff members. It does this by allowing staff members to publish information to and distribute it on the web.
 
...Having information move in a consistent flow across domains and down to the unit level allows for a constant situational awareness. "We are creating a coordinated battle rhythm through knowledge management," Lovering said.
 
Another added value of the CAS-KWEB combination is the ability to create a coalition network. "We are introducing Navy technology to a joint area," said Burke. "With the addition of all those collaborators, the growth of knowledge is exponential."

Computerworld | Microsoft seeks its next cash cow by John Fontana, Network World
 
...To the tune of US$1.6 billion in fiscal year 2003, Microsoft bled money from its Business Solutions, Mobile and Embedded Devices, MSN, and Home and Entertainment divisions.
...Despite the losses, Microsoft's competitors recognize these business units as slumbering giants. They are not only coddled by a cash reserve of $51 billion but with a thirst to become Microsoft's new growth business now that traditional cash cows - client operating systems and the Office suite - have matured.
 
...The rewards, risks and challenges are epitomized in Microsoft's $10 billion dream for its Business Solutions group, which produces ERP, CRM and other applications to automate business functions for small and midsize businesses (SMB), which Microsoft defines as those with 1,000 or less employees.
 
...Microsoft CRM works with Office's Outlook, and the company is working to marry its "knowledge worker" collaboration products with business-productivity applications.
 
Also on tap is Project Green, an initiative to replace Great Plains, Navision and Microsoft CRM with applications built on a single code base that depends on Microsoft's dizzying lineup of Longhorn branded clients, servers and development tools slated to start shipping in 2006...

On Internet.com, Susan Kuchinskas writes: 'KANA Customers Connected at the Hipbone.'
Kana - a CRM vendor whose services I first utilized almost seven years ago (before they acquired and assimilated 'Silknet' whose products I also utilized) - currently provides knowledge management, e-mail marketing, customer contact center operations, marketing and analytics applications, while Hipbone enables live chat, co-browsing and file sharing.

Military Information Technology :: Collaboration Through Technology By Chris Watson
 
...In 1999, Congress instructed the Department of Defense and the intelligence community to address the lack of interoperability between fielded collaboration tools. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Joint Staff (JS) established a Collaboration Tiger Team (CTT), composed of members from the combatant commanders (unified commands) and agencies, with a twofold mission: develop a strategy for implementing collaboration tools throughout DoD, and define and validate a prioritized list of functional requirements for DoD collaboration tools.
The OSD/JS CTT asked the Joint Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Battle Center (JBC) to conduct operational assessments of five DoD collaboration tools, focusing on the Joint Task Force requirements, and providing a recommendation satisfying an interim collaboration standard (18 to 24 month solution).
In September 2000, the JBC briefed the OSD/JS Collaboration Planning Tools Senior Steering Group, recommending the Collaboration Tool Suite (CTS) as the tool that best supported interim DoD collaboration user requirements. Following additional recommendations provided by the JBC in March 2001, the CTS was renamed the Defense Collaboration Tool Suite (DCTS).
 
Set of Open Standards
 
DCTS is an integrated suite of collaboration tools developed to support the mission planning process via voice and video conferencing, document and application sharing, chat, whiteboard capability and virtual workspace sharing. It is not a single product, but rather an evolving set of open standards within which standards-based products can interoperate. It is a client/server system consisting of client workstations connected via a network to a suite of centralized servers.
The client applications manage all local data processing, user interface and data export to other client-based commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software. The servers respond to internal and external client requests for data and manage and maintain the centralized data.
The current DCTS Version 2.0, Phase I, configuration is a fully featured suite of collaboration tools consisting of many parts, including:

Microsoft NetMeeting - provides Windows users with multi-point data conferencing, text chat, whiteboard and file transfer, as well as point-to-point audio and video.
Asynchrony Envoke - a government-off-the-shelf (GOTS)/COTS software application providing users of different systems awareness or presence of other users, spaces and meetings.
Sun Microsystems SunForum - provides shared applications and conferencing for PC and UNIX operating systems.
Digital Dash Server - a GOTS integration effort to provide space-based integrated collaboration services built on Microsoft Digital Dashboard technology. Services include space navigation, awareness, shared file space, access control, VTC conference joins, broadcast messages and system administration services.
First Virtual Communications MultiPoint Control Unit (MCU) - a COTS software application service enabling multipoint NetMeeting sessions.
Microsoft SQL Server - a complete database and analysis offering for rapidly delivering the next generation of scalable e-commerce, line-of-business and data warehousing solutions.
...The DCTS standard suite and several certified collaboration tools were deployed during contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in support of deliberate and crisis action planning...

and so i wish for you this holiday
a heightened sense of all that lights your fire
for passion is the thing that, come what may,
will help to manifest your deep desire.
 
so thank you for your praise of my tech prose
and in your heart please know that all you share
comes back to you and often overflows
with that for which your heart has steadfast care.
 
and as we find that 'sense in action' counts
with blogs and wikis in a 'socialtext' we'll see that interest in our action mounts
as we with knowledge fill our 'social decks.'
 
twas lilia inspired here this prose to 'actionable cohorts' - this 'sense' flows...
©2003 judith meskill

Christopher Saunders writes for InstantMessaging Planet on 'Spicing Up Collaboration' with Pepper Computer's flagship collaborative application.
Pepper Computer's founders Len Kawell and Mary Ellen Heinen, have strong backgrounds in collaboration systems. Kawell, with Lotus Notes, and he and Heinen with e-book player Glassbook (later acquired by Adobe.)
Pepper Keeper uses the "page" metaphor. Like sheets of paper in a notebook or journal, once you use the "pages" you need to buy more - pages are "non-renewable" - that is, they're usable once. Christopher Saunders writes: "Pepper Keeper introduces collaboration into the picture by enabling users to share their creations with others. The system relies on AOL Instant Messenger (specifically, the TOC protocol) to link users with friends, via a built-in Buddy List. The applications can be sent to other users as either read-only, or fully editable."
 
Pepper is available in Windows and Mac versions - and right now it is free.

In an article today in Network Computing Asia, Chan Chi-Loong writes about Collaboration Trends and Managing Its Dynamics.
I am including additional references for Collaboration Taxonomy, following this (long) citation from Chan Chi-Loong's article:
...quote... According to Dr Prabhakar Raghvan, Verity's CTO, the two most important resources a company has can be distilled to just two things: people and knowledge. Creating a knowledge management platform with efficient search functions and a well-defined document management plan can save companies millions - at a fraction of the cost of setting up the system, according to Prabhakar.
...Brian Prentice, senior analyst of Technology Research Services at META Group, strongly believes that collaboration technologies need to be managed more than ever as a profusion of collaboration tools invades the market.
Collaboration technologies are everywhere. A typical organisation might use IBM Domino for e-mail, Microsoft Sharepoint Server for directory services, Plumtree for portals, SAP for resource planning, Siebel for CRM, Oracle for databases, and so on. One of the biggest problems is that these technologies overlap. A shared workspace can be created with the Domino mail server, MS Sharepoint Server, Plumtree portal, and SAP. Besides the redundancy of resources, sometimes these different technologies do not mix that well and end users are inundated with having to learn how to use (or worse, forced to used) all these different applications for different groups. Far from simplifying matters, collaboration technologies actually complicate matters for end users if not properly managed.
Collaboration Taxonomy
One solution to help resolve this from the end user perspective is to establish a collaboration taxonomy. This is a set of guiding principles that correlate business activity and IT solutions with a collaboration focus. By having such a structure, organisations can better identify collaboration needs. This is a starting point for crafting a full-fledged management policy.

Through looking at some of the different aspects of collaboration - individual users, business processes, knowledge communities, intra-enterprises and lifestyle centric processes, a collaboration taxonomy can guide organisations in focusing on the intended returns of each IT investment. From this starting point, it can be extended to see how much work is necessary to integrate each piece into your organisation.

A Collaboration Strategy
META Group believes that a few big vendors like Microsoft and IBM will eventually dominate the market a few years down the road. These vendors were picked because they have strong existing products (e.g. Lotus Notes, Exchange) and a unified strategy for collaboration, rather than singular point products.

"Simplifying things is one of the best ways to empower people to use collaboration technology," says Balaprakash Kasiviswanathan, regional product manager for Asia-Pacific, Microsoft, "and seamless, painless integration from the front-end to the back-end will do this."

Whether META Group's predictions will play out remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that collaboration - e-mail, for example - is one of reasons we frequently employ IT in the first place. Comprising information and people, collaboration is too important to the future of an organisation to be left unmanaged...
...end quote...
Additional Collaboration Taxonomy References:
A Taxonomy for CSCW (Computer Support for Collaborative Work) Systems, Blog of Collective Intelligence: Collaborative Taxonomy Archives, Clemson University, C.R.E.D.O. Lab, Automation in Design Group, CSCW-98 Workshop, Mark Klein's Selected Publications on Collaborative Design, Underlying principles of an online community: The CSCW framework, Wherewithal: Collaborative Taxonomy Engine.

Social Intelligence Design 2004
...SID 2004 is the third workshop on the subject of social intelligence design focused on the significance of information technology in our lives, work, home, and on the move. In this workshop we consider Social Intelligence (SI) as the ability for people to relate to, understand and interact effectively with others. Our particular concern is how SI is mediated through the use of new technologies.
Main Themes of SID-2004:
 
* Natural Interactions - covering theory, modelling and analytical frameworks that have been developed with Social Intelligence Design in mind, including situated computation, embodied conversational agents, sociable artifacts, socially intelligent robots.
* Communities - covering community media, communication patterns in online communities, knowledge-creating, network and anonymous communities.
* Collaboration Technologies and tools - covering innovations to support interactions within communities, covering a range from knowledge sharing systems, multi-agent systems and interactive systems.
* Application Domains - including design, workspaces, education, e-commerce, entertainment, digital democracy, digital cities, policy and business.
 
Intended Participants:
This workshop is intended for all who are concerned with the impact of advanced information and communication technologies on social intelligence, in particular, researchers, developers and designers of new ways of communicating enabled and supported by such technologies. The contributions will be published in the workshop proceedings...

OfficialSpin :: Former IEQ investment, BiblioTech, copies its way into history
...London, England -- (OfficialSpin.com) -- 18/11/03 -- According to a website operated by Bibliotech Limited, OfficeMaster is their property - reference is made on the website to "TM" and BiblioTech say: "OFFICEMASTER" is owned and operated by Bibliotech Ltd." They say that "Officemaster is a leading, web-based, mobile office solution that combines a full suite of social software applications. With a focus on communication and collaboration, OFFICEMASTER allows each company to work effectively, both internally and with its customers and partners in an online business environment."
One problem though... OFFICEMaster is a UK registered word only (WO) trademark No. 2161786, owned by LSC Group Limited of Tamworth Staffordshire. LSC Group applied for their WO trademark on 21 March 1998. However on 6 July 1998 BiblioTech registered the domain name - officemaster.co.uk - then on 8 July 1998 BiblioTech registered another domain name - officemaster.net. LSC Group was granted a registered trademark on 30 April 1999, but that hasn't stopped BiblioTech from pursuing their own use or claiming that they own the trademark.
LSC Group's trademark is in Class 9, described as follows: computer programmes for the recordal, storage, indexing, retrieval, viewing, amending and printing of documents..."And so it seems that BiblioTech's use is a clear infringement of LSC Group's Mark...

[there are three news stories in this post, don't miss the two 'below the fold'.]
 
United Press International: The Web: Real-time networking By Gene J. Koprowski
 
..."The idea is to take advantage of the Internet's ability to mimic normal human behavior," Alex Chang, founder of Friendzy, a Web-based social networking organization, headquartered in Dallas, told UPI. "The most useful contacts you make are through someone you already know. There is no better targeted marketing than going through people you already know."
Friendzy was launched last month on the same kind of premise, said Chang. Those looking to make new contacts, whether they are for business or social reasons, log onto the site. It takes about one minute to register. "Visitors enter profile information and then can search for people by interests," said Chang. "Or, they invite their friends onto the network."
By putting the social network into a visualized format via the Web, users can seek out new friends with common interests more easily.
 
Privacy is protected, initially, by providing new members only limited information about another person, the online version of meeting someone in a bar and telling them your name and where you are from, said Chang...
 
...Microsoft Corp., in Redmond, Wash., is offering software called Microsoft Office Live Meeting for use by businesses for "real-time events (such as) marketing and public relations tours, briefing journalists, and even e-learning," Kent Kappen, a manager in the real-time collaboration business unit at Microsoft, told UPI.
Kappen said real-time technologies are replacing tedious "media tours" for company executives, who in the past had to travel to New York, Chicago, Washington, and Los Angeles to introduce a new product to the business press.
 
The software also is being used for more structured events, such as business meetings. Users log onto the system and communicate, with applications -- such as spreadsheets or word processing files -- in real-time, with colleagues around the globe, said Kappen.
 
"You can hash out things and get business done," Kappan explained. "This replaces sending a draft of a memo or a press release back and forth five times. You can just virtually look over someone's shoulder and collaborate and get it done on the spot. The key technology is not really just broadband. People with 56k line connections can collaborate too, just as well as those with a T1 line. The technology is bandwidth adaptive."
 
Another software firm is offering real-time collaboration tools that allow customers like Sony Corp., to connect all of their distributors at one time for a "live event from the desktop" and train them how to sell a new product, Marni Hoyle, vice president of corporate marketing at Centra Software Inc., of Lexington, Mass., told UPI.
"This is all really a reflection of the changing of social dynamics and of how business is conducted these days," Jeff Wong, global director of product management at Genesys Corp., an integrator of virtual conferencing technologies in Los Altos, Calif., told UPI.
"The driving thrust of companies is doing more with less," Wong said. "So companies need to communicate a lot more in a global economy. The technologies are bringing distributed work parties together, and enabling productivity through better communications. It's as if they're all part of a real social community, not separated by continents."
 
The real-time tools are likely to grow even more sophisticated within the next 10 to 15 years, said Peter Plantec, the psychologist and author, whose book features a forward by Ray Kurzweil, the computing guru.
"We're going to see programs that behave like viruses -- virtual characters -- talking in chat rooms, and MUDs (multi-user-domains) with people, and self-replicating and evolving. It will be totally wild," Plantec said.
 
"Corporations will use 'Synthespians' -- synthetic actors to communicate with customers. By replacing people, they will increase the profitability of corporations. There will be a lot more leisure time, because these synthespians will do a lot of the routine work we do today. And that will be interesting. If people have too much leisure time, they can get into trouble."
Plantec also predicted the very nature of social relationships would change for humans as these virtual characters evolve. "People will have relationships with computers," he said... Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Gratitude.net Provides Opportunity to Share Life Challenges and Cultivate a Deeper Sense of Thankfulness and Zest for Life
...With the renewed popularity in social-networking sites, Gratitude.net builds upon the trend of people looking to the web to help them make personal connections and experience a sense of community. With instant access to a large network of others who may have faced similar life challenges, Gratitude.net allows members to easily poll one another to quickly tap into knowledge and insights on how to best approach specific problems. The Gratitude community allows for a supportive environment to ask for advice, seek affirmation and discover solutions to real problems.
A completely free site, members receive and distribute gratitude tokens to other Gratitude community members who have helped them through a tough situation. Every member receives 1,000 tokens of gratitude each week to freely share with those who have shown support and offered them guidance. Taking time to send expressions of thanks and tokens of gratitude allows members to build a thankful disposition and a happier approach to life.
 
Built on the beliefs of Harvard professor, Howard Gardner -- that the most accomplished people in history cultivated three key habits: reflection time, leveraging their strengths and framing their experiences for growth -- Gratitude.net allows members to nurture these habits through sharing challenges and offering advice and wisdom to others.
"Gratitude.net was developed to help cultivate that person we all wish we could become," said Gattis...
Mercury News :: Marimba chairman to step down By Therese Poletti

...Kim Polese, one of Silicon Valley's few high-profile female executives, said Tuesday she is stepping down as chairman of Marimba, the software company she co-founded in 1996...
...Tech insider Dave Winer, an inveterate blogger and fellow at Harvard Law School, said he was surprised that Polese stayed at Marimba as long as she did.
 
"She is more creative and Marimba has become a successful company, but kind of mundane," Winer said.
 
He speculated that Polese may be interested in a new kind of software growing in popularity. "She has been showing up at parties about social networking software and blogging parties," Winer said. "It's a whole new generation of software, and some of it is being created in the valley."...

[there are nine news stories in this post.]
 
CIO :: Analyst Corner - IT Does Matter By Margaret Tanaszi - Program Manager, IDC
...An interesting debate has been engaging the attention of many in the business community and IT industry, sparked by an article by Nicholas Carr in the May 2003 Harvard Business Review, IT Doesn't Matter. On his website, Carr further explained his argument in the article that IT has become a commodity, and although essential to competitiveness at the regional and industry level, "it is no longer a source of advantage at the firm level - it doesn't enable individual companies to distinguish themselves in a meaningful way from their competitors." (Nicholas G Carr.) The article said,
The rapidly increasing affordability of IT functionality has not only democratized the computer revolution, it has destroyed one of the most important potential barriers to competitors... The opportunities for gaining IT-based advantages are already dwindling. Best practices are now quickly built into software or otherwise replicated... Their very power and presence have begun to transform them from potentially strategic resources into commodity factors of production. They are becoming costs of doing business that must be paid by all but provide distinction to none."
 
Carr's thesis is built on the notion of scarcity. He says that what makes a resource truly strategic-the basis for sustained competitive advantage-"is not ubiquity but scarcity," and notes that the core functions of IT have now become available and affordable to all."
 
However, the same notion about the value of information (the "information is power" principle) was firmly disproved by the now common diffusion of information by networks and the Internet. One of the key tenets of knowledge management, for example, has been that the value of information increases by its use, distribution and transfer to create new forms and configurations of knowledge, which go on to create new kinds of value, and as history shows, value that can be translated into currency.
 
Few would argue with Carr's point that "most companies can...reap significant savings from cutting out waste." That is a perennial problem for most organizations, and they are trying to address it as best they can. Many companies can also count themselves in Carr's assertion that "companies have been sloppy in their use of IT," citing inessential volumes of information on corporate storage networks. That too is an ongoing challenge for most organizations.
 
It is when Carr claims that corporate IT spending studies "consistently show that greater expenditures rarely translate into superior financial results" that he exposes the space in which IT can truly matter. The disassociation between spending and results sheds no light on what was done with the IT investments to lead to those disappointing outcomes. Similarly, Carr cites a 2002 Alinean study, comparing those same parameters for 7,500 large U.S. companies, which found that "the top performers tended to be among the most tightfisted." Again, what is missing is how those top performers used the IT investments to their advantage... KM Europe 2003 - creating, exploiting and retaining Knowledge
Now in its 4th year and already enjoyed by more than 10,000 visitors, KM Europe is the largest Knowledge Management (KM) conference and exhibition in the world. Growing every year, this event is a driving force behind KM development in Europe. KM Europe 2003 takes place from the 10-12 November at Amsterdam RAI and will be the biggest and best event yet.
 
TenLinks :: iManage Releases CADLink for iManage WorkSite
...FOSTER CITY, California, November 10, 2003 - iManage, Inc. (Nasdaq: IMAN), a leading provider of collaborative content management software for global enterprises, today announced the release of CADLink for iManage WorkSite MP, a solution that integrates leading computer-aided design (CAD) applications into the iManage platform. Designed to help engineers leverage content management functionality from within their native CAD environment, CADLink for iManage WorkSite MP is being introduced under an OEM agreement between iManage and McLaren Software, the leading developer of content-based enterprise applications for companies in the process manufacturing, utilities and engineering, design and construction sectors.
The introduction of CADLink for iManage WorkSite MP will combine the power of iManage's collaboration content management solution with the CAD capabilities of industry-leading products like Autodesk AutoCAD and Bentley MicroStation. CAD drawings and the intricate network of references between the CAD files typical of complex designs, are all stored, accessed and controlled through iManage Worksite MP, enabling engineers to work concurrently and improve design cycle time. Engineers using the solution can access drawings directly from the iManage repository through the familiar menus of their CAD applications, speeding the adoption of content management practices. Combined with the powerful extranet capabilities and tight security model of iManage WorkSite MP, CADlink enables businesses to collaborate across their value chains on design and construction projects at significantly reduced time and cost...
Business Wire :: OSFI Technology Initiative to Improve Processes, Information Management; Will Aid Regulator in its Role of Overseeing Financial
...The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), the regulator of federally registered financial institutions operating in Canada, will implement a new system to streamline, standardize and re-design internal processes and improve the management of information across the organization. OSFI will work with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGE&Y) as its systems integrator for the initiative, and will utilize software solutions from Formark and Open Text(TM) Corporation (Nasdaq: OTEX)(TSX: OTC). The solution will be based on Open Text's Livelink(R) software suite.
Called the Business Systems Integration Initiative (BSII), the project will allow OSFI to enhance its effectiveness in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing financial services industry. The BSII project will provide a new level of automation, so that OSFI employees can quickly and more efficiently manage regulatory processes, improve risk management supervision and speed responses to key stakeholders...
Endeca Announces Formation of Government Advisory Board
...CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 2003--Endeca, the leading provider of advanced search and Guided Navigation(SM) solutions, today announced the formation of a government advisory board. The founding members of the Endeca Government Advisory Board bring long experience and expert knowledge of public sector and government technology applications to the company. Founding members include: Roger Baker, former CIO for the Department of Commerce, Alan Balutis, former executive director for the Federal Government Information Processing Council (FGIPC), and Charles Battaglia, former staff director for the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
"We are very pleased and honored to have such an experienced and successful trio of individuals form the nucleus of our advisory board," said Steve Papa, CEO and founder of Endeca. "These board members exemplify integrity and public service and have been entrusted to provide leadership across the wide spectrum of government including national intelligence, military, and civilian agencies. Their association with Endeca is further validation of Endeca's potential to revolutionize the way the public sector finds, discovers, and analyzes information, and we plan to augment the board with equally distinguished members in the coming months." ...
Business Standard :: Managing know-how
...Winners of the IMA-American Express "India CFO Awards" write exclusive case studies on how they helped their companies overcome crucial strategic problems. In the last of this series, V Balakrishnan, CFO, Owens Corning India, winner, India CFO Award 2002 for Excellence in Information & Knowledge Management, writes about how he made information management more seamless and aligned it to the company strategies.
...The various initiatives that we have undertaken in the field of knowledge management have been recognised by Owens Corning. We had been engaged by the parent to develop a Six Sigma Tracking Tool that is used across some 60 sites worldwide. It is a prestigious project that has enhanced the image of the organisation.
 
One question that is asked is: what is a CFO's role in knowledge management? Knowledge Management is all about process and aligning strategy to what your company knows.
 
It is a process requiring appropriate corporate culture, good technology, metrics and an organic quality of growth, right information to right people and understanding of what needs to be retained. One would end up linking knowledge, business strategy and IT.
 
Given all this, a CFO is at an advantage of capturing the organisational knowledge which is into processes that are aligned well to the business strategy that he or she is aware of, and use IT as a tool for capturing this knowledge through a well-designed process.
 
This knowledge is mostly converted into business data and as the central repository, the CFO is able to leverage the knowledge availability across the organisation and channelise it through processes to drive superior business results.
 
In my role as the CFO of the company, I along with my highly-charged IS team, have been able to make information management more seamless than experienced earlier. Some of the initiatives or strategies might look small but these have contributed immensely to the productivity of the organisation...
Yahoo PR NewsWire :: Global Downturn in Profit and Growth to Be Addressed By Pharmaceutical Executives at March 8-9 Forum
...NEW YORK, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Executives and high level decision makers from the largest pharmaceutical and healthcare companies along with economists, strategists, and consultants will convene in Chicago, IL to address critical impediments to industry growth and profit, reports Strategic Research Institute.
R&D productivity, generic competition, pricing strategies, regulatory and policy concerns, as well as lack of innovation in global product marketing will be among the obstacles covered over the course of the two-day executive forum to be held in March.
 
The speaking faculty is diverse and comprehensive, consisting of industry executives from strategic planning, market analysis, licensing, federal relations, new products, business development, knowledge management, drug commercialization, medical affairs, health economics among others.
 
Key industry companies participating to date include: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novartis, ISO Healthcare, Medical Solutions PLC, and Aventis Pharma US.
 
Audience interaction will be facilitated via panel and roundtable discussions, specifically in the integration of R&D and performance strategies...
Computerworld Singapore :: Search gets serious By Cathleen Moore and Tan Ee Sze

...The content management challenges that enterprises face in Singapore are no different from those reported in other parts of the world: the electronic content that enterprises accumulate is growing rapidly and these would require good search solutions.
Moreover, in the Singapore context, enterprises may also have to grapple with a host of other issues. James Lin, chief operating officer of Mustard Technology, pointed out that there may be good technology but what is often lacking is local support in terms of cost-effective consulting and implementation skills. "For the global vendors, it is a challenge to support remote customers," he said.
...Mustard Technology's niche is in the area of fuzzy search that crosses language barriers - the fast and fuzzy transliterated search. Mustard uses patented fuzzy logic matching algorithms and natural language parsing capabilities that mimic the human approach to problem-solving. This enables the software to index high volume databases and suggest appropriate matches according to user-configured business rules and scoring thresholds. The software operates across multiple Asian languages and is tailored for Chinese (simplified and traditional), Malay, Japanese and Korean languages as well as English.
The company also has a patent for its version of the taxonomy search, and works closely with local research groups to incorporate other technologies such as concept search, text summary and text categorisation into its search solutions.
 
...One of the growing ways to put search to use is through search-derivative applications, in which core search functionality is pressed into service for specific processes such as knowledge management, marketing, sales force automation, help desk, and training.

Looking towards the future, enterprise search technology will continue to expand beyond its seek-and-find roots, blurring the lines between efforts such as business intelligence and knowledge management in an effort to present a full view of information assets within a company...
Yahoo PR NewsWire :: Virage(R) Announces VS Archive(TM)
...SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Virage, Inc., a wholly owned division of Autonomy Corp. (Nasdaq: AUTN; LSE: AU.; Europe Nasdaq: AUTN) and a leading provider of rich media communication and content management software, today introduced VS Archive, its next-generation software solution to store, categorize, manage, retrieve and distribute video, audio and other rich media content.
Building upon the highly successful VS Production(TM)and VS Publishing(TM), this release expands the range of rich media business applications including those for marketing, sales, human resources, production and training. With this solution organizations can digitize, index, share and repurpose content departmentally or enterprise-wide thereby enabling multiple users distributed across locations to quickly find and review content and collaborate online. In addition, the solution automates the analysis and categorization of the original footage removing this once highly manual and time-consuming process. Companies making this investment benefit through improved communication, better advertising and promotion, increased productivity, accelerated learning and the security of knowing valuable corporate assets will be preserved for the future.
 
VS Archive manages all forms of unstructured content from the point of ingestion through archive creation and content access. Powered by Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), video and rich media are now integrated at the center of other enterprise content and compatible with existing systems. IDOL Server(TM) capabilities include automated retrieval, hyperlinking, categorization, alerting, profiling, clustering and personalization. Other Autonomy technologies integrated into this release include Dremedia(TM) and SoftSound(TM) for scene change detection, transcript alignment and advanced audio and speech analysis.
 
In addition, Virage core products and technologies power the solution. The SmartEncode(TM) product line includes the award-winning and market-leading product VideoLogger® for automated indexing, analysis and encoding, and ControlCenter(TM) for monitoring, managing and scheduling multiple source feeds. Virage Solution Server(TM) provides the framework and underlying capabilities for rich media content management using Java(TM) 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). The capabilities include security, user and group management, asset management, database and storage management, XSL template rendering, SOAP data import and high availability...

[there are eight news stories in this post.]
 
MarketingProfs.com :: Between the Pages of Angel Customers and Demon Customers by Nick Wreden
 
...How many companies call themselves "customer-centric" while failing to see issues through customers' eyes?
Larry Selden, professor emeritus of finance and economics at Columbia University, and Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor at large at Fortune magazine, argue in their book, Angel Customers & Demon Customers, that any company that claims it's customer-centric is "an outright fraud" unless it can pass a three-part test:
 
* Is there a specific person who "owns" the customer and can develop specific value propositions?
* Who is accountable for the profitability of a customer or segment?
* And how significantly does the company differentiate interactions with customers?
 
The subtitle of the book is Discover Which is Which and Turbo-Charge Your Stock, which summarizes the book's premise well. The only way to achieve a P/E superior to the market - not your industry - is to understand that a company is no more than a portfolio of customers.
 
Companies that want a superior stock price must understand the relative profitability of customers, develop different value propositions for customers of varying profitability and organize around customers.
 
Here's what the authors say:
 
You can build gross margin by making capital investments that reduce labor costs; it works because the capital costs aren't included in gross margin. You can buy market share with price cuts. You can increase customer satisfaction and retention through all sorts of giveaways to the customer that will cost the company dearly.
 
Only by looking at customer economic profit and a contribution to a premium P/E can one make a sound judgment about the success of an initiative...
 
Selden and Colvin offer a new way to calculate customer equity - although, curiously, the term is never used. A "Customer Segment Value Creation Scorecard" divides each demographic or other segment into current, new and lost customers.
 
Sales to each group are broken out by products, services or intellectual capital, and reflect cross-sells and up-sells. Costs include COGS (costs of goods sold), account management, acquisition costs and, interestingly, Customer Knowledge Management (CKM), which represents the costs of acquiring, maintaining and using customer information. Subtracting these costs (and taxes) from revenues gives the familiar figure of net operating profit after tax, reached in a new way.
 
Then the approach grows complex. Using these figures, companies can calculate return on invested capital (ROIC) for each category of customer. The ROIC for each customer segment is used to calculate current and future P/E... destinationCRM :: Phone Tag: A Costly Game by David Myron
 
...Siemens Communications released the results of an online survey outlining how much money British businesses are losing due to phone tag.
Of thirty thousand British information workers surveyed, 70 percent of respondents claim up to one third or more of their calls do not get through to the right people the first time. They are either forced to hang up or to leave a message when an associate is not available to take the call. In fact, more than one quarter of respondents believe that 50 percent or more of their calls fail the first time because people are not available on the other end of the call.
 
ased on the survey and its own research, Siemens estimates each office worker wastes at least 30 minutes a day playing phone tag or making unsuccessful phone calls. After considering average employee hourly pay rates, based on figures from Britain's National Statistics Office, unsuccessful phone connections costs British businesses nearly L83 million ($139.1 million) a day, or L22 billion ($36.87 billion) in a working year. These figures do not include toll costs.
 
Connecting employees to associates quickly is a familiar concept inside call centers, especially when agents need to call an associate or a supervisor for help with a customer. A related study this summer by Collaborative Strategies, commissioned by ePeople, revealed that more than one-third of the workweek is spent answering intrusive questions, which often necessitates another call to a colleague for help.

Collaborative Strategies surveyed 157 respondents from companies with at least $50 million in revenue.
 
"Where we see this most often is in what we call exception management, which is when you have an irate customer.... Eighty percent of the time you can use a low-cost automated solution [to answer customer queries]," says David Coleman, managing director at Collaborative Strategies.
 
Yet, it's the other 20 percent of calls that causes the most difficulty. These need to be answered by a live agent, and quickly. One way to solve the problem, the Collaborative Strategies report claims, is effective expertise management that includes knowledge-sharing and other more efficient ways to answer questions, find expertise, or obtain necessary information in a timely fashion. Companies like ePeople and Kanisa compete in this space. "Enterprises have been slow to adopt knowledge management technologies, but based on the survey results they could clearly benefit," Coleman said in a statement. "There exists a tremendous opportunity for knowledge and expertise management vendors to deliver tangible value to the enterprise."...
TMCnet :: eGain Announces New Release of Data Adapter to Support eService Trade-in Program
...SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- November 4, 2003 -- eGain Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: EGAN), a leading provider of customer service and contact center software to the Global 2000, today announced a new version of eGain Data Adapter to support the eGain SafeSwitch Program. Announced earlier this year, eGain SafeSwitch allows companies that have already invested in non-scalable or obsolete eService systems to safely switch to eGain's proven, best-of-breed e-Service software, trusted by world-class companies to achieve and sustain customer service excellence, while trading in the un-depreciated value of their prior investment*.
The new version of the eGain Data Adapter allows customers to easily access data from any business system including legacy eService systems, ensuring a seamless switch to eGain with no business disruption. Furthermore, the solution enables fast and easy access to complete customer views and associated service history, based on data from eGain and non-eGain systems.
 
"Staying with obsolete e-Service systems could be a fatal mistake in today's tough business environment," said Ashu Roy, CEO of eGain. "The eGain SafeSwitch Program and the eGain Data Adapter, along with the guarantee of investment protection and no business downtime, make it a no-brainer for companies with such systems to make the switch to eGain."
 
The eGain SafeSwitch Program is available to replace email management, knowledge management, live web collaboration and web self-service systems from existing and acquired vendors such as Kana, ServiceSoft, Firepond, Brightware, eAssist, Delano, Divine, Melita, Webline, Cisco and others. Several enterprises, including leaders in industry sectors such as outsourcing, manufacturing, retail and government, have already made the switch eGain's trusted solutions...
MCADCafe :: NGRAIN Software Brings 3D Capabilities to Product Knowledge Management
...Enhancements to NGRAIN Knowledge Module and Mobilizer deliver improvements in the way companies capture, manage and communicate product knowledge for training, maintenance and service applications.
Responding to a growing need for more effective ways to support product knowledge management within organizations, NGRAIN(TM) Corporation, a leading interactive 3D visualization and simulation software developer, today announced significant advances in its innovative products, Knowledge Module 2.1 and Mobilizer 2.1.
 
NGRAIN revolutionizes the way organizations maintain and communicate complex product and equipment knowledge. This allows employees to easily embed knowledge within 3D models, resulting in Knowledge Objects that are deployable to users with desktops, laptops or Tablet PCs. NGRAIN Knowledge Objects provide a powerful visual index to reference materials and knowledge, through an on-demand virtual product experience available to anyone, anywhere.
 
"NGRAIN has extended its knowledge-capture capabilities and - for the first time - allows users to integrate NGRAIN 3D graphics content directly into familiar applications like Microsoft(R) Word and PowerPoint(R). With these capabilities, users can easily access and understand product knowledge, wherever and whenever they need it - in the classroom, on the factory floor or out in the field," said Gabe Batstone, General Manager, NGRAIN Product Knowledge Management...
Business Wire :: Convera Selected for Technology Modernization Program at Customs and Border Protection Within U.S. Department of Homeland Security
...VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 2003--Convera (Nasdaq:CNVR), a leading provider of search and categorization software for enterprises and government agencies, today announced RetrievalWare has been selected as the search technology for the Customs and Border Protection Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) handbook. The new contract for Convera is worth approximately $2 million.
Within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) developed for Customs and Border Protection will be used to increase critical information sharing among the 22 Department of Homeland Security agencies. An important component of ACE, the electronic handbook helps create a new high-tech trade system to streamline import operations and offer greater efficiency for Customs and Border Protection staff and the international trade community...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Verity Named a 'Top 100' Company by DM Review for Second Consecutive Year
...SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Verity Inc. (Nasdaq: VRTY), a leading provider of enterprise software that helps organizations maximize the return on their intellectual capital investment, has been cited as a 'Top 100' company for the second consecutive year by DM Review, a foremost publication for business intelligence and analytics, in the most recent issue of the magazine...
PAHO :: Scientists Review Advances in Scientific Research in the Americas
...Washington, DC, November 3, 2003 (PAHO) - Scientists from throughout the Americas opened a meeting here Monday to review the current status of scientific research in the region.
The three-day meeting being is being held at the headquarters of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
 
The 15-member Advisory Committee on Health Research (ACHR) - which includes eminent scientists from several hemispheric nations - will review the initiatives and strategies of technical cooperation by PAHO agencies for the promotion and development of health research.
 
The task this year has mainly to do with the management of information and knowledge.
 
The meeting was officially opened by PAHO Director Dr. Mirta Roses, who said that faced with "inequity, urban growth and poverty the likes of which this continent had never witnessed before - poverty has tripled since the 1970s - we see knowledge not as something static, but as a tool to change the situation."
 
Roses said that development and access to knowledge are essential to meet the new challenges and to sustain the progress made in the area of health. "In this regard," she said, "the trail-blazing work of ACHR helps show the way by pointing out the best ways to reach those objectives."
 
Dr. Richard Van West Charles, PAHO's area manager for Information and Knowledge Management, noted that one of the elements for gaining knowledge is research.
 
"Research is often perceived as a tool of exploitation by the powerful, or as just a way to publish it in a scientific magazine. However, it is a vital component of development and, as such, must be accessible to all levels of society." For this to be possible, he said, every PAHO initiative must have a communications component that aims to reach wide and diverse audience.
 
Van West Charles also said that PAHO is working strongly to transform the traditional way in which knowledge is regarded. "We have to learn to share knowledge, using existing technologies and understanding it as a tool for action. We're also working to better organize the collection and analysis of data, attain knowledge, and evaluate the impact of scientific research in the region," he noted...
Yahoo :: Stanford University Licenses Ingenuity Pathways Analysis, Collaborates on Systems Biology Solutions
...MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Ingenuity is pleased to announce today that the Stanford Genome Technology Center at Stanford University has licensed Ingenuity Pathways Analysis, a new web-delivered application that enables biologists to discover, visualize, and explore therapeutically relevant networks significant to their experimental results.
Dr. Ronald Davis, Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center, first used the application during its beta release. Dr. Davis, who is pleased with the application's novel analysis of gene expression data said, "Ingenuity Pathways Analysis is the first successful application to bring a systems biology approach to large datasets, enabling functional analysis on a genome scale. Its delivery, incredible ease-of-use, and most importantly, its biological insights, make this a necessary solution for anyone doing gene or protein based research."
 
In addition to licensing the Ingenuity Pathways Analysis application, Ingenuity and the Stanford Genome Technology Center are collaborating on the development of new functionality to further extend the application's capabilities and the state of the art of systems biology...

[there are five news stories in this post.]
 
The Globe and Mail :: Workers better educated, StatsCan says
...OTTAWA - University graduates invaded not only high-tech industries, but also a variety of high-knowledge jobs in the 30 years between 1971 and 2001, a Statistics Canada study indicates.
Even in the mining, oil and gas sector for example, the percentage of workers with high-knowledge occupations almost doubled, to 26 per cent from 14 per cent.
 
In general, 34 per cent of knowledge workers had university degrees in 1971, compared with slightly less than 3 per cent of other workers, the agency reported Thursday.
 
"By 2001, 52 per cent of all workers in knowledge-intensive occupations had a university degree, compared with less than 10 per cent of those in other occupations."
 
The study found that the shift toward a knowledge-based economy was not a new phenomenon that emerged only in the 1990s when the information and communications technology sector experienced explosive growth.
 
"In fact, the proportion of knowledge workers increased steadily over the past three decades, reflecting a growth trend that began long before the high-tech boom of the 1990s," the agency said.
 
In 1971 about 14 per cent of the workforce had high-knowledge occupations. By 2001 that proportion had almost doubled to 25 per cent.
 
The study also found that:
 
While knowledge-based occupations pay significantly higher wages, the wage advantage enjoyed by knowledge workers relative to other occupations did not increase significantly from 1971 to 2001.
 
In 2001, some of the largest concentrations of knowledge workers were in business services at 66 per cent and finance and insurance at 42 per cent.
 
In the 1990s, the proportion of workers who were knowledge-based grew faster in service industries than in goods industries.
 
University degrees were most common in professional occupations. In 1971, slightly less than 45 per cent of professionals had university degrees. Thirty years later, this proportion was 66 per cent.
 
Growth in knowledge-based occupations has occurred in all regions of the country... AScribe :: Personal Web Usage in Workplace Offers Benefits for Employees, Employers, New Book Concludes
...PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 29 (AScribe Newswire) -- More and more employees are surfing the Web for personal reasons during work hours, and according to Saint Joseph's University's Dr. Claire Simmers and Drexel University's Dr. Murugan Anandarajan, it could be beneficial for employees and employers. In a new book entitled "Personal Web Usage in the Workplace: A Guide to Effective Human Resources Management" (Information Science Publishing), they explore the constructive side of personal Web usage.
Better time management, reduction in stress, adding to skill sets, and helping to achieve a balance between work and personal life are some of the advantages cited in the book.
 
"Personal Web usage in the workplace has a negative perception, especially among administrators who often see it as inefficient and creating a decrease in work productivity," said Dr. Simmers, associate professor of management.
 
The book suggests that personal Web usage can contribute to employees' continuous learning by helping them stay current on world events and business news, as well as provide support for education through formal classes and professional associations.
 
"Today, organizations demand more human capital and 'knowledge workers' who can perform at a higher level, but they are reluctant to view personal Web usage as a tool that could help employees perform their jobs more effectively," added Dr. Simmers. "If there is a level of virtual trust built between employees and organizations, then the use of the Internet can prove to be productive."
 
The study conducted by Drs. Simmers and Anandarajan, one of several presented in the book, analyzed 316 surveys of employees who were either part-time M.B.A. students from a northeastern university, or one of three contacts of each student; all of them had Web access at work.
 
Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1851, Saint Joseph's University advances the professional and personal ambitions of men and women by providing a demanding, yet supportive, educational experience. One of only 137 schools with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and AACSB business school accreditation, Saint Joseph's is home to 3,900 full-time undergraduates and 3,400 graduate, part-time and doctoral students. Steeped in the 450-year Jesuit tradition of scholarship and service, the university challenges students to exceed their highest aspirations, fosters the mature development of values and deepens a desire to help shape the world...
allAfrica :: South Africa: Number of Full-Time Telecommuters Doubled Since 2000, Says Meta Group
...Teleworking policies continue to change as cultures and technologies mature, providing the framework for expansion from the travelling salesperson to the enterprise knowledge worker. Currently, more than 90% of enterprises use dial-up services to support such workers. However, functionality requirements for knowledge workers include the ability to access all relevant corporate and customer information, which demands reliable broadband access via cable modems, DSL, and other always-on Internet solutions for the remote workstation portfolio.
"By 2004, 40% of Global 2000 (G2000) companies will have an always-on broadband services policy that encompasses acceptable use, sourcing, payment/reimbursement, and service-level expectations (to include required quality of service for VOIP) for small, fixed remote sites and teleworkers. By 2006, 60% of G2000 organizations will have adopted such technology policies," added Ussher. "Among the reasons enterprises are considering convergence (eg, voice, data, video) are remote access by telecommuters to telephony features (including voice mail and station-to-station dialling) and access to non-telephony applications (eg, corporate applications), underlining the need for an enterprise-wide telecommuting strategy to include support."...
The Financial Express :: Not Limited To Consumer Space by S SADAGOPAN
 
...Microsoft InfoPath is a neat application to capture business process re-engineering. MS One Note is a convenient tool that permits knowledge workers to capture multitude of bits and pieces of information, particularly using Tablet PC features. On the server side, Share Point Server has been fully integrated with MS Office permitting collaboration, publishing and controlled distribution available to ordinary users without having to learn/install additional pieces of software. To get the full benefit of Office System, one should have many of the server products installed too. In a sense, this upgrade of MS Office targets organisations (in fact, large organisations) that are focused towards productivity, process improvement, performance improvement, scalability and security...
ebizQ :: Informatica Aligns With IBM, webMethods
...Informatica Corporation, a provider of data integration and business intelligence software, has reached an agreement with IBM under which the two companies will jointly integrate, market and sell business intelligence solutions worldwide. The agreement will help Informatica more tightly integrate its entire product line with key IBM hardware and software platforms, "enabling customers to significantly speed development, increase effectiveness and reduce the cost of their integration and business intelligence environments," Informatica says.
The new agreement enhances the companies' existing relationship, and will enable collaborative solutions to be implemented as an integrated whole. "This will empower customers to more efficiently utilize their full range of information assets, deliver comprehensive business intelligence to wider sets of knowledge workers, and respond more quickly and intelligently to business opportunities and change," Informatica notes...

Hold onto your socks - there are fourteen knowledge management 'stories' in this post. From iPhrase's One Step application, to Kent State's collaboration with Sheffield University, United Kingdom, to Line56 Media and Plumtree Software's new survey results, to articles on Content Management, the UN, Document Management, to the release of new enterprise suites by both Hummingbird and Generation21 Learning Systems, Global Knowledge's new CEO, Primus' first profitable quarter, and the list goes on... Enjoy...
 
SearchCRM.com :: A better search creates a site for sore eyes By Barney Beal
 
...The difference between a frustrated customer slogging through a maze of site links and one quickly finding the necessary information can be the difference between a sale and someone logging off.
That has companies taking a closer look at enterprise-search technology for their customer-facing applications.
 
Countrywide Financial Corp., in Calabasas, Calif., recently invested in the One Step application from iPhrase Technologies Inc. Countrywide, a mortgage lender that is branching out into banking and insurance, wanted to create a common style for its 110 external-facing Web sites. Much of the firm's business goes through the online channel, including about 45% of its mortgage lending, according to Larry Gentry, first vice president of business technologies.
Countrywide bought into One Step in May and has rolled it out on its corporate communications and investor relations sites.
 
"So far, it looks great," Gentry said; "iPhrase has a good reporting module, so you can instantly see what people are searching for [and] the number of clicks. It's insight we never had before."
 
Already, the company has seen unexpected traffic for job listings and career information. Additionally, many users are looking for branch locations. Armed with that information, Countrywide was able to move the link to that information further up the FAQ site, saving customers a step.
 
Customer-facing search technology is just one segment of the overall enterprise-search market, according to Tim Hickernell, an analyst with META Group, Inc., in Stamford, Conn. Others include traditional, enterprise-wide search technology and categorization, and there's also information-discovery technology, such as that used by large agencies such as the CIA and FBI.
Laura Ramos, a director with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said the market for search technology is just beginning to sort itself out.
"Enterprise search is still very crowded with vendors and crowded with technology," she said. "There's a lot of opportunity for growth. It's difficult to sort out the players."
 
Analysts say Verity, Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., and Autonomy Systems, San Francisco, are two of the bigger players in the overall enterprise-search arena... Yahoo :: Kent State University's CEED and United Kingdom's Thinktank Collaborate to Bring Global 'Best Practices' to the Business Sector
...KENT, Ohio, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Executive Education and Development (CEED) at Kent State University announces an exclusive collaboration with ThinkTank Consortium, an Action Learning Consortium working with Sheffield University, United Kingdom. This first-time alignment between the two consortiums will launch a new block of training programs and global best practice initiatives never before available to businesses. The combination of practical knowledge and implementation strategies created by this venture is unprecedented. Businesses will have the opportunity to access these global best practices through new programs and initiatives offered by CEED. Courses will begin January, 2004 with curriculums such as Innovative Thinking for Management, E-Business: Global Best Practices, Knowledge Management Fundamentals and Process Management for Healthcare. A complete course schedule is available at: ThinkTank Consortium: Partners in Best Practice.
"The benefits of synergy from this collaboration between ThinkTank and CEED are incalculable and obviously desirable to any business" states Richard Jackson, principal of ThinkTank Consortium.
 
Mr. Richard Jackson recently spent two weeks on the Kent State University Campus for meetings, presentations and keynote addresses. Mr. Jackson has implemented quality systems in business, the classroom and healthcare. Holding MSc's in both Operational Research and Business Intelligence, Mr. Jackson's premier expertise lies in the field of healthcare. (Note: European MSc's are equivalent to U.S. based PhD. degrees) He is currently in collaboration with the UK's National Health System (NHS) on the development of an automated knowledge management system for NHS.
 
"Combining the capabilities of these two organizations will, unequivocally, result in the invaluable sharing of global intelligence" states Lucinda Welch, Outreach Manager of CEED. "We are proud to present this caliber of knowledge, application and research to our clients."
 
CEED specializes in customized training and consulting services. Located at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio USA, CEED helps today's executive leaders rise to the challenges of this highly competitive marketplace. CEED strives to provide business clients with highly targeted and effective training/development programs and consulting services that focus on growth, productivity and organizational excellence. For more information regarding CEED, contact Lucinda (Cindy) Welch, Outreach Manager at 330-672-1176, lwelch@bsa3.kent.edu or visit CEED - Kent State's Center for Executive Education and Development.
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Line56 and Plumtree Publish First-Ever Survey of Enterprise Web Deployments, Validating the Need for Radical Openness
...LOS ANGELES and SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Line56 Media and Enterprise Web leader Plumtree Software (Nasdaq: PLUM) today published the industry's first comprehensive survey of organizations deploying Enterprise Web software. Survey results indicate that the average mid- to large-sized organization supports over four development standards, nearly three application servers and over three content repositories. The survey also found that organizations are using this heterogeneous infrastructure to build an enormous number of applications, averaging over 120 applications per respondent. The report, which also includes market-share and ROI data, is available at Line56.com | E-Business Research Reports. Line56 and Plumtree will discuss the survey results in an online seminar this Wednesday, October 19th at 11:00 a.m. PT with registration at Line56 and Plumtree Discussion Registration.
eWeek :: Content Management is King By Dennis Callaghan
 
...Enterprises with diverse content management needs will have new options from IBM and Open Text Corp., following announcements from those companies regarding new products and an acquisition, respectively.
IBM last week rolled out new content management software for small and midsize businesses and Linux shops, as well as new content management integration offerings and records management product enhancements. ...
 
Meanwhile, Open Text last week acquired German enterprise content management software developer Ixos Software AG, which is expected to add content management and archiving to Open Text's core strengths in collaboration and knowledge management. The $225 million deal comes on the heels of Open Text's August purchase of another German content management software developer, Gauss Interprises AG...
UN News Centre :: UN reform proceeding on many fronts, Frechette tells General Assembly
...A new report on providing technical cooperation identifies UN system agencies active on certain issues and clarifies roles and responsibilities to eliminate duplication, she told the Assembly. "It is hoped that this compendium will be a useful source of information for programme countries and the donor community."
The UN's work in developing countries "is being made more effective through simplification and harmonization of procedures, joint programming, the pooling of resources, better knowledge management and improvements in the (development) Resident Coordinator system," she said.
 
This year's UN budget proposals represent "a major effort to realign activities with priorities and to increase attention to development issues, in particular the Millennium Development Goals," she said.
 
The goals, approved in 2000 by a summit of world leaders, aim to eliminate extreme poverty by 2015.
 
Alongside the efforts to reform the international civil service, General Assembly President Julian Hunte of St. Lucia has been campaigning to improve the working of the 191-member body.
 
Speaking at the opening session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union hearing today, he said, "We seek to foster the building of a 'global parliament,' more efficient in its decision-making process and more capable of taking effective decisions. Above all, we need a United Nations General Assembly whose decisions are respected and have a decisive influence on the actions of member states."
 
In the General Assembly later, he appointed "facilitators" to move the process of gathering reform proposals along and he asked delegates "to demonstrate a combination of imagination in proposing solutions and of willingness to be flexible during the process of negotiation."...
Transform Magazine :: Document and Content Services: From Plain Vanilla to Super Deluxe by Sam Diamond
 
...Things sure have changed at service bureaus. It's not that they're offering 39 flavors of service; they're more like the new "old fashioned" ice cream stores that start with plain vanilla and then mix in toppings to create whatever concoctions customers want. Most service bureaus still start with basic document-oriented services, such as scanning and data entry, but it's the added services that really bring value to customers.
"The role of service bureaus has evolved from one of just enabling companies to save space by making electronic copies of documents, to one of empowering them to leverage the content in those documents," explains John Solomon, president of Input Solutions, an imaging-oriented service provider in Gaithersburg, MD. "Increasingly, companies want value-added services like database design, sophisticated indexing schemes and knowledge management capabilities." ...
 
Service bureaus understand that to remain successful, they must offer a range of services that match the changing needs of the market. What does the menu include so far? Conventional document services include scanning, data entry, database design, indexing, creating sub-databases for specific interest groups within an enterprise, knowledge management, and delivering images on secure Web sites, via secure transfers or on CDs or DVDs.
 
In the content-oriented services arena, taxonomy development, content tagging, and XML/HTML transformation services are commonplace, and value-added services now include integration services and site hosting. Outsourcing, too, is gaining popularity, with companies turning to service providers to take on complete business processes.
 
"Businesses today are trying to meet increasingly complex information needs with manual and fragmented document and records management practices," says Larry Wash, vice president, managed services operations at Rochester, NY-based Xerox Global Services. "To address this issue, organizations are focusing on how to more effectively capture, manage and deliver unstructured information in order to facilitate productive collaboration among employees, make more effective decisions and reduce embedded process costs."...
Transform Magazine :: Moving Closer to True ECM by Marvin Pyles
 
...Hummingbird Enterprise 5.1, the latest version of Hummingbird's suite, is aimed at meeting compliance mandates as well as most, though not all, of the challenges of enterprise content management (ECM). While it's not a major upgrade, release 5.1 offers many improvements in usability and application performance that will translate into better productivity for end users.
Hummingbird Enterprise is a suite of integrated applications including document management, records management, knowledge management, collaboration, search, business intelligence (BI), data integration and a unifying portal. Hummingbird was among the first ECM companies to integrate records management functionality, so it can draw on extensive experience in meeting today's heightened compliance demands. The company's records management technology is DoD 5015.2-certified, and the company has more recently added an Automated E-Mail Management solution to provide classification, indexing, search and retention of messaging content in Exchange public folders and Lotus Notes repositories. ...
 
Hummingbird's strongest customer bases include legal, professional services, government agencies, financial services and utilities. According to Shruti Yadav, an analyst with Wellesley, MA-based Nucleus Research, "Companies seem to choose Hummingbird because it has the most out-of-box functionality you can use without excess consulting or customization costs. This gives companies a shorter implementation time and can have a huge impact on ROI."...
Business Wire :: Global Knowledge Appoints Joseph W. Cece President and CEO
...CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 28, 2003--Global Knowledge Inc., a worldwide leader in IT education and learning solutions, today announced the appointment of its president and chief executive officer, Joseph W. Cece. A seasoned senior executive with more than 20 years of experience growing and managing companies in highly competitive sectors, Cece was selected by the owners of Global Knowledge -- New York investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe -- to lead Global Knowledge's future strategy and growth in the worldwide IT education and learning marketplace.
Before joining Global Knowledge, Cece served as the CEO of BTI Telecom Corp., a Raleigh, N.C.-based telecommunication provider that recently merged with West Point, Ga.-based ITC DeltaCom. Prior to his tenure at BTI, Cece held executive management positions at Digital Access, Suburban Cable, Cablevision Systems Corp. and TV Guide...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Generation21 Learning Systems Enterprise Version 5.0 Displays Unprecedented Stability
...GOLDEN, Colo., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Generation21 Learning Systems, a leading developer of enterprise learning software, has completed load testing on its new Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0 and the results are unprecedented. Generation21 Enterprise version 5.0 will be released in November at TechLearn in Orlando. The load test, conducted on Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0 baseline product, simulated 66,299 users and 397,794 transactions over the seven-day testing period resulting in zero errors. Performance on the application server and database server were monitored over the seven-day period with memory usage never exceeding 25 percent of capacity, with the exception of a couple of spikes at 40 percent.
"We have made great strides with Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0," said Dale Zwart, Generation21's founder and chief technology officer. "But all of the new advances would be for naught if we weren't able to offer a stable system to our customers. The results of our testing have been phenomenal."
Generation21 pioneered the use of Universal Knowledge Objects -- "nuggets" of right-sized information -- and continues to enhance enterprise learning with innovations including performance support with context-based retrieval of knowledge outside of the classroom and on-the-job. Generation21 allows organizations to capture and share knowledge to generate measurable results in improved efficiency and productivity by allowing a company's knowledge base to be easily accessed by employees in diverse locations, thus allowing learning to be constant. Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0 will be unveiled November 2-5, 2003 in Orlando, Fla. at TechLearn 2003...
RealMarket CRM News Release :: SupportSoft
...SupportSoft's Knowledge Center Suite Automates Self-Service for 25,000 Cox Employees
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SupportSoft (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), Inc. (Nasdaq: SPRT - News), a leading provider of real-time service management software, today announced the successful deployment of SupportSoft's Knowledge Center Suite(TM) within Cox Communications, a Fortune 500 and leading cable communications company. The Knowledge Center Suite leverages SupportSoft's Real-Time Service Management (RTSM) software platform that allows problems to be automatically put into context, their cause to be diagnosed and, once determined, resolved -- or even avoided altogether -- in real time...
Business Wire :: Guardian Technologies Signs Definitive Agreement to Purchase Intellectual Property of Difference Engines
...DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 28, 2003--Guardian Technologies International, Inc. (OTCBB:GDTI), an Intelligent Systems Solution Provider (ISSP), announces that it has reached an agreement to purchase the Intellectual Property (IP), which includes the radiology imaging, compression, and feature enhancement technologies of Difference Engines Corporation (DE), a privately-held company in Columbia, MD.
According to Michael Trudnak, CEO of Guardian Technologies, "we have long thought of Life Sciences as one of Guardian's primary markets for its advanced Intelligent Reasoning Information Systems (IRIS). This intelligent solution combined with imaging technologies, has applications across all areas of medical information."
 
"We feel this transaction provides Guardian with the most advanced platform currently available for penetrating the market for HIPAA compliance. This market is estimated to have a potential size of $160 billion. Our platform allows medical providers to store all medical records, documentation, and medical images in a secure 'point & click' software platform. It will be a significant contributor to our revenues in 2004," Trudnak continued...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Factiva and Verity Partner to Improve Global Enterprises' Intellectual Capital Management
...SUNNYVALE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Factiva(TM), a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, and Verity Inc. (Nasdaq: VRTY), today announced an agreement that will help global enterprise customers to effectively and easily organize their intellectual capital assets. The companies will jointly offer enterprise customers the opportunity to integrate a set of Factiva's industry-specific taxonomies with Verity's intellectual capital management software, K2 Enterprise. In addition, customers can gain access to Factiva's global collection of nearly 8,000 content sources, and engage the taxonomy and technical experts of Factiva Client Solutions.
Under the terms of the partnership, Factiva will offer its content and taxonomy expertise, including strategy and implementation -- adaptable to the specific needs and rules of an organization -- for use with Verity's flagship intellectual capital management solution, K2 Enterprise. Factiva will offer its established general business taxonomy for companies, industries, regions and subjects, as well as its recently announced specialized pharmaceutical and healthcare taxonomy. Factiva Client Solutions, including its taxonomy specialists, will now be available to assist with Verity implementations...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: CACI Awarded $60 Million in Contracts to Provide Marketing and Call Center Support for Military Health System
...ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CACI International Inc (NYSE: CAI) announced that it has been awarded two prime contracts by the Department of Defense (DoD) to support TRICARE, the military's healthcare program. One contract calls for CACI to provide management planning and resources to help centralize TRICARE's marketing and education capabilities, while the second calls for CACI to support TRICARE's customer call center.
With a total estimated value of $60 million, both contracts have a duration of one base year and four option years. The awards increase CACI's DoD client base and support the company's growing business in DoD healthcare services...
Business Wire :: Primus Knowledge Solutions Reports Quarterly Profit and Revenue Growth
...During the quarter Primus added several new customers, including a significant wireless provider, First Consulting Group, Genentech, Red Hat and others and had repeat business with Airbus, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Washington Mutual Bank and others.
Also during the third quarter, Primus received the 2003 STAR Award for "Best Support Technology Vendor" from the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry association for IT support professionals...