 | COLLABORATIVE BUSINESS KNOWLEDGE SUBSEGMENTS
- Business Intelligence (BI) describes the process of gathering information about a business or industry, as well as the tools and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help make business decisions.
- Business Process Management (BPM) refers to aligning processes with the organization's strategic goals, designing and implementing process architectures, establishing process measurement systems that align with organizational goals, and educating and organizing managers so that they will manage processes effectively. BPM often refers to automation efforts, including workflow systems, XML Business Process languages and packaged ERP systems.
- Collaboration tools support the process through which individuals work together to accomplish specific tasks. Various products and technologies, including software such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office System, Open Text Livelink, and Groove Workspace, facilitate such work.
- Community software describes applications that foster collaboration—these include discussion forums, Web conferencing, and instant messaging.
- Content means all forms of information, including text, formatted text such as HTML pages, interactive and/or dynamic Web pages (such as those generated from data files and databases), images, video, and sound files.
- Content Management software is the set of tools that manage the lifecycle of content creation, editing, workflow and distribution for a variety of purposes. A common use of Content Management software is to manage a Web site; another is to manage a company's intranet.
- Distributed Workforce implies a work environment where employees are diffused across different offices, time zones, borders, and surroundings, which may include a home office, telecommuting center, customer site, or hotel room.
- Document Management applications are used to manage the process of creating, editing, and distributing documents typically generated in productivity applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, and online presentation.
- E-learning is the process or experience of gaining knowledge or skill via a computer-mediated system. This includes Web-based learning, virtual classrooms, and certain collaborative environments.
- E-mail Messaging is a system for sending and receiving messages, usually text in the form of an abbreviated memo, electronically from one person to another or to a group of recipients over a computer network, e.g. between personal computers.
- Expertise Location systems identify and find experts. Expertise systems also manage the transmission of questions to experts and capture their responses for use and reuse in projects.
- Idea and Innovation Management is the process of capturing ideas and putting them into a process that ultimately results in new products or changes in practice.
- Knowledge-enabled CRM is the application of knowledge management tools and techniques to Customer Relationship Management technologies.
- Knowledge Management tools compile and deliver knowledge to the right people at the right time. Basex also defines knowledge management as the process of organizing, classifying, categorizing and disseminating organizational resources, consisting of people and information, in a manner so as to make these purposeful and relevant.
- Mobility and wireless connectivity is the ability to access people and information, as needed, from any device, regardless of the location and without noticeable latency.
- Portals are aggregators of enterprise resources, which include people and information, and are usually browser-based.
- Search and Categorization tools matches queries with documents that will likely contain relevant information. These documents can range from internal files to Web pages. Categorization technology places each document into the relevant node in a taxonomy.
- Social software supports interaction of individuals with groups.
- Telecommunications systems are electronic systems used in transmitting messages, which may include telephone, radio, and telegraph.
- Unstructured Data Management is the analysis of documents with the goal of extracting useful information from them, including actions, classifications, and connections.
- Weblogs (frequently shortened to “blog”) are chronological journals or logs of thoughts published on a Web page. They are typically updated daily using software that allows users with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. The act of updating a Weblog is “blogging” and the owner of the Weblog is a “blogger.”
- Workflow automates a range of business tasks, and allows the flow of work between individuals and/or departments to be defined and tracked. Users are notified of pending work, and the flow defines where inputs are initiated, the location of decision points and the alternatives in output paths.
It is essential to understand the various adjacent business dependencies and overlapping functionality among these areas. For example, the line where Content Management starts and Document Management leaves off is nothing less than a moving target. However, many managers fail to recognize this and, as a result, companies overinvest in redundant technologies. Forgetting for a moment the initial costs, the ongoing cost of supporting numerous systems which all accomplish the basically same task diverts budget from newer and more necessary tools. With sufficient knowledge at hand, managers can avoid this trap while at the same time striving to build true Collaborative Business Environments that engender a high level of knowledge sharing and collaboration within their organizations. |