Technology Services

The project team conducted a series of requirements-gathering sessions, where various end user and management groups were brought together to capture and document their specific business requirements. The requirements were analyzed, ranked, and compiled into a business requirements document. Results from a parallel, rapid prototyping exercise were incorporated into the design. Once the requirements were approved by stakeholders, Iknow created a detailed project implementation plan.

Iknow worked with the client’s IT division during the detailed design phase. The application design process required expertise in interface design, content management system architecture and implementation, search engine design and tuning, taxonomy development, and portal technology.

The resulting system was based on a commercial ECM product and customized to meet the client’s business and technical requirements.

The project team developed a comprehensive solution that addressed the content management processes and technical infrastructure. The solution involved four core elements:

• A robust content management process that was integrated with the new product development process. The enhanced process included all of the necessary business functions and departments for the creation, review, and approval of technical customer support knowledge.
• A taxonomy for simplified content indexing and retrieval.
• A technical environment that incorporated a leading commercial enterprise content management (ECM) application suite.
• A global content management organization, with both distributed and centralized functions. This organization was accountable for the global content creation, publishing, and delivery processes.

Iknow, working collaboratively with the SI and the client’s development staff, built the knowledge repository, content search, and content-display system. Four separate interfaces with specific functionality were created for the four end-user groups: customers, internal technical support staff, sales engineers, and business partners.

Iknow started with a current state assessment. The project team analyzed the current system implementation, the business processes that interacted with or used the digital asset library, and the organization’s current role and responsibility assignments. Iknow conducted interviews with a variety of internal stakeholders and prepared process flow diagrams, information flow diagrams, and decision maps for the important business steps.

The project team developed a comprehensive set of 38 improvement recommendations covering content architecture/metadata design, user interface, connections between the assets, workflow integration, access by advertising agencies, asset expiration and asset archiving, search, content creation guides, and personalization.

Iknow created a comprehensive taxonomy framework for the DAM system. This deliverable included the metadata and controlled vocabularies for tagging the documents in the digital asset library and a taxonomy for browse and faceted navigation.

A three-phase implementation roadmap was developed. Phase 1 focused on content architecture and system enhancements. Phase 2 focused on content enrichment, implementing technical enhancements, and designing and implementing business process and organizational changes. Phase 3 expanded the company’s investment in and use of the digital assets and the DAM system.