Services

Findability and Search

Findability is the art and science of making information easily retrievable within content management systems, digital asset management systems, databases, and on complex websites and portals. The objective of findability is to deliver the right content to users when they need it with the least amount of effort and frustration.

Business Value

Improvements in findability and search allow users to efficiently and intuitively find the exact content they want when they need it. Better search increases employee productivity, improves the quality of decision making, and reduces the frustration from a poorly designed and implemented search application.

Deliverables

Iknow delivers configured and optimized enterprise search systems. These systems typically include carefully configured user interfaces that provide an optimal user experience.

Taxonomy and Metadata Development

The primary functional need in today’s electronic information environments is providing effective and easy-to-use methods that enable users to find, navigate, and use content.

Business Value

Taxonomies and metadata, when properly implemented within a client’s ECM, DAM, or enterprise search system, improve the ability to find relevant content quickly. Specifically, taxonomies and metadata support filters, facets, browse, and other types of advanced search functionality.

Deliverables

Iknow delivers custom taxonomies and metadata schemas/models that are handcrafted to our clients’ unique environments.

Much of our work in taxonomy and metadata development takes place in the context of larger knowledge management engagements. On these assignments, Iknow delivers not only a customized taxonomy but a completed enterprise content management (ECM) or digital asset management (DAM) system that incorporates the taxonomy and metadata for asset tagging.

Content Migration and Enrichment

A common challenge in most knowledge management initiatives is the migration of digital content from legacy repositories into a newly launched, enterprise content management (ECM) or digital asset management (DAM) system. Because of the large numbers of assets in legacy repositories and databases, this activity can often be one of the most costly and time-consuming parts of a KM system implementation.

Business Value

Content cleansing, consolidation, and migration help organizations better manage their content and lower storage and related software costs. Content enrichment, when combined with enhancements to enterprise search software, greatly improves the findability of digital assets.

Deliverables

Iknow’s deliverables from Content Migration and Enrichment projects typically include:

  • A content migration plan, including recommended tools used to execute the migration.
  • A content enrichment plan.
  • Implementation assistance for performing content migration and content enrichment tasks.

Content Governance and Lifecycle Management

Content governance and lifecycle management are the policies, practices, and procedures that ensure that an organization’s available content is timely, accurate, and relevant. Content governance helps create trust in the information so that employees can use it with confidence.

Business Value

A strong and well-managed program for content governance and content lifecycle management is key to ensuring that content shared across the organization is valuable and relevant to end users.

Deliverables

Iknow’s primary deliverables for Content Governance and Lifecycle Management include:

  • Content governance strategy, which includes detailed descriptions of how each major content type is handled, from creation through expiration. Specifically, this description, or map, would show who creates it, how the content is approved for use, and who the intended content consumers are.
  • The roles and resources required to implement content governance policies and practices.
  • A risk mitigation plan that addresses security, privacy and confidentiality, and other concerns that relate to the safeguarding of content.
  • Implementation assistance.

External Content Strategy, Sourcing, and Rights Management

Iknow offers a full set of services to help organizations evaluate, acquire, and manage their external content sources.

Business Value

Making sure you have the right flow of external information into your organization is critical to success. Too much and you become paralyzed (and waste resources); too little and you make uninformed decisions.

Deliverables

Iknow offers a full suite of services around external content acquisition, rationalization, and maintenance, including:

  • External content strategy.
  • Source identification—finding and evaluating new sources of content.
  • Source rationalization—helping organizations optimize their spending on the “right” content sources.
  • Contract negotiation—helping you get the best prices and contract terms.
  • Business process design/redesign and optimization. Making sure the content reaches and is used by decision makers.
  • Implementation assistance.

Content Strategy Development

Because much of an organization’s knowledge is codified in the form of content, the content strategy is a core element of any good knowledge management program. The business goal of a content strategy is to put the right content into the hands of the right people to help them make better decisions and work more effectively.

Business Value

A content strategy is essential for successfully managing an organization’s content. Without a clearly defined content strategy, the organization will likely end up with content silos, ineffective search, and limited knowledge sharing.

Deliverables

Iknow’s primary deliverable is a content-strategy document. Depending on the project scope, it could include a detailed roadmap for content-related improvements and preliminary requirements for items such as content review/approval processes, classification, archiving, and security.

Iknow also offers assistance for implementing a content strategy.

KM Renewal

Practically every organization has some experience with knowledge management. Even when these efforts are not necessarily labeled “knowledge management,” they nonetheless represent real investments in people, process, technology, and content-related initiatives and tools, typically with the goal of enabling their staff and teams to do their jobs more effectively through the access to, and sharing of, relevant data and information.

Business Value

KM Renewal programs offer the potential to provide a fresh approach and new momentum to existing KM programs. If the shortfalls in an underperforming KM program are not addressed, then these failures can “poison the well” and cause businesses to abandon otherwise good investments in knowledge management.

Deliverables

The main deliverable from this work is a refreshed KM Strategy and Roadmap. The strategy helps reset the dialogue and the underlying business case with the organization’s leadership; the roadmap is a focused action plan on how to enhance and optimize the value of the current knowledge management programs. Iknow builds this action plan through internal interviews and surveys, and an assessment of existing programs.

Iknow also offers assistance for implementing KM Renewal programs.

Governance, Roles, and Organization Design

Governance deals with the “how” questions of knowledge management: How should KM be organized, monitored, and managed for successful outcomes? To address these issues, Iknow works with clients to define and build the structures, roles, and governance processes required to fully enable effective knowledge management in their organizations. This could include leadership positions, KM steering/advisory groups, and business-unit knowledge management roles.

Business Value

Success with knowledge management depends critically on both leadership and effective support resources. A well-designed combination of dedicated management roles with networks of part-time advisors and facilitators can ensure efficient use of resources to meet KM objectives, while enhancing broader organizational involvement and buy-in.

Deliverables

Iknow’s deliverables typically include an organizational strategy, role descriptions for both permanent and advisory/committee positions, staffing and training plans, as well as draft communications for describing the new roles to the rest of the organization.

Iknow also offers assistance for implementing governance, roles, and organizational design recommendations.

Processes, Policies, and Procedures Development

To ensure that knowledge management becomes a permanent and self-sustaining organizational capability, Iknow helps our clients define and implement KM processes, policies, and procedures. For example, process guidelines are often developed for managing content throughout its lifecycle (i.e., content submission, review and approval, retention, and expiration). Standardized business processes may also be created in areas such as content summarization, external content selection and review, access rights to specific content repositories, and ongoing KM performance measurement.

Business Value

Well-developed processes and policies simplify KM implementation, accelerate organizational uptake and buy-in, and strengthen ongoing maintenance processes for knowledge management. Once established, these foundational elements of KM can “run in the background,” reducing management burden and improving KM outcomes.

Deliverables

Iknow’s Processes, Policies, and Procedures Development deliverables take many forms. Draft policies and procedures are prepared and submitted to senior management for their review and acceptance. Graphical process maps describe future-state work flows for the key KM activities. The process maps generally include activity descriptions, roles and responsibilities, automation opportunities, and potential branches and loops depending on the outcome of each process step. These maps are helpful for developing detailed role descriptions, communicating the vision to the organization, and training.

Iknow also offers assistance for implementing new KM processes, policies, and procedures.

Strategy and Roadmap

Iknow consultants have years of collective experience working with executives and managers to develop customized KM strategies, KM mission and vision statements, and implementation roadmaps for client organizations. We help clients ensure that their KM strategy is consistent with other business priorities and will help the whole organization pursue its goals.

Business Value

The KM Strategy and Roadmap documents are critical in ensuring that knowledge management initiatives have clear and meaningful goals, align with other business priorities, and include the appropriate actions to drive rapid progress and guarantee effective execution.

Deliverables

Iknow’s primary deliverable is a KM Strategy document that summarizes the key business goals of knowledge management, the key organizational and process challenges to be overcome, and how success will be measured. The final document is often preceded by interactive workshops to discuss interim hypotheses and conclusions. 

A separate KM Roadmap document, also prepared following interim review sessions, describes each implementation initiative, together with its rationale, relative importance, timeline, and costs. The document includes a prioritization framework and options for sequencing the overall implementation effort.

Iknow also offers assistance for implementing the KM Roadmap.

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