Since joining Vamosa in 2001, Nic has helped transform the company into a sector-defining software and solutions company specializing in the emerging area of Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG). Nic has led the expansion of Vamosa in the US, while continuing to work closely with the UK team on Vamosa's strategy and vision for the recently launched suite of products. Lots of good stuff on the Vamosa corporate blog...you should check it out.
A previous Nic post for the 8 things juggernaut -- 8 things that always worried you about legacy content, but you were afraid to ask about.
Most organizations do not realize the actual volume of data living and breathing on their corporate web properties, document management systems and file shares. In a world where it is estimated that around 80% of corporate data exists in unstructured forms; knowing how to turn the contents of that digital landfill into a knowledge asset presents a huge challenge for any business. But by capturing, sharing and retaining that knowledge, you will definitely build business advantage. Here are 8 things you need to do get the most out of your digital landfill.
8 Things You Need to Do to Capture, Share and Retain Knowledge from Your Digital Landfill
1 -- Define Knowledge (and how it is to be deployed).
Content knowledge is the building blocks for your business to differentiate. Smart companies take content knowledge and turn it into a strategy, product and/or service that builds competitive business advantage. Before you can begin to understand and get the most from the information within your system, you must define knowledge. It needs to be up-to-date, relevant and map onto your prime business objectives. It also must be aligned with the mode of operation of your business; in a distributed, technologically advanced enterprise, there is often no need to produce paper-based information, with all the associated challenges of change control, and inherent costs. Similarly, within more, traditional, slower moving environments the use of electronic media alone may involve a level of culture change that is unnecessary due to the prevalence of paper based manuals, such as in field based applications or within engineering workshops. The reality is that knowledge should be independent from the channel through which it is delivered. It should be fit for purpose, and ideally operate across all communications channels within the business.
2 -- Adopt Industry Standard Classification Schemes where Possible.
Your organization has so much data, but which data maps to valuable knowledge is not necessarily apparent. You’ve already defined knowledge, however, now you need to understand how to extract this value from the data. This requires a process of classification, but one that is flexible. You should identify all business content within your company and then associate those pieces with an industry or corporate standard classification.
3 -- Embrace Long-Term Standards.
Using industry-wide standard object based classification will provide your business with a flexible organizational solution. That way, if the business changes, you can modify your taxonomy (that is, change the way in which the relationships exist between the objects) rather than having to physically re-classify every object to reflect the changed taxonomic requirements of your organization. This will help to ensure the knowledge assets are of use now and will be in the future as the business changes.
4 -- Apply Consistency to Your Existing Content to Reduce the Noise.
There is so much static noise within your organizations’ proper information in the form of inconsistent nomenclature, patchy classification, duplicate and near duplicate content. That noise makes it hard to find anything – normally because you don’t have the tools or techniques to pinpoint a relevant subject area, or because your information is stored in functional silos – in department-specific storage areas, for example. Apply your standard classification to your existing content to reduce the noise within your organization.
5 -- Make Sure Your Content isn’t Duplicated.
Fighting through the noise needs to go one step further; it needs to ensure that there are no duplication issues. A Swiss Bank client once told me that attaching a PowerPoint presentation of 1Mb to an email within that bank increases corporate storage requirements by at least 1 GB and produces on average ten versions of the file. In one search, a single document could exist in 100 different places. That single fact alone highlights how difficult it is to sort out the knowledge from the noise. By de-duplicating your content, you’ll already be streamlining the process. Anecdotally this can reduce the file count by between 50% and 80% - significant in anybody’s language.
6 -- Find the Holes within Your Knowledge.
Look for existing entities in your classification that do not exist within your metadata – the information you have about your content. Holes provide you with the ability to clean information, ensure all relevant metadata is being completed by content creators; and if it’s not to get those content creators in line. That way you’ll be able to ensure content is relevant, findable and clean.
7 -- Share Knowledge.
There is always a presumption that the way to share content is with a content management or document management system. But this is not always the first thing to address. Content Management Systems work optimally when the content that they are custodians of is focused, relevant and classified. You need to understand how the content is being used and then drive your choice of platform as required. When migrating emails, for example, you have the real opportunity to be selective about where you store content. One customer was migrating 120,000 user email accounts from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. When discussing the migration, it was identified that 70% of the storage requirement was generated by attachments. Moving all of the attachments to SharePoint instantly enabled ‘share-ability’ and de-duplication. You don’t need to follow the obvious route when sharing knowledge, rather choose a platform based upon what your business requires.
8 -- Maintaining Your Knowledge Assets.
If you don’t look after your house for years, leaving the walls to crack, the ceiling to leak and mould to grow in the bathroom, it’s not an easy task to repair. But if you manage it on a weekly basis, maintenance is much easier. The same applies to your knowledge. Once you get it to a point of usefulness, where it is relevant and findable, keep it there. If you don’t’ look at it for a year, you’ll then see some major gaps in the metadata, incorrect naming conventions, incorrect storage locations etc. If you invest in a pragmatic care and maintenance program, then spotting minor deviations from the documented standard will be easy to monitor for, highlight and resolve.
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