One of the major challenge IT staffs face when seeking to implement social productivity tools is the virtual “mudball” of enterprise information that needs to be clearly sorted before successfully deploying any tools or platforms on top of it.
As companies seek to improve collaboration and efficiencies for their knowledge workers, deploying social productivity tools has become one of the top tasks for IT professionals. Workers today depend more and more on Web 2.0 applications, and enterprises of all sizes are looking to support them by deploying social productivity platforms.
These platforms marry collaboration with process automation. They include products like Microsoft SharePoint, which makes it easier for people to share information and work together on projects. The platforms include applications for web sites, portals, wikis, blogs, search capabilities and integrated tools for business intelligence.
One of the major challenge IT staffs face when seeking to implement these social productivity tools is the virtual “mudball” of enterprise information that needs to be clearly sorted before successfully deploying any tools or platforms on top of it. Oftentimes, the challenge is not in storing the information, its in finding the information, whether that’s content in the form of documents or the right person or expert to collaborate with on a project. Social productivity is about enabling organizations to do both.
There are basic questions companies can ask to help get the information sorting process started. Here are the most important:
- What type of content is it? Not just file types, such as Word docs or Excel spreadsheets, but the business context of those documents. You need to determine if it is HR, customer information, or accounting content. And once you determine its type, you then need to understand the various business or compliance rules associated with it.
- How is the content published? For many organizations, this can vary widely by department. After all, various types of functions tie operational preferences to a variety of information types and locations. Equally important is who publishes the content as people’s skills can vary across the organization.
- How do you classify your information? Another area that can vary widely across various departments within an organization. Classifying your information provides organizations the opportunity to automatically route information through a business process and can also help users find information more easily by allowing them to refine search results by how the information is classified.
- How are you going to retain the content? A common area where regulatory or compliance issues can weigh heavily on an organization. Retention schedules are important not only for official records, but also for non-records so old or outdated that content can be archived.
- User experience – can you make it easy? Bottom line is that if you can’t make it simple for people to find the content they need, they will use other methods to do it, which may take you back to antiquated processes using outdated systems.
- How will people find information? Publishing, classifying, and retaining content are key aspects to any content management solution, but if users can’t easily search and find the information, they will be less likely to adopt the solution.
If these six items are properly addressed, then you can pave the way to successful platform migrations. You will have the key elements you need to properly structure, classify, and manage your content. Additionally, you will create an environment through which people can more effectively collaborate in a socially productive manner.
As a result, your IT organization will be able to significantly reduce costs and the overall amount of content (example: email and document storage redundancies) while your workers enjoy the benefits of greater collaboration, process efficiency, and increased productivity.