Teams, Partnerships and Alliances
~ undertake new initiatives
~ address both minor and major problems
~ capitalize on significant opportunities
> Collaborating system
= Supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information
- Organization form alliances and partnerships with other organizations based on their core competency
> Core competency
=An organization's key strength, a business function that does better than any of its competitors.
> Core competency strategy
= Organization chooses to focus specifically on its core competency and forms partnerships with other organizations to handle nonstrategic business processes.
> Information Partnership
= Occurs when two or more organizations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer.
Collaboration System
- Collaboration solves specific business tasks such as telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications and management
> Collaboration system
= An IT-based set of tools that supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information
# Categories of collaboration
> Unstructured collaboration ( information collaboration)
= Includes document exchange, shared white boards, discussion forums and e-mail
> Structured collaboration (process collaboration)
= Involves shared participation in business processes such as workflow in which knowledge is harcoded as rules.
# Collaborative business functions
# Collaboration systems
> Knowledge management systems
- Supports the capturing and use of an organization's "know-how"
~ Knowledge management (KM)
= Involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.
> Content management systems
- Provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing and publication of information in a collaborative environment.
> Workflow management system
- Controls the movement of work through a business process.
> Group ware systems
- Software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling and videoconferencing.
Explicit and Tacit Knowledge
- Intellectual and knowledge-based assets categories:
> Explicit knowledge
= Consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified often with the help of IT
* Payroll information, customer address, student grades and faculty course taught.
> Tacit knowledge
= Knowledge contained in people's heads
* How to perform a process, how to perform an activity and how you feel about something.
# Best practices for transferring or recreating tacit knowledge
> Shadowing
= Less experiences staff observe more experienced staff to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work.
> Joint problem solving
= A novice and expert work together on a project.
# Reasons why organizations launch knowledge management programs
KM Technologies
- Knowledge management systems:
~ Knowledge repositories (databases)
~ Expertise tools
~ E-learning applications
~ Discussion and chat technologies
~ Search and data mining tools
KM and Social Networking
- Finding out how information flows through an organization
> Social networking analysis (SNA)
= A process of mapping a group's contacts (whether personal or professional) to identify who knows whom and who work with whom
- SNA provides a clear picture how employees and divisions work together and can help identify key experts.
Content management
> Content management system (CMS)
= Provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing and publication of information in collaborative environment.
# CMS marketplace includes:
> Document management system (DMS)
= supports the electronic capturing, storage, distribution, archival and accessing of documents.
> Digital asset management system (DAM)
= Similar to DMS, generally works with binary rather than text files, such as multimedia files types.
> Web content management system (WCM)
= Adds an additional layer to document and digital asset management that enables publishing content both to intranets and public Web sites.
- Content management system vendor overview
Working Wikis
> Wikis
= Web-based tools that make it easy for users to add, remove and change online content
> Business wikis
= Collaborative Web pages that allow users to edit documents, share ideas or monitor the status of a project.
Workflow Management Systems
- Work activities can be performed in series or in parallel that involves people and automated computer systems.
> Workflow
= Defines all the steps or business rules from beginning to end, required for a business process
> Workflow management system
= Facilitates the automation and management of business processes and controls the movement of work through the business process.
> Messaging-based workflow system
= Sends work assignments through an e-mail system
> Database-based workflow system
= Stores documents in a central location and automatically asks the team members to access the document when it is their turn to edit the document.
Groupware Systems
# Groupware system advantages
Videoconferencing
- A set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously
Web conferencing
- Blends audio, video and document-sharing technologies to create virtual meeting rooms where people "gather" at a password-protected Web site.
Instant messaging
- Type of communications service that enables someone to create a kind of private chat room with another individual to communicate in real-time over the Internet.
# Instant messaging application
