CHAPTER 15

CREATING COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

In this chapter, we learned about :

• Identify the different ways in which companies collaborate using technology
• Compare the different categories of collaboration technologies
• Define the fundamental concepts of a knowledge management system
• Provide an examples of a content management system along with its business purpose
• Evaluate the advantages of using a workflow management system
• Explain how groupware can benefit a business

Teams, Partnerships, and Alliances

• Organizations create an use teams, partnerships, and alliances to :

1. Undertake new initiatives
2. Address both minor and major problems
3. Capitalize on significant opputunities

• Organizations create teams, partnerships, and alliances both internally with employees and externally with other organizations

• Collaboration system : Supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

  

• Organizations form alliances and partnership with other organizations based on their core competency

1. Core competency : An organization's key strength, a business function that it does better than any of its competitors
2. Core competency strategy : Organization chooses to focus specifically on it core competency and forms partnership with other organizations to handle nonstrategic business processes

• Information technology can make a business partnership easier to establish and manage

1. 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

• The Internet has dramatically increased the aese and availability for IT-enabled organizational alliances and partnerships

 

Collaboration Systems

  

• Collaboration solves specific business task such as telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications, and remote project and sales management

• Collaboration system - An IT-based set of tools that supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

• Two categories of collaboration : 

- Unstructured collaboration (information collaboration) : Includes document exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums, and e-mail 

- Structured collaboration (process collaboration) : Involve shared participation in business processes such as workflow in which knowledge is hardcoded as rules

• Collaborative business functions

 

• Collaboration systems include :

1. Knowledge management systems - Support the capturing and use of an organization's "know-how"
2. Content management systems - Provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of information in collaborative environment
3. Workflow management systems - Controls the movement of work through a business process
4. Groupware systems - Software that supports team interaction and dynamic including calendaring, scheduling, and videoconferencing

 

Knowledge Management Systems

• Knowledge management (KM) : Involves capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions

• Knowledge management system : Supports the capturing and use of an organization's "know-how"

Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

• Intellectual and knowledge - based assets fall into twp categories :

1. Explicit knowledge : Consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of IT
2. Tacit knowledge : Knowledge contained in people's heads

• The following are two best practices for transferring or recreating tacit knowledge :

1. Shadowing - Less experienced staff observed more experienced counterparts approach their work
2. Joint problem solving - A novice and expert work together on a project

• Reasons why organizations launch knowledge management programs

KM Technologies

• Knowledge management systems include :

1. Knowledge repositories (database)
2. Expertise tools
3. E-learning applications
4. Discussion and chat technologies
5. 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 works with whom

- SNA provides a clear picture of 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 a collaborative environment

• CMS marketplace includes :

1. Document management system (DMS) - Support the electronic capturing, storage, distribution, archival, and accessing of documents
2. Digital asset management system (DAM) - Similar to DMS, generally works with binary rather than text files, such as multimedia files types
3. 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 : Send works assignments through an e-mail system

• Database-based workflow system : Stores documents in a central location and automatically asks the team member to access the document when it is their to edit their document

Groupware Systems

 

• Groupware technologies

• Groupware : Software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling, and videoconferencing

 

Videoconferencing

• Videoconferencing : A set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmission simultaneously

 

Web Conferencing

 
 

• 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

• E-mail is the dominant form of collaboration application, but real-time collaboration tools like instant messaging are creating a new communication dynamic

• 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