User-led Innovation - IT Training

We don't need IT training to use www.amazon.com site to purchase books. The application is simple enough to use. Also, one can easily purchase airline tickets on the web without need for an intensive IT training. However, same is not true for corporate business applications.

Until IT application vendors can come out with Amazon-like "ease of use" in their applications, there is always going to be a need for IT training for end users. With shrinking IT budgets and resources for IT training activities, how can one cope up with this challenge. We all know that without appropriate training, companies can't get total benefits out of their investments (in systems & applications).

IT always get challenged with this problem (training) and good news is that the latest web 2.0 technologies now offer new hope (and solutions).

Why not involve users in their own training? "Train the trainer" approach needs to be replaced by "user trains the user" and here is how.

Using the Wikipedia approach, companies can develop their own collaborative Wiki sites (internal) that can be used as training platforms. This approach requires end-users who are "willing and able" and ready to share and train (assuming initial baseline training/documentation has been completed).

As users might have very limited time (and sometimes lack of interest), companies should find innovative ways of encouraging this new collaborative training approach. This form of user-led innovation (IT training) is open to all the users of the systems and can be further expanded to improve process efficiencies and ensure that companies can reap the "promised" ROIs.

Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management Systems

So what is a knowledge management system and what is the big fuss about these BI (business intelligence) systems these days? Would you also like users to be self-trained (as IT training budgets have been cut)?

IT's role has been changing in last few years and we now see a shift happening in the industry. IT has now started to focus more on "Information" rather than technology (at least in the companies that I know of). Does anyone care about cloud computing?

In this post I am going to discuss some key characteristics of a knowledge management system.

As we all know, knowledge levels can range from being
- Unrelated data (or information) to
- Documented procedures & processes or
- Having readily accessible knowledge experts, who have tacit knowledge (as opposed to having explicit knowledge - codified tacit knowledge).

The information/knowledge can be captured
- actively (e.g. humans writing business process, procedures etc.) or
- passively (systematically).

Also, Knowledge application (or re-use) can be accomplished either
- by having it embedded in the system(s) or
- by involving humans to proactively participate, innovate and integrate various building blocks of the knowledge system.

In summary, Knowledge management system comprises of capture, retention, and application of the knowledge.

Knowledge management system is best optimized by intertwining technology, organization and business processes (www.terrigriffith.com). Collecting knowledge passively and enabling employees to have an access to tacit knowledge/expertise is the best bet for improving success of a knowledge management system.

The BI systems of today (built on top of knowledge systems) help organizations passively collect information from the existing transactional applications using ETL (extraction, transformation and loading) techniques and present the information via data marts, portals or enterprise reporting tools (depending upon information delivery requirements). This allows companies to have better visibility into various processes and information assets so that business leaders can make informed decisions in a timely manner.

In addition, the new enterprise 2.0 collaboration solutions help streamline expertise and knowledge discovery. Designed to leverage the expertise, personal network, and unpublished information of employees, new tools allow organizations to quickly deploy a solution that doesn’t suffer from the “adoption challenges” of traditional knowledge management software.

Knowledge management is best used when embedded in work processes. This greatly reduces need for extensive IT training (of course, ease of use in the systems will greatly help as well). Expecting users to consult standalone knowledge management systems (in their spare time) actually reduces employees’ effectiveness, and if you have loads of money to spend on IT training and keep the documents updated, then force be with you!!!

Passively collected knowledge is the best form of knowledge capture as the humans don't have to spend extra effort on the knowledge capture. Using the latest collaboration infrastructures, corporations can provide easy access to tacit knowledge available in the company.

If you have implemented a knowledge management system (or a BI system) in your company recently or plan to implement one in future, I would like to hear your thoughts...

Getting buy-in on new Technology Features

Have you ever tried to sell the features of a new Technology that you want to implement in your organization? Have you felt disappointed and wondered why your management didn't buy-in your brilliant idea. If the answer to above questions is Yes, then the following concept (re: Technology Features) will probably make sense to you.

Technology features can be described as being core vs. tangential or concrete vs. abstract. While concrete features can be directly and specifically described or understood, abstract features must be described more indirectly and/or generally. Core features are very critical to the overall function or nature of the business/technology whereas tangential features are not critical features of the technology, and their use/benefit may be optional. It requires great deal of effort to explain the benefits or ROI for abstract and tangential features. In many cases, it might be desirable to leave tangential or abstract features unnoticed to get desirable effects. Also, the assessment of these features can differ across different types of stakeholders.

Depending on the stakeholders' background, the above concept can be used to move the features from one category to another (e.g. from core to tangential), thereby, increasing the probability of getting approvals and buy-ins. Concrete features are easily understood by stakeholders and they tend to then actively participate in discussions and provide constructive feedback. Another key idea to consider is the timing of stakeholder engagement in assessment of features. Sooner is generally better as this makes stakeholders to have a “real” stake in the new technology.

I learnt the above concept in my EMBA class on "Managing Change and Innovation". The class is taught by Terri Griffth (http://www.terrigriffith.com/) at Leavey School Of Business, Santa Clara University, CA USA.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions. What has been your strategy in getting buy-in on new technology features and benefits?