Hello, I think there is no one way to justify KM initiatives (and I'm a bit dismayed that we seem to have reduced KM to "implementing search"). How you justify your KM initiative depends on: i. what

Very interesting debate. May I suggest another approach to demonstrate KM enabling characteristics to engerprise performance? We are researhing, designing, and establishing evalutation criteria for a

Vinod, Our search application augment Google Search Appliance butprovide a couple features that address the issues you brought uphere. On "Discovery vs. Security", we recognize not all

Yao, It does seem from your post that you are in the process of understanding Enterprise Search for a particular application. I've seen a similar situation at a previous employer and can't say I

My experience was that different executives required different messages and the value / cost savings message needs to change as your KM program matures. Our best success, and what we use today,

I am enjoying the debate so far. I suggest a broader approach for the value that KM can provide to an organization. One way is to use the Balance Score Card Approach. Leadership will be a lot more

Survey questions can be challenged but setting up a simple web site to gather anecdotes can help The real value is when you can combine quantitative and qualitative data to measure impact (ie combine

Dave, Very good advice. Enterprise search and KM is such genericand fundamental that its impacts gets lost amount many other direct contributingfactors. Beyond engaging early with high impact

Good point on search quality and effectiveness. We arecarefully logging the search activities and I believe we will be able extractsome indicators of value-adds of the tool. A few examples: - Number

I'd follow the general theme here. Senior managers have seen too many promises of cost and time savings over the years to take them seriously unless they are very concrete. I would focus instead on

I have always enjoyed the debates here in this group but haveseldom joined in since I’m more of a KM hobbyist than professional. I’m going to take Bill’s approach and be thecontrarian here.

I agree with Andrew on the time savings ROI - It is meaningless. It does not go to the bottom line. What are the people going to do with the time savings? leave early? It is more effective to tie the

All of which suggests a simple best practice: Build in your internal marketing for the initiative, whatever it is -- and this includes a constant commitment to getting end users to speak up as

Hi Yao, This is a wonderful topic. Around anyear time back, while I developed the business case for instituting anenterprise search (certainly as part of KM initiative) I used same argument.Presented

Yao and Bill, With improved enterprise search ... knowledge workers can reduce the amount of the time spent on search ... a saving 10% of the time (1 hour per week) can be translated into

Hello Yao, I was asked a similar question this morning andhave also been formulating a response. I like the general approach you have taken in thedraft of your article. Without getting in too

Hello KM peers, I amonce again asked to justify what I am doing by associating my work in KM area toimpact to business bottom lines such as hard-savings. This type of request mustbe common across KM

Congrats Stephanie, All the best in your new position. Sanjay Swarup Program Manager KM ManTech International

Will be looking forward to what you do in that area, too :-). Best regards, Miguel

Thanks for the tip, Matt. Will definitely be checking that out - especially keeping in mind your feedback. Am curious to know more... Tom coverage of collaborative software a kick in the pants -