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CHAPTER 15

Creating Collaborative Partnerships

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LEARNING OUTCOMES

15.1 Identify the different ways in which

companies collaborate using technology

15.2 Compare the different categories of

collaboration technologies

15.3 Define the fundamental concepts of a

knowledge management system

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LEARNING OUTCOMES

15.4 Provide an examples of a content

management system along with its

business purpose

15.5 Evaluate the advantages of using a

workflow management system

15.6 Explain how groupware can benefit a

business

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TEAMS, PARTNERSHIPS, AND ALLIANCES

• Organizations create and use teams, partnerships, and alliances to:– Undertake new initiatives– Address both minor and major problems– Capitalize on significant opportunities

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

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TEAMS, PARTNERSHIPS, AND ALLIANCES

• Collaboration system – supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

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TEAMS, PARTNERSHIPS, AND ALLIANCES

• Organizations form alliances and partnerships with other organizations based on their core competency– Core competency – an organization’s key

strength, a business function that it 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

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TEAMS, PARTNERSHIPS, AND ALLIANCES

• Information technology can make a business partnership easier to establish and manage– 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 ease and availability for IT-enabled organizational alliances and partnerships

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COLLABORATION SYSTEMS

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

• Collaboration system – an IT-based set of tools that supportsthe work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

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COLLABORATION SYSTEMS

• Two categories of collaboration1. Unstructured collaboration (information

collaboration) - includes document exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums, and email

2. Structured collaboration (process collaboration) - involves shared participation in business processes such as workflow in which knowledge is hardcoded as rules

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COLLABORATION SYSTEMS

• Collaborative business functions

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COLLABORATION SYSTEMS

• Collaboration systems include:– Knowledge management systems– Content management systems– Workflow management systems– Groupware systems

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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

• Knowledge management (KM) – involves capturing, classifying, 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”

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Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

• Intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into two categories1. 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

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Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

• The following are two best practices for transferring or recreating tacit knowledge– Shadowing – less experienced 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

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Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

• Reasons why organizations launch knowledge management programs

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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:– Document management system (DMS)– Digital asset management system (DAM)– Web content management system (WCM)

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CONTENT MANAGEMENT

• Content management system vendor overview

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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

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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

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WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

• Messaging-based workflow system – sends work assignments through an email 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

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GROUPWARE SYSTEMS

• Groupware technologies

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GROUPWARE SYSTEMS

• Groupware – software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling, and videoconferencing

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Videoconferencing

• Videoconference - a set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously

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Web Conferencing

• Web conferencing - blends audio, video, and document-sharing technologies to create virtual meeting rooms where people “gather” at a password-protected website

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Instant Messaging

• Email 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

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Instant Messaging

• Instant messaging application

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CHAPTER FIFTEENOpening Case Study Questions

1. Identify which systems WTC could use to collaborate internally

2. Explain which Internet technologies have facilitated the way in which WTC collaborates with both its participants and business partners

3. List the four collaboration systems discussed in this chapter and rank them in order of importance to WTC’s business

4. Describe how WTC could leverage the power of a knowledge management system for its employees and for its participants

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN CASE Enterprise Content Management at Statoil

1. Why do you think content management is such a critical part of Statoil’s strategy?

2. Comment on the utility and importance of Statoil’s use of an information portal to promote enterprisewide content management?

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN CASE Enterprise Content Management at Statoil

3. To what extent do you think Statoil’s predicament of information overload is typical for organizations?

4. What lessons learned and insights from the chapter’s discussion on collaboration tools could help promote Statoil’s adoption and use of its content management initiative?