Knowledge workers engage in a great variety of activities. A stock broker is a knowledge worker. So is a product manager, an architect, an industrial designer and a marketing communications specialist. Regardless of the activity, knowledge workers spend a lot of their time searching for and evaluating information.
This should come as no surprise. But just how much is “a lot,” and what does it cost the organizations that ultimately foot the bill? Industry analyst group IDC found that in an average 40-hour work week, a knowledge worker spends approximately 25 percent of his or her time searching for information and another 25 percent evaluating it. For a full-time employee earning $60,000 annually ($28.85 per hour) that’s nearly $30,000 per year. Those are big investments of time and money, especially when you consider that finding and evaluating information are only the first steps to using it productively - in other words, realizing any return on that investment.
The Evolving Search Market
Today’s enterprise generates an enormous quantity of information, often stored in siloed repositories that cannot be accessed by a single application. So knowledge workers have a lot to search through, and it’s rarely a simple task. Plus, they frequently need access to information outside the corporate firewall. Unfortunately, up to now, the tools provided to enterprise knowledge workers have frequently fallen short of the mark in terms of search. This inadequacy gave birth to standalone search applications - an important market space with dozens of vendors, none of which grabbed more than a 15 percent market share.
At the same time, in its 2006 Magic Quadrant for information access technologies, Gartner recognized that the search market was in rapid flux. The report stated that leading vendors had capabilities that went far beyond “enterprise search to encompass a collection of technologies, including: search; content classification, categorization and clustering; fact and entity extraction; taxonomy creation and management; information presentation (for example, visualization) to support analysis and understanding; and desktop (or personal knowledge) search to address user-controlled repositories to locate and invoke documents, data, e-mail and intelligence.” Only a year later, Gartner described enterprise search as a market in the throes of dramatic consolidation. Platform players were buying niche vendors with attractive technologies as new vendors emerged and others disappeared.
Perhaps morphing rather than consolidating better explains what has occurred and is occurring in enterprise search. The platform players have seen the future of knowledge work, and it much more resembles Web 2.0 and rich Internet applications than it does even the most sophisticated enterprise search tool. It requires an application environment that provides smart workspaces for ad hoc information sharing integrated with the system resources and Web services necessary to find, access and manage collaborative content within the framework of an enterprise information infrastructure.
Beyond Search
Undoubtedly, the public Web - always connected and media rich with its potential for enhanced communications - has driven the expectations of enterprise knowledge workers. Blogging, wikis, photo and video sharing, community building and social networking are phenomena that simply beg to be used somehow in building a more effective, interactive business environment. By helping knowledge workers focus on the information, tasks and events that matter, these tools – properly positioned for the enterprise – promise to increase productivity, improve transparency, expedite business processes and eliminate knowledge gaps.
The question is literally and metaphorically, “How do we get there from here?” How can we assemble a rich set of knowledge resources that supports the dynamic relationships between information and people while they collaborate across the extended enterprise? We need to help enterprise knowledge workers:
- Find relevant information in context,
- Publish user-generated content and
- Integrate collaborative content with disparate enterprise resources.
A Starting Point: Next-Generation Content Management
The next generation of enterprise content management platforms is a viable starting point for helping knowledge workers more productively use the time they’re already spending. ECM is one of the most commonly deployed enterprise applications. Today’s content management platforms can:
- Eliminate information silos,
- Enable easier repurposing of content,
- Enforce retention policies and brand standards,
- Streamline business processes,
- Offer greater security for sensitive content and
- Increase efficiency.
Up until now, the knock on content management has been ease of use. As a recent Forrester report points out, for many business people, the hassle of using an ECM system exceeds the system’s value. But that is changing and changing rapidly.
More Production - Less Frustration
ECM can make life easier and more productive for knowledge workers without sacrificing the controlled management and attention to compliance the enterprise requires. These platforms will incorporate:
A Web 2.0 client. From within the ECM client of the very near future, knowledge workers will easily do things like create blogs and team wikis that used to require separate, external applications. This client will support personalized information views as well as team and individual workspaces. Knowledge workers will have one-click publishing capability and the ability to manage tasks and projects via a powerful yet friendly interface.
This interface will support the coordination of content, people and processes. It will leverage an asynchronous, dynamic user experience for running within a browser and connecting through a desktop, laptop or mobile device. It will deliver a flexible and responsive interactive environment - RIA anyone?
