SPC14 – Day 4 – Knowledge Management with SharePoint and Yammer

The last day of sessions has started. I’ve started this day with a session on  knowledge management. It’s funny this. A couple of years ago (I guess at least four) I presented on the Sogeti SharePoint seminar. My subject: knowledge management. It’s nice to see that the information I shared during that session is still valid: the presenter explained the way knowledge is shared.

There is still the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge. There’s the (enrichment of) content and its context. The way we communicate has not changed to much. It’s still basically one-to-one or one-to-many. This is apparent as well when we look at how ” portals” are created: not social and one-to-many communication.

Four yours ago we didn’t have SharePoint 2013 or the Yammer integration. So, what do these platforms bring to the mix?

For one: you do not have to choose between this platforms. Presented was the customer case of DNV-GL. This organization uses Yammer as the virtual workspace. The Yammer workplace went viral and at this moment they have over 10.000 users. It has been a bumpy road (starting in 2009). It went from a perceived threat to appreciated communications channel. To ensure this by empowering the users, not making the environment obligatory. Management was stimulated to use it as well (executive sponsors). A lot of countries started using the Yammer environment, although the management of the Milan affiliation didn’t like the platform. The effect of this was that in this region, the platform is not used at all.

The success factors for the solution:

• Seamless
• Contextual
• Available
• Insightful

Based on this, another example was discussed: the innovation hub. A site which aggregates ideas, sentiments, social communication, people and the Yammer feed. It kinda looked like the new Oslo and OfficeGraph apps. Very cool.

Some of the information in this session was not new. In fact, Sogeti has described a lot of this in the TeamPark methodology. And the session also used the term “Connected Enterprise” (sound familiar: Connected Workforce by Sogeti). Also, the innovation hub really was close to the Sogeti Social Intranet.

But it was (again) nice to hear from real-life companies on how they experienced this journey.