Yes, Document Management is a prerequisite!

I have asked earlier if Document Management was a prerequisite for a successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption. My answer is yes for a few  reasons.

1.      Enterprise 2.0 is focused on improving knowledge sharing

2.      Knowledge  = content + context

3.      Content are those things that exist explicitly, like documents, physical items, like products, etc.

4.      Businesses are, for the most part, document centric operations.

5.      Most previously captured knowledge has been processed and is stored in documents.

In addition, I will argue that a successful Enterprise2.0 adoption relies on a successful document management system, and the more uncontrolled the document management system is, the poorer the results will be from an Enterprise 2.0 adoption.

That is, you can generate context or tacit knowledge but if you can’t link it to appropriate content, then the value will not be achieved.

If you are focusing on using Enterprise 2.0 inertia to create a document management system, then get that working before you introduce other technologies.

Comments

[marnix]

Hi Kevin, I absolutely agree !!
Get the basics right first. And the basics are a consistent use of a good document management system. From there, you can add blogs and wiki's but these will probably be for a minority of your user crowd.

Marnix

[Kevin Shea]

Hello Marnix

Thanks for stopping in.

I am also looking into the issues of how companies adopt Enterprise2.0 tools (more specifically wikis) when they have a poor document management system. There are some who hope to "fix the problem" by introducing a wiki, and others who, due to the size of the firm, may have different stages of document management in different divisions.

So there are some interesting issues of how to integrate so as to make things work!

Also, I took away the tools idea from your site. I have seen too many instances of IT introducing different tools and not specifically noting what each tool is best used for. You list makes good sense.

Feel free to drop by again and comment with you insights and opinions.

[marnix]

Hi Kevin,
I think a wiki and a document management system are intrinsically different tools. A wiki is more suited to collaboratively create a new knowledge artifact (ex : a manual). A document management system is better to manage more static documents (ex a procedure). Although it is not black and white, more a scale of gray.

Marnix