Visual-KnowhowTM - Supercharge SharePoint Collaboration

The SharePoint Team site hasn’t changed much in the last decade. Neither has the primary user complaint:
“IT TAKES TOO LONG TO FIND WHAT I NEED”

NOT ANYMORE! We are releasing Visual-KnowhowTM, a next-generation SharePoint site template (e.g., Figure 1) driven by knowledge visualization concepts. This site can be used for all of your organization’s collaboration including teams (Department, Process, Project or Innovation) and Knowledge Networks.

Find the right content or experts you need  WITH JUST ONE CLICK.


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Figure 1. Process Team Site

Imagine you are a young engineer trying to fix a problem with product purity. The above Process Map shows key components of the plant and how they relate in the overall operation. As shown in the Quick Launch menu, the content is stored in multiple lists and libraries. So where do you begin?

Using the map, the engineer quickly focuses on Product Distribution (bottom center) as a likely place to look for help, then traces the link to Separation Process as an even more likely source. Clicking this object returns the following Results.

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Figure 2. Typical Results from All Content Sources

The engineer gets content from all lists and libraries on a single page (as shown by the ListType column), as well as Member profiles of experts to call if immediate help is needed.


Deliver Extraordinary Business Value

Unfortunately, many Collaboration and Knowledge Management initiatives fail due to lack of leadership support, primarily when they don’t deliver tangible value. Without leader reinforcement, your network members lose interest. How many languishing sites do you have?

Our Visual-KnowhowTM site helps in three ways:

  • The site measures business value using metrics your leaders’ desire.
  • Built-in business and activity metrics and peer recognition help shape knowledge sharing behavior.
  • For your HR/L&D groups, studies have shown that effective knowledge transfer can help accelerate time to competency by 50%.
 Documenting Business Value

Our young engineer ran into another problem with maintaining the temperature in her reactor. This time she didn’t find any useful guidance. The Visual-KnowhowTM site includes a robust Q&A function for this situation. She posted a new Question as shown in Figure 3. In the initial post, only the Title, Details and Keyword fields were described.

Within a few hours she received two responses. The information on coolant solved the problem. The engineer later documented the Solution that worked for the next person with a similar problem, and estimated the cost and time savings.

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Figure 3. Q&A Process

The Visual-KnowhowTM site provides Knowledge Managers real-time tracking of business value (Figure 4) and activity metrics (Figures 5 and 6). This information can be a key factor in shaping knowledge sharing and reuse behaviors.

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Figure 4. Business Metrics

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Figure 5. Total Views

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Figure 6. Total Views by Member