06 March 2003

Excellent article by Michael Koenig on why time saved is a misleading justification for knowledge management: "White-collar professional employees spend a consistent 20% to 25% of their time information seeking..... The consequence of this phenomenon is that if a KM system allows a user to save time, that time will most likely be diverted into other information seeking behavior and users will still spend the same 20% to 25% of their time information seeking. That is, of course, not bad; both the information need served by the KM system and the information need into which time was diverted may well be better served, with better decisions made and higher productivity resulting. The point, though, is that the bottom line for KM is better decision making and higher productivity. Time saved is a misleading and unconvincing indicator, because you probably won't be able to demonstrate it." (Thanks to Column Two.) 12:29:59 AM    comment []

Closely following on the heels of Gerry McGovern's article, Martin White writes about "Brain fade among CMS vendors". "I have spent today looking through over fifty tenders for the supply of a content management system for a client, and what a depressing experience it has been!.... Many of the vendors had clearly not looked in any detail at not only what was explicitly stated in the pre-qualification, but had not read between the lines as to what was not stated but might well be required." He also comments that many of the CMS vendors suggested "their own particular product could do anything that the client wanted, so there was no need to highlight particular features." I agree - as I said a couple of days ago: "Too many CMS vendors sell cool features and aggressively push their complete software suite irrespective of the customers' actual requirements." I come from a project/consultancy background. Understanding and responding to the client's specific requirements, spoken and tacit, is central to any proposal. Complex applications like CMS with a lot of workflow and business process implications demand the same approach. As customers we should expect nothing less. (Thanks to Column Two.) 12:22:37 AM    comment []