Sponsor a collaboration tools audit
Audit your collaboration and knowledge sharing systems
To analyse your knowledge and collaboration toolset, start with evaluating it across two dimensions.
Audience and sources - How easy is it to identify your knowledge source and intended audience?
Content, questions and insights - How easy is it to define your content’s insights and/or questions you seek to answer?
This analysis yields a 2 x 2 matrix like the one above. Let’s dive deep into each part of the matrix.
| Quadrant | Audience & sources | Content, questions & insights | Possible tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Known | Known | This is the most addressed quadrant for modern enterprise software. You know what information you have or are seeking. You also know who you’re sharing it with or who you’re getting it from. Team collaboration tools like mailing lists, team sites, chat groups and collaborative documents are ideal for this combination of people and knowledge. e.g. Workspace by Google, Office 365, Notion, Basecamp. |
| 2 | Known | Unknown | On the internet, we follow people, blogs, social handles or websites without being able to predict exactly what value we’ll get. We find content creators who represent our interests and we bet that they’ll produce useful content for us. This is a two way street and just as we follow people, some of them follow us back and the interactions are richer for it. e.g. Workplace from Meta, Yammer, P2, Lumapps |
| 3 | Unknown | Unknown | This is where the age of intelligence has come alive on the internet. The internet knows us. A bit too much you may argue. Your social networks, digital assistants, news and entertainment apps make “intelligent” recommendations. I’d grudgingly admit that this does enrich our digital experience. There’s the concern about privacy, no doubt, and enterprise software needs to be doubly careful about this concern. Let’s not discount the role of “digital exhaust” here. When you come across interesting content, you follow the author and discover their, other, as-interesting content. One discovery leads to another, much like a trail of breadcrumbs. e.g. Workgrid, recommendation engines within your quadrant 1, 2 and 3 tools; custom recommendation engine; employee profiles on your enterprise social network. |
| 4 | Unknown | Known | Often you know what knowledge you’re looking for but don’t know where to look, and who could give you that information. Google comes to the rescue on the internet and at work, enterprise search comes to the rescue. E.g. Elastic, Glean |
Once you’ve completed this exercise, you’ll discover how you can improve your knowledge sharing infrastructure. The toolset should ideally have coverage across all four quadrants. This system audit can help you propose an investment roadmap to your company. It can also give executives the information they need to prioritise investments.