At Caloundra City Council, the Customer Service Officers (who staff the front desk and call centre) have come up with a great way of keeping their intranet up-to-date. It's called the buddy system, and it works something like this: Volunteers within customer service are partnered up with key staff within the different business units. They then discuss how the arrangement will work, including who will do what, when contact is made, and who updates the intranet. The customer service staff then take the initiative, and keep in touch with their assigned buddies, to find out whether there are changes or

Just before my week away fishing, I started with a new client, a NSW Government department who are implementing a new intranet. They have all the tools, including a top-tier CMS and search tool. What they are not sure on is the best way to proceed with the very difficult task of addressing intranet issues, so I was called in as an "on-call expert" to answer questions, and help out as required. From my perspective, this is a great little project, as it gives me exposure to some interesting challenges, without getting too bogged down in actual implementation. This is

This briefing helps to dispell the widespread confusion in the marketplace between document management systems (DMS) and content management systems (CMS).

Metrics are an effective way of setting project targets, assessing success, and tracking ongoing health. This article summarises a range of practical KM and CM-related metrics.

When in Canberra this week, we talked about CMS implementation issues. The same problem arose that has existed for all my other clients, with the potential to make the CMS very difficult to implement. Here's the issue: Before starting to develop a CMS solution, you need to deploy a fully-functional staff phone directory ("whitepages"). This should have the following features: Provides standard contact information: name, phone number, e-mail address, etc. Records which department and team each staff person belongs to. Identifies each staff person's job role. Records the relationships between staff (such as "reports to", or "managed by", etc) Accurate

Following on from my work with the government department yesterday, I've just sent through my summary of the day, and my recommendations. Looking at the options for authoring, these were my high-level recommendations: Develop a range of authoring tools, matched to the specific needs of the content, audience and authors. No single authoring tool will meet all needs, without considerably compromising the quality and maintainability of the intraweb. A long list of potential document types have already been identified. Examine each of these in turn, against the following criteria: nature of the content (length; degree of structure; formatting and layout

I've just spent the day in Canberra, doing some consultancy work for one of the government departments. With the plane flight there and back, it makes for a long day, but well worth the effort. The organisation currently has an intranet, of sorts. It has grown organically, and is developed using Frontpage. Each group has been trained to use Frontpage, and has gone away and created themselves a little subsite. Every section of the intranet looks completely different, and all changes are made directly to the live version. A scary system all round. Needless to say, they are looking at

I've been to a few trade shows recently, and have browsed through the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) stands. From an outsider's point of view, these systems seem to be progressing in leaps and bounds, with many reaching quite a mature level. One question I've been asking the vendors: what information does your system provide frontline staff about the company's product line? Let me explain this question further. CRM systems are designed to capture a lot of information, and provide it to frontline staff in an easy-to-digest form, including: customer details transaction history sales opportunities cross-selling suggestions previous customer feedback The

There is no ‘correct’ answer to this question. To get the best business outcomes, you must understand the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.

Why spend millions on managing content that no-one understands or needs? This article provides tips for getting the best value out of your business content.