Knowledge Management and Search
Effective knowledge sharing requires more than the ability to collect, catalog, and publish a wide range of information. Professional service firms are discovering that successfully aggregating and prioritizing information, so that search results represent the best thinking that exists on a given topic, creates differentiated intellectual capital.
Knowledge management and search solutions from Microsoft allow professionals to find content scattered throughout the enterprise—whether it comes from intranets, extranets, Internet sites, internal people, outside experts, or business applications. Search logic that brings the most relevant documents to the top, with relevance based on the user's role, can further streamline searches. New solution technologies integrate search and workflow functions, and enhance collaboration by providing access to a range of social networking tools. These solutions are easily integrated with existing systems, and can be customized and configured to meet each firm's needs.
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Business challenges
In the May 2006 article "Beyond Business Intelligence: Delivering a Comprehensive Approach to Enterprise Information Management," Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates noted that information workers spend an estimated 30 percent of their time searching for information, at a cost of $18,000 per year per employee in lost productivity.
For professional service firms, such figures provide a strong financial incentive to improve knowledge management and search capabilities. A key challenge is that relevant content and data, even in a single firm, are often locked within different systems and departmental silos (such as practice-specific project, document-management, or client-relationship management systems, accounting, or human resources). Data is also stored in a wider range of applications today, with e-mail and electronic files joining traditional paper files, while each retains its own structure.
For professional service firms, specific challenges include:
| • | Finding content: Traditional search methods tend to be application-specific (for example, searching within a document-management system or within an accounting system), and require content to be organized and tagged in a structured manner to return useful results. Keyword searches of unstructured data historically return a sea of results that have to be sifted through manually by the user. |
| • | Assessing relevance: Difficulty comparing documents, or other data that is pulled from different information sources, make it challenging for a person to evaluate the relative utility of available content. |
| • | Unlocking tacit knowledge: Firms often have difficulty identifying the individuals who have the most experience working with a specific client, matter, or project, as well as internal and external experts on specific topics. |
| • | Avoiding rebuilding the wheel: Lost productivity stems not only from time spent searching for documents but also in re-creating existing documents, either because the originals cannot be found or because the person is unaware that a version already exists. |
Solutions
Microsoft offers a comprehensive, integrated set of business information management tools that help people find, share, and use information quickly and easily. Knowledge management solutions built on this platform allow people to search for data from a wide variety of sources and also to integrate information about people into the search process.
| • | The Business Data Catalog (BDC) enables people to search for content from a firm's line-of-business applications, integrating the search with both traditional e-mail as well as document management repositories, while also connecting the matter at hand to relevant people within the firm. |
| • | Key elements of knowledge management solutions are provided by Microsoft Windows Vista, which makes search an integral function throughout the operating system |
| • | Windows Search helps people find the information they need from a desktop, an intranet, line-of-business applications, or the Internet—all with a single search. |
| • | Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a unified suite of enterprise-scale applications that satisfies diverse business-critical needs, such as managing content and business processes, simplifying how people work together across boundaries, and enabling better-informed decision-making. |
New functionalities in Office SharePoint Server 2007 integrate search and workflow functions, and also enhance collaboration with access to social networking tools, such as wikis and blogs. For example, consider the common process of tagging a valuable document to be edited, reviewed, and then posted in a content library for access and reuse through browsing or search. With Office SharePoint Server 2007, a final deliverable stored in a project folder may be tagged and a copy of the document submitted into this workflow for efficient handoff from one stage to the next. This ensures people follow the firm's risk-management policy and that the document is stored with metadata tags that expose it as a "Best Bet" resource in a variety of relevant contexts.
Case studies
Read these case studies to learn how professional service firms have improved their knowledge management capabilities with offerings from Microsoft and its partners:
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton
Law firm increases reuse of firm knowledge and enhances productivity with customized intranet solution
Golder Associates
Engineering consulting group increases efficiency with global collaboration solution
Covington & Burling LLP
Global law firm uses search solution to improve access to information
Business benefits
Integrated data-management solutions from Microsoft provide the means to improve client and service-partner relationships, create innovative offerings, and improve operations and profitability. Professional service firms can use these solutions to create more relevant searches by aggregating information from multiple sources; identifying the relationships among the content sources and the people who have expertise in the specific matter or the topic; and defining the latest version or the "version of record." Specific benefits include the ability to:
Streamline searches based on user's role
Providing content that is relevant to the user's role within the firm streamlines the search process, so, for example, paralegals or assistants don't have to wade through material for practice managers and attorneys. Default search results can also be targeted based on the specific practice group the user belongs to.
Search for relevant people organized by their degree of separation from the user
Users can find who has the most experience dealing with a specific client or topic by using Business Data Catalog to search Active Directory directory services, information housed in a firm's human resources department, and profile information supplied by people themselves.
Improve client-service levels
Gain immediate access to a wide range of firmwide information, such as data from accounting and client-relationship management applications, allowing people to provide immediate answers to client questions about billing, fees, payments, and account status.
Deploy social networking tools more easily
Share content more easily with wikis, identifying authors as subject matter experts and creating value for the firm. Blogs can be targeted to users based on their profile and information assets. Such free-form knowledge sharing improves on older collaborative tools, such as e-mail, because blogs can be searched using keywords, and can more easily be archived and retrieved for later use.
Improve productivity, and reduce errors by integrating knowledge management systems and reusing content
Integrating knowledge management and search capabilities cuts down on the need to re-create existing documents, either because they could not be found or because the user was unaware they existed. In addition, reducing the number of times people need to enter data cuts the chances for data-entry errors.
Boost data security with consistent knowledge management policies
Set Information Rights Management policies on entire document repositories and then apply to documents as they leave a repository—for example, when downloaded to a laptop. This ensures that intellectual property and sensitive information is not inadvertently sent outside the firm, and can't be stolen from a laptop or other portable device.
Overview
Technology
