COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIP

Teams, Partnerships and Alliances

• Use this element to:

        ~ undertake new initiatives
        ~ address both minor and major problems
        ~ capitalize on significant opportunities

> Collaborating system

= Supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

• Organization form alliances and partnerships with other organizations based on their core competency

> Core competency

=An organization's key strength, a business function that does better than any of its competitors.

> Core competency strategy

= Organization chooses to focus specifically on its core competency and forms partnerships with other organizations to handle nonstrategic business processes.

> Information Partnership

= Occurs when two or more organizations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer.

Collaboration System

• Collaboration solves specific business tasks such as telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications and management

> Collaboration system

= An IT-based set of tools that supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information

# Categories of collaboration

> Unstructured collaboration ( information collaboration)

= Includes document exchange, shared white boards, discussion forums and e-mail

> Structured collaboration (process collaboration)

= Involves shared participation in business processes such as workflow in which knowledge is harcoded as rules.

# Collaborative business functions

# Collaboration systems

> Knowledge management systems

• Supports the capturing and use of an organization's "know-how"

~ Knowledge management (KM)

= Involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.

> Content management systems

•  Provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing and publication of information in a collaborative environment.

> Workflow management system

• Controls the movement of work through a business process.

> Group ware systems

• Software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling and videoconferencing.

Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

•  Intellectual and knowledge-based assets categories:

> Explicit knowledge

= Consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified often with the help of IT

* Payroll information, customer address, student grades and faculty course taught.

> Tacit knowledge

= Knowledge contained in people's heads

* How to perform a process, how to perform an activity and how you feel about something.

# Best practices for transferring or recreating tacit knowledge

> Shadowing

= Less experiences staff observe more experienced staff to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work.

> Joint problem solving

=  A novice and expert work together on a project.

# Reasons why organizations launch knowledge management programs

 KM Technologies

• Knowledge management systems:

       ~ Knowledge repositories (databases)

       ~ Expertise tools

       ~ E-learning applications

       ~ Discussion and chat technologies

       ~ Search and data mining tools

KM and Social Networking

• Finding out how information flows through an organization

> Social networking analysis (SNA)

= A process of mapping a group's contacts (whether personal or professional) to identify who knows whom and who work with whom

- SNA provides a clear picture how employees and divisions work together and can help identify key experts.

Content management

> Content management system (CMS)

= Provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing and publication of information in collaborative environment.

# CMS marketplace includes:

  

> Document management system (DMS)

= supports the electronic capturing, storage, distribution, archival and accessing of documents.

  > Digital asset management system (DAM)

= Similar to DMS, generally works with binary rather than text files, such as multimedia files types.

> Web content management system (WCM)

= Adds an additional layer to document and digital asset management that enables publishing content both to intranets and public Web sites.

• Content management system vendor overview

Working Wikis

> Wikis

= Web-based tools that make it easy for users to add, remove and change online content

> Business wikis

= Collaborative Web pages that allow users to edit documents, share ideas or monitor the status of a project.

Workflow Management Systems

•  Work activities can be performed in series or in parallel that involves people and automated computer systems.

> Workflow

= Defines all the steps or business rules from beginning to end, required for a business process

> Workflow management system 

= Facilitates the automation and management of business processes and controls the movement of work through the business process.

> Messaging-based workflow system

= Sends work assignments through an e-mail system

> Database-based workflow system

= Stores documents in a central location and automatically asks the team members to access the document when it is their turn to edit the document.

Groupware Systems

• Groupware technologies

# Groupware system advantages

Videoconferencing

•  A set of interactive telecommunication technologies that allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously

Web conferencing

•  Blends audio, video and document-sharing technologies to create virtual meeting rooms where people "gather" at a password-protected Web site.

Instant messaging

• Type of communications service that enables someone to create a kind of private chat room with another individual to communicate in real-time over the Internet.

# Instant messaging application