I was speaking with a client the other day about faceted search. (For more information on that subject see my recent blog post “A Firm Foundation for Faceted Search.”) We discussed the need for well-organized and well-structured data to support useful faceted searching. The client challenged that need, and stated she had read and been told that some forms of search require no data preparation and will work with completely unstructured data.

Faceted searching works well when your content is well organized and well cataloged. What exactly does that mean, and what are the benefits of faceted searching?

 

I just read a CMSWire blog post on “Preparing for the Future of Knowledge Management.” While the article contains some excellent advice, I strongly disagree with one of the core recommendations.

The other day I joined a discussion on content migration with a client who is beginning a KM project. While preparing for the meeting I ran into this post. It’s from a customer support company, but many of the migration issues they face are similar to my KM experiences. I’d like to share some of the strategies we’ve used over time to turn this early implementation challenge into an opportunity for KM success.

When I read David Gurteen’s post on IM and KM (Information Management and Knowledge Management) it reminded me of a specific KM project I was involved with. In his post, David raises the issue of “what is IM and what is KM?” Where does the first stop and the other begin? This question has been discussed many times in the past. I think it is critical that we all agree with David when he says “Does it really matter? I don't think so.” Okay, with that out of the way, let’s have some fun with this question.

Knowledge portals are easy to describe, but tricky to get right. To my mind a knowledge portal should accomplish two key things: first, enable users to find the information they seek quickly and efficiently (more on “find” later) and second, facilitate the ongoing capture of information and knowledge so that the portal helps users with that “finding.”

The SharePoint juggernaut continues in corporate enterprise environments. But 15 years after the product was first launched, clear evidence of SharePoint’s strengths and weaknesses as a knowledge management platform is emerging from objective industry observers.

But isn’t SharePoint a KM application? At Lucidea we work on KM projects with clients around the globe, in almost every industry. One question that we hear again and again is “But isn’t SharePoint a KM application?” I love this question and I hate this question, because the answer is “it depends.” It depends on what you mean by an application, and what that implies. Let me explain.

I am often asked “what’s the secret sauce in Lucidea’s applications?” and further, I’m often asked why customers turn to our solutions rather than having IT build something in SharePoint or a SQL database.  

I am also asked “what do I tell IT when they want to replace an existing Lucidea solution with one they promise to build in SharePoint?” Rather than discuss the many advantages of our Lucidea solutions, I’d like to share one simple but very powerful differentiator: date handling and date searching.

Originally posted 7/18/2013 on the Inmagic blog

SharePoint seems to be everywhere these days. Many customers have been told by their IT departments that their knowledge management repositories should or will be converted to SharePoint by IT. Many customers are resisting this request, but often find it difficult to make IT understand that SharePoint is not capable of performing some of the functions that are important for managing and organizing content.