The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge ManagementA Simple 8 Step Process to Help You Make the Best Decisions When Implementing Social Collaboration or Knowledge Sharing Platforms

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EngagementFunct

ionality1

2

3

4

5

6

Measurement

Deploym

ent

AnswerHub is enterprise knowledge management with the simplicity of QampAthat makes it easy to find collect manage and share all the answers yourteam needs to effectively communicate

Benefits of Using AnswerHub

Theming and PluginsAnswerHubrsquos knowledge sharing software can be customized to look and feel exactly the way you want

Enterprise SecurityAnswerHub is OWASP certified software with enterprise-grade security to keep your information safe

Easy IntegrationAnswerHub can easily integrate with your existing IT infrastructure web services and other tools

Total Control ModerationAnswerHub includes powerful moderation and anti-spam tools to easily manage your site

AnswerHub is enterprise knowledge management with the simplicity of QampAthat makes it easy to find collect manage and share all the answers yourteam needs to effectively communicate

Benefits of Using AnswerHub

Theming and PluginsAnswerHubrsquos knowledge sharing software can be customized to look and feel exactly the way you want

Enterprise SecurityAnswerHub is OWASP certified software with enterprise-grade security to keep your information safe

Easy IntegrationAnswerHub can easily integrate with your existing IT infrastructure web services and other tools

Total Control ModerationAnswerHub includes powerful moderation and anti-spam tools to easily manage your site

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Make Introducing Social Knowledge a Piece of Cake

Great Recipes Start with Great Ingredients

Step 1 - Identify Your Pain Points

Step 2 - Identify Opportunities for Impact and Success

Featured Knowledge Management Community

Step 3 - Define Desired Functionality

Step 4 - Determine the Best Implementation Strategy

How Important Is Social Software at Work

Step 5 - Target Relevant Operating Metrics

Step 6 - Identify and Reward Evangelists

Did You Know

Step 7 - Measure Return on Knowledge Not ROI

Step 8 - Adopt Agile Practices Deploy Often and Early

The Key to Success Finding the Right Balance

References

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15Con

tent

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The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 1

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Industry leaders including eBay LinkedIn GE and NetApp have successfully implemented social knowledge management tools Now more small and medium-sized businesses are looking to do the same

In this white paper wersquove outlined the process an organization should take to determine whether or not social knowledge management tools can resolve their issues and the best steps for ensuring a successful deployment

Make Introducing Social Knowledge Management a Piece of Cake

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 2

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List of Ingredients3 c User Engagement

1 c Platform Functionality

2 tsp Deployment Method

14 c Measurement

At AnswerHub we help companies use knowledge more productively by organizing it and making available anytime anywhere

Scalable to Improve AllForms of Communication

The AnswerHub platform allows your QampA site to grow with your company mdash you can even host multiple sites on the same server

Built-In Community Operating Metrics

AnswerHubrsquos dashboard includes detailed analytics about your community Heres an example of the statistics AnswerHub tracks

Before yoursquore ready to roll out your new social knowledge management tool itrsquos important to understand the ldquoingredientsrdquo yoursquore working with

You will need plenty of user engagement to get your tool off the ground and a big part of that will be determining functionality and deployment method

Mix that with a good dose of analytics and yoursquore on your way to successful social knowledge management

Great Recipes Start with Great Ingredients

1 3 4 5 62

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 3

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The first step is to identify the problems you would like to solve with knowledge management Common pain points include

bull Difficulty collecting and distributing internal knowledge

bull High customer support costs

bull Loss of knowledge due to turnover

bull Lack of internal collaboration

bull Too much time spent in meetings

Knowledge management tools can also assist customer support teams Question and Answer formats are particularly effective for providing a timely answer while having a customer on the line

Identify Your Pain PointsStep 1

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 4

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Identifying what success will look like before deployment helps determine if your initiatives are successful To maximize the ROI from knowledge management tools itrsquos important to identify

1 Which pain points will be addressed first - Find a balance between the most important pain points the pain points that can be addressed the fastest and which will have the greatest impact

2 Whether multiple pain points can be resolved at the same time by the same tool or feature - Finding a tool that solves multiple pain points will save you time and money

Itrsquos also important to develop a strategy that makes people in your organization aware of the tools are and how to use them

Identify Opportunities for Impact and SuccessStep 2

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 5

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Make Answers Easy to FindGridGain replaced their outdated forum with AnswerHub because customers were unable to find the correct answers in the old format GridGain quickly realized that organizing information was as important as providing it

Featured Knowledge Management Community

GridGains QampA Spaces

Create Knowledge SpacesGridGain uses AnswerHub to provide dedicated support for its real-time big data software customers With a diverse set of questions GridGain achieved the desired functionality of segmented knowledge with ldquoSpacesrdquo

GridGain created spaces for each of the different topics their users were talking about making answers easier to find

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 6

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Define Desired FunctionalityStep 3

Social knowledge management tools can perform a variety of tasks so itrsquos vital to establish the specific functionality your organization will benefit from most including

bull Identifying product experts and brand champions

bull Improving cross-boundary communication

bull Preserving institutional memoryknowledge

bull Harnessing and distribute internal knowledge

bull Discovering emerging opportunities

bull Identifying product pain points

Some knowledge management tools like AnswerHub allow you to change functionality by enablingdisabling plugins and themes even while the tool is in use providing greater flexibility

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 7

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Determine the Best Implementation StrategyStep 4

Aligning IT rollouts with business-driven efforts will position your organization to successfully deploy and achieve quantifiable results However there are several options when it comes to rolling out a new technology and selecting the best strategy for your organization is key Options to consider for implementation include

Also consider using theming and plugins to integrate knowledge management with existing tools like intranets CRMs and websites You can also use internal marketing to generate excitement and anticipation or to provide instructions for the expected use of the new tool

Roll Out Options Pros Cons

Deploy to the entire community at once Get entire organization involved from the start increased adoption rate

Risk of losing user interest due to unforeseen issues

Test deploy to a percentage of your organization

Provides a cross section of departments and employees for more accurate information

Slower implementation

Deploy to small teams across departments to gauge interest and build excitement

Fix any issues you discover in the initial deployment find evangelists

Slower implementation test case may not apply to company wide issues

Deploy to team managers or department heads only

Gain valuable insights from leaders build a tem of influential evangelists

Slower implementation team managers and department heads are less likely to have time to test

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 8

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How Are Organizations Using Social Software3

56

Harness Distributed Knowledge

Facilitate Cross-boundary Collaboration

56

78

Increase Employee Engagement

58

Discover Emerging Opportunities

49

Identify expertise

46

Improve Leadership Through Feedback

30

Preserve Institutional Memory

34

Develop EmployeeSkills

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 9

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Target Relevant Operating MetricsStep 5

Many knowledge management tools like AnswerHub provide analytics to monitor activity and highlight potential issues within your community In addition to monitoring these statistics itrsquos important to look for signs your team is communicating more effectively

bull Employees are spending less time on the phone while maintaining a high-level of communication

bull Departments that were previously segregated are now communicating

bull Former ldquogo-tordquo sources of information are spending less time answering questions andor employees are spending less time asking questions

Donrsquot be afraid to make changes to the functionality of your knowledge management tool if you find that yoursquore not reaching your goals

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 10

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Identify and Reward EvangelistsStep 6

Some organizations struggle when motivating employees to share knowledge because the value of knowledge within the organization is so high In these situations employees will hoard knowledge because they think it will lead to raises promotions or bonuses

To counteract this organizations must identify ldquoevangelistsrdquo and reward them for their knowledge sharing Evangelists are employees dedicated to building support for a given technology in this case a new knowledge management tool through explanation demonstration and documentation

To make identifying evangelists easier knowledge management tools like AnswerHub provide gamification features that encourage and reward knowledge sharing participation These features help to identify evangelists and reward them with custom community badges and moderation privileges

AnswerHub Badges

Great QuestionQuestion voted up 8 times

Citizen PatrolFirst Flagged Post

Strunk amp WhiteEdited 10 entries

Civic DutyVoted 15 times

AnswerHub badges are awarded for different actions and can be customized to match goals and branding

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 11

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Did You Know

52Of employees believe colleagues can help

them do their job better1

Of executives say social business is vital to their organization2

39 67Of employees say they have difficulty locating

the right people1

38Of employees donrsquot get

asked to share their help and information1

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 12

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Measure Return on Knowledge Not ROIStep 7

Most organizations rely on ROI to evaluate new projects and software but when evaluating knowledge management platforms itrsquos far more effective to measure your ROK or Return on Knowledge When measuring ROK be sure to include

bull Employee Satisfaction Happy employees means less turnover reducing recruiting and training costs

bull User Workflow Employees respond to customer issues more efficiently increasing brand loyalty and customer retention while also reducing time spent looking for answers to questions

bull Collective Knowledge Harnessing the knowledge of your organization and its customers can lead to reduced marketing and research costs

bull Knowledge On-Demand Making information easily available to employees and customers eliminates the costs associated with printing and shipping information to other locations 1

23

45

6

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 13

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Adopt Agile Practices Deploy Often and EarlyStep 8

If you see opportunities for improvement within your knowledge sharing platform make the changes necessary and deploy them

Lingering issues will increase user frustration and decrease adoption rates and correcting a problem and immediately deploying the fix to your organization minimizes this risk This should be a continuous process that includes product updates feature extensions and software integration

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 14

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The Key to Success Finding the Right Balance

The benefits of organizational social collaboration are far reaching As Sandy Pentland the Director for the Media Labs Entrepreneurship Program at MIT put it ldquoSocial business can have huge potential inside and outside the enterprise across employees customers prospects and business partnersrdquo 4 Now that you have the recipe for social collaboration success itrsquos time to start the process of integrating a new software platform or tool into your organizational structure

The right balance of ingredients with the proper planning and procedure will help ensure your social collaboration platform is adopted by your organization and that the transition process is as smooth as possible For information on social collaboration platforms and more ideas and strategies for integrating them into your daily workflow visit wwwAnswerHubcom

The Perfect Start to Social Knowledge Management

ThemingSecurity IntegrationModerationEngagement

Everyday AnswerHub connects thousands of users with the answers they need to communicate and collaborate more effectively Come see what AnswerHub can do for your organization

The Recipe for Successful Social Knowledge Management 16

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References1 ldquoSocial Knows Employee Engagement Statisticsrdquo Elizabeth Lupfer The Social Workplace 2011

2 ldquoThe Leading Indicators of Social Business Maturity in 2012rdquo Dion Hinchcliffe ZDNet 2012

3 ldquoSocial Business What Are Companies Really Doingrdquo MIT Sloan Management Review 2012

4 ldquoTech Trends 2012 Elevate IT for Digital Businessrdquo Deloitte 2012