Here I present another perpective on how to organize,catalogue,share and access information or knowledge within enterprise. It has some ideas on typical scenarios on how we utilize the information to fulfill daily job and also briefs the features of a software which I used to implement the ideas. It's just a platform which for in-house use and I think it really make some difference to the way how I and my team to tidy-up and share the information. Welcome any ideas, comments and discussions. You can reach me at victor.reload@gmail.com

32. Enterprise information map--diagram Any share drive BranchAeptOneunc1.1 BranchBeptTwounc2.1 Any intranet portal http://team1.sharepoint.company/PolicySet/Summary.htm http://intranet.company.com/HR/holidayPlan/2009/ Any internet resources http://www.internet.com/product.php http://www.techsite.org/ Or even any print-out Bulletin on BranchA gate One Any critical knowledge in some people’s memory Jack know how to solve a type of complex tech issue How to get email client Where to get email account Where to get support of email Email codes Job A standards or guideline Job B standards or guideline Tech field one Reference info Tech field two Reference info News and event of dept A News and even of dept B Branch A football Club info Email 360—How to Job standards and procedures Company events and news Recreations and clubs Department A Department B Department C Company BU entities Topics/Info chunk Logical links Physical info locations

35. Screen shots of the topic of my department As you can see I group all hot spots that I think is important to my team’s work into six categories, they are my team’s function and goals or values, the organization chart, various standards/policies/methodologies for job, facilities used for job, plans/logs/records of job, and finally the training and staff career path stuff. They are just brought based my perspective but most of them are common to general management and operation. Then I dig into each group and fill the detailed topics under each. For example for sub-group 04.02 Job standards/procedure… I added four topics and they are corresponding to different fields or services we are now engaging

36. Drill down sample of one topic group Now we have two trade BPO projects. For each project we have two topics one is for all kinds of support process how-tos and another is for project background for further reference.

37. Further detail of a topic—the information chunk Then for each topic we have some information that need to highlight, for example for one topic we have seven types of jobs need to fulfill. And finally for each information we will consolidate operational sub-information that will be used for my team member to do their daily jobs. And we use the information logical link to chain them up When user right click some topic then all useful related soft links will be unfolded. They are not concrete information such as files on share-drive or sharepoint portal. Instead they are just the links or tags which will automatically navigate my people to touch the final information. So that’s the true trick or advantage. A project will involve multiple parties with multiple information hosts and various medias or storage. No one single medias or application will host all the needed information and suit everybody’s requirement. Take the the highlighted one as sample we do have a project sharepoint portal but it’s for high level use for PMO. And we have to store some material on our own share-drive, But from soft link viewpoint they are listed the same format under a logical topic no matter where and how the exact files are stored

38. The topic organization and dispatching And after digging in the topics I found something more interesting, now that the management topic are comparatively stable and universal so we can deploy or spread it to more departments and more branches easily. Just imagine the enterprise are composed by three key factors: The locations, the division(or group), and the functions or target of each department. Then I setup a bigger picture which involves all of them into that. Please see pictures below:

40. Holistic view of your enterprise information Another advantage of the system is that for executives they will have the chance to look inside how the subordinate divisions run their daily job with a closer sight than ever. Besides all kinds of reports or meetings like traditionally the management team can just log into the system and view their BU based management topics or aspects. Please see below screen shot: Management team have multiple options or path to dig in the enterprise running status. One is by Location  Division  Management topics(It’s for top executives); Second is from the Division  Location  Management topics, it’s for all divisions or SUBs’ managers, they can view the implementation of each departments located at different branches.

41. View the information by BU And moreover management can view some interested topic based on different locations/divisions. Say if CIO is interested in the IT facilities of company’s department he or she will has the following view: Look at the screen copy if it’s of the topic what IT facilities and how we are using them clear? CIO can view that topic based on different branches and different departments which makes the comparision very easy. And similarly the PMO management can review project related topics throughout any department at any locations without asking local manager the details. And also for FA management the same way. By create such as management topic framework different type of management can easily investigate the running status of all corporation covered affiliates. They can view them by certain topics, or by location, or by division/SBU.

42. Interestingly we can compare it with the accounting system. By accounting system financial people do not instruct staffs how to run their business of each activities, but they create a series of catalogues and the behind procedures on how to capture each business activities into the system and finally enables the management to have a full picture on how their business is running in terms of financial benchmark. Likewise why don't we create such a picture for the information we use everyday? Analogy to financial accounting system

43. Some questions about the system (Q1)Do I think I’m the smartest guy that can take all critical management topics into the system at one time on my own? (A) That’s the best question, I can not work it out by myself and nor we can make it one size for all, in fact it’s a dynamically evolution system, each division, department or even each branches can raise the topics they think are important to them, so in the system we have a function that allows divisions to create their custom topic groups and combine them into the corporate standard or common topics. For example our IT support department find there should be staff leave record to cater to our working calendar, then we create that by ourselves and combine it into the legacy topic tree like below:

44. Some questions about the system- cont. Then when management review our department’s structure they will see that and can decide whether it should be a good practice to make it standard of corporate level, or should it be combine under other topics, or just leave it as is. Please study the following screen copy from management’s view; As you can see when navigating to branch Dalian  Department (SS)IT support service center the management will see a custom group with blue highlight. They can continue to dig-in what’s under that topic.

45. Some questions about the system- cont. (Q2)Is it applicable to all different departments to follow the same (management topic) map? <Of course not, as you can see in question #1 any department or division can add any topics which are important to them. But whatever it’s corporate standard or division customized they can be under monitoring by top management> (Q3)Can it replace the legacy IT facilities/infrastructure? <No, it does not contradict any existing IT applications or tools, in fact it sit on them and for the logical link of information it need to be stored in traditional storage such as share-drive or sharepoint portal etc. It’s a matrix which can organize those scattered information and present the end user a logically unified view from management topic perspective> (Q4)How about the security of company information asset? <Company information will be hosted in legacy applications, even people who has the right can see some department’s management framework they still need access to view the concrete files or records in target applications; And we have built-in function to segrate the topic view based on different BUs, departments or even teams> (Q5)What key advantage can different roles(front-line staff & managers, top management) expect to get out of the system? <For different level of management they can review the company’s management status based on different angles, also it provides them a baseline to optimize and refine the management details step by steps, otherwise all manager have to think about it by themselves from scratch. Also for people turnaround the successor have to spend a lot of time to gather all information and recreate the map on their own, it is really inefficient For front-line staffs it will be very clear for them to understand how they do their jobs and how the department is running, Also it’s pretty quick for them to search any critical information to fulfill their daily job. Our department is just a typical example, people do not waste time to source all kinds of details, contacts, URLs, instructions any more>

46. One more feature of the system Due to the limit of time I can only present part of the features of my product. At last let me introduce another key function of it. You know for typical Windows OS it has a Start menu on left bottom which can navigate the user to any installed applications. Likely we have another popup menu on the right bottom like below: Just by couple of clicks user can quickly find any operating information. I’ve to say this function make my everyday job easily and happy. Also it provides a quick info window which enable each user to choose any useful information based on their responsibility and assemble into a short-cut when, that will furtherly shorten their time to reach the target information, like below: Say if I’m a guy who doesn’t care about the organization and management stuff most of the time then I just pickup the Job standard/procedure and IT facilities related information and each time I can get my information within seconds. It’s the cool, right?

47. Summary I’m not a professional who has deep expertise or study in information access and search but just try to work out a tool which can facilitate my daily job and make it more happier. Nor I’m representing any company or trying to sell some kind of software to the folks. I just want to share with the others about my idea and welcome any type of discussion or study on this topic. You can contact me anytime via victor.reload@gmail.com