Software

RE: What software has your nonprofit used to improve knowledge flow within the organizatio

rani — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:41:00 GMT

This is very iteresting and helpful article. In our office outlook (email/calendar) is the source to share - much has been learned from this artilce. Thanks.
rani

RE: What software has your nonprofit used to improve knowledge flow within the organizatio

wcook — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:32:00 GMT

For those of you who found this thread in the forums, be sure to check out Idealware's article 15 Ways to Use Software to Improve Your Knowledge Management, which lists ways you can use software to improve information flow in your organization.

Share your feedback here.

RE: What software has your nonprofit used to improve knowledge flow within the organization?

donc — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:10:00 GMT

Knowledge flow/management for us is still primarily a process of people getting together to identify, discuss and resolve issues and to brainstorm ideas and solutions for possible incorporation. Knowledge flow is a human process.

The best software tool we have found to support this is the basic scheduling and calendaring features of Outlook/Exchange supported by Email and a Knowledge-base to capture informational repositories (an Intranet) built on SharePoint.

Cheers, Don

RE: What software has your nonprofit used to improve knowledge flow within the organization?

tclaremont — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:59:00 GMT

The biggest improvement to the knowlege sharing process has been the development of the intranet, but the rate of adoption has been slower than anticipated.

The fundamental problem has been resistence of employees to change their work process so that it includes the new technology. Call it a "fear of computers" or whatever you like, the apprehension was much more profound than we anticipated.

Now that the initial phobia has been diluted somewhat, we are finally to the point where people are ASKING for additional content, which is precisely what needs to happen in order for a project like this to succeed. Once the employees realize that there is a human being at the controls of the website, and that requests and feedback are instrumental in the development of the intranet, it becomes more of a partnership and less of a one sided production. People then feel like they have a vested interest in the project.

As for the knowlege flow, it will have to be tailored to your audience. Some end users prefer a "push" technology, where the content is sent to them via email, etc. While some employees prefer a "pull' technology, where the end user is requred to consciously go to the web site in order to retrieve the content. Different methods work for different people. Solution? Allow both. Let people "subscribe" to content if they want email notification of changes. If they don't want the notifications, they can still go to the website whenever they like to manually retrieve data.

Software? ColdFusion/SQL Server on the backend, and loads of development time on the front end.

What software has your nonprofit used to improve knowledge flow within the organization?

wcook — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:27:00 GMT

What worked and what didn't? Share your experiences and recommendations with other nonprofits.