Here you are. Your tips are appreciated.
Sincerely,
Wonko
Corporate Use of Wikis:
For Communications with Customers
Most firms have an ongoing need for exchanging information with their
customers. In many cases, these communications are collaborative in
nature, requiring multiple exchanges to achieve resolution. Two
firms, Voce Communications and Opsware Inc., frequently communicate
with, and receive communications from, their clients.
Before adopting wikis, Voce Communications, a public relations firm,
kept its clients informed about campaigns and schedules using e-mail
exchanges. Problems with e-mail exchanges included issues with speed
and reliability. Adopting wikis allows the company to rapidly and
accurately interact with its customers to coordinate their advertising
activities.
Opsware Inc. is a software developer focused on the management of
corporate data centers. The company offers training courses to its
customers on its products. Initially, the company used a web-based
form that customers filled out to request training. The forms were
transmitted to administrative personnel as e-mails, which then had to
be manually transferred into a calendar. The new wiki receives the
data from the Web forms directly, reducing the amount of work required
to administer the training program and associated transcription
errors. Furthermore, the wiki automatically gathers data on the
customer who is signing up for training, making the information easily
accessible to assist Opsware in tailoring their training.
For Coordinating Marketing
Marketing activities at companies with more than a handful of
employees become very difficult to coordinate. Many types of media
may be used, a variety of events may be held and/or attended, a large
number of vendors may be involved, and several senior managers of the
company may be required to approve budgets and activities.
Traditionally, coordinating all the relevant parties involved
countless meetings, phone calls, and e-mails. The absence of a
central repository of information regarding the firm's activities can
make message consistency difficult to maintain, potentially confusing
the marketplace. Keeping senior executives up to speed on future
plans and budgets also is challenging.
Aperture Technologies Inc., a software maker, is one company that has
adopted wikis for marketing coordination. "Wikis allow this
collaboration much better than anything else, so we get things done
faster." As a result, the company can more rapidly achieve consensus
both internally between its marketing professionals and negotiate
agreements with external vendors to execute its marketing plans.
Voce Communications, a public relations firm, has adopted wikis to
help its clients manage their advertising campaigns and schedules.
After experiencing problems with e-mail exchanges, the company
realized it could more quickly and reliably inform its customers about
marketing activities using wikis than it could using e-mail exchanges.
For Project Management
Project management is an essential function of every company, but is
also frequently one of the least productive and enjoyed activities
employees engage in. As companies seek to increase the productivity
of their employees and reduce expenses, spending less time in meetings
and on conference calls is essential. Unfortunately, traditional
project management approaches are based on frequent face-to-face or at
least synchronous meetings between all of the parties involved. Even
people whose involvement is peripheral may be required to be present
for every meeting just in case their input is needed.
As more and more projects involve people who are not located in one
location, meetings and conference calls become even more onerous.
Employees have to travel or have to be available for telephone calls,
even when they are located in wildly disparate time zones.
Asynchronous communication methods become increasingly essential, but
exchanges of e-mails with large numbers of people being carbon copied
are less than ideal because they trap valuable information in
electronic-mail boxes.
Wikis overcome these problems by allowing employees to collaborate no
matter where they are at a time convenient to them. The project
management process is constantly updated and visible to everyone,
preventing information from becoming fragmented across participants'
e-mail in boxes. Aperture Technologies Inc., a software maker, is one
company that has adopted wikis to track projects. "Wikis allow this
collaboration much better than anything else, so we get things done
faster."
E-mail software startup Stata Laboratories Inc. has also applied wikis
to project management. Aaron Burcell, director of marketing, has
found that he has eliminated daily phone calls for project management
in favor of only one per week. The company has also been able to
outsource more engineering and other work to India that it had before,
reducing its costs. The savings in money and time on teleconferencing
alone have paid for the cost of the wiki.
For Documentation Creation
Documentation is one of the most critical aspects of a company's face
to its customers. Unfortunately, it is also often a poor stepchild of
the product development process. Frequently, those who are best
positioned to know how to use a product are unwilling and/or
ineffective communicators. Furthermore, product knowledge can be
distributed among many different individuals, making it difficult to
accumulate into a single document. Also, as product development
proceeds, deviations from the originally planned specifications may go
unnoticed by the documentation team if they are not kept informed
until it is too late to correct the documentation without delaying the
product's launch.
Typically, companies will engage a technical writer to ensure that the
documentation is readable. However, the technical writer has the
difficulty of acquiring sufficient product knowledge to communicate
information about the product accurately. Gathering information can
be difficult and time-consuming, particularly when many people must be
consulted. The product manager may want to prevent the technical
writer from interacting directly with the developers to keep them
working on the product, but critical information may then be
overlooked. In some cases, the developers may be the only ones who
really know how the product works.
Wikis make it much easier for the technical writer to collaborate with
the employees engaged in the product development process. As the
documentation begins to take shape, the developers can provide input.
Even if their language skills are not sufficient for publication,
another developer, the product manager, and/or the technical writer
can refine their input into a form that is understandable by the
customer. As the product take shape, and the inevitable deviations
from the original project specifications occur, these changes can be
brought to everyone's attention and incorporated into the product's
documentation. Not only is the documentation's accuracy improved, but
the product development process as a whole may benefit if other
development activities are also affected by the changes.
Aperture Technologies Inc., a software maker, is one company that has
adopted wikis for writing and editing documentation. "Wikis allow
this collaboration much better than anything else, so we get things
done faster." The company has eliminated many meetings, conference
calls, and e-mail exchanges. Small groups within Walt Disney and SAP
have also found wikis useful as online scratchpads for accumulating
material.
As a Source of New Product Offerings
In the increasingly competitive global economy, companies must
continually develop new and innovative products to attract consumer
spending. The Internet has created a myriad of opportunities for
businesses to create new products and services for consumers.
One area that has exploded in the last few years is digital
photography. As consumers have discovered the ease of transferring
photographs onto their computers, they have become increasingly
interested in using computers to share their photographs with others.
E-mailing is one common method with minimal technical complexity.
Commercial online hosting services like Kodak's Ofoto allows consumers
to share their pictures with others and for the consumer and their
friends and family to obtain prints.
More technologically savvy consumers have created their own web pages
to display their pictures, frequently with text describing them.
Guest books can allow others to comment on the pictures, but an
interactive medium that allows consumers and others with only basic
information technology skills to post pictures and collaborate on text
has not been available.
Ofoto is contemplating changing the situation by providing wikis to
its users. The idea is that photographers will use them to allow
friends and relatives to provide commentary about their photographs.
For example, someone who has been on a camping trip with friends could
post the pictures and then invite everyone else who was on the trip to
post stories about them. The stories and the pictures can also be
shared with other people. Such an offering presumably would increase
traffic to Ofoto, which in turn would lead to more people ordering
prints and increased revenues.
Sources:
"Something Wiki This Way Comes" By Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek (June
07, 2004) http://www.businessweek.com/@@2MDUc4YQNM5hDg0A/magazine/content/04_23/b3886138.htm
"Hate Your Software? Write Your Own" By Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek
(October 18, 2004) http://www.businessweek.com/@@2MDUc4YQNM5hDg0A/magazine/content/04_42/b3904104_mz063.htm |
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