Over the last few years Sei-IS have been involved with a number of industries but this week I have the opportunity to watch a beer get created from scratch and it reminded me that we have assisted a number of companies in their Knowledge delivery. Information spreads out like a spider web but each strand to ensure the web stays strong has to be fixed at just the right angle and location to assist the whole structure.
Who needs what information
Within Ford Motor Company I watched a small team of people take apart a competitors car that has specifically been imported from Asia and meticulously each piece was tagged and listed and the collaboration started. Engineers started to receive the data that was most relevant to them, if I was responsible for the engine mount then I would start to see the data on Rubber mountings, bolts structural diagrams costs associated with the parts…. If I was in lighting then I would start to receive data about the fibre optic lighting systems. The Point about this example is that the people stripping the car have no real idea within the business who needs what information… the knowledge in this car is only applicable to the engineers working in that space.
Collect - Assess - Define - Convert
Japanese Tobacco International have a worldwide marketing arm which had to support different rules in different counties where law says different things in different places. The business required the knowledge from Marketers across the world shared and available but to start with it was in 115 different countries. All the good ideas has to be collected, assessed, defined into a common format approved by the legal teams and then converted to the output that was available to all relevant countries that could legally use the data for their advantage. The process required moving information from Intranet SharePoint sites to Extranet Sites and back again as the knowledge progressed through the various stages.
Unique process - Unique product
Finally this week I got to taste a very special beer after watching it from a distance move through a collective Knowledge process. The business wanted to create a special Beer for the Head Quarters staff as a reminder of what the business did and also to move a mainly admin function closer to the ‘ coal face’. The staff through the intranet suggested the colour of the beer, the taste of the beer and type of beer and even the name of the beer. As each of the attributes of the beer was agreed Heinekens Brew Masters defined the materials and processes that would be required to produce a beer to the specification. Various members of the staff who had been involved in the selection process then got to see the beer being brewed and labelled and ‘tasted’ before it was made available to all staff during the Christmas period. A unique beer, following a unique knowledge process.
Next Steps
Sei-IS Business Consultancy support many business in their knowledge processes using SharePoint to deliver knowledge through the defined levels of Structure, Information and Knowledge. We do not get involved in every process but where we do we ensure that the process adds value to the business just like all of these examples above…
