Share It or Waste It

This week's interviewee, Northern Light's David Seuss, put a very pesky problem into words for us. He says, "When it comes to business intelligence, the information is in many sources."

Important information that can help you run your business better isn't just in your quarterly reports. It's online. It's in trade journals. It's in your own internal systems. The information is all over the place and it can be virtually impossible to keep on top of it. Think about it - how many coworkers do you know of that have an overflowing file of magazines or articles in their offices? They probably never get around to organizing all that stuff so they can use it - and they certainly haven't worked out a system to share that vital info with others.

Northern Light has a solution to the information breakdown. They create search interfaces that quickly and easily find all the information a company needs. How on earth do they accomplish that? Well, David Seuss wasn't about to give away his proprietary secrets. But he did give us some advice on enabling knowledge sharing within an organization.

Make it Searchable

The web is a place chock full of vital information. But it's totally disorganized, probably just like the information systems in your business. No one could find a thing on the web were it not for the saving grace of search engines. They're not perfect, but they make looking for information a whole lot easier. "The work force can use search engines now. They know how to acquire information electronically and use it to improve their decision making, to identify more alternatives, to research alternatives more thoroughly and to implement decisions with more confidence," Seuss says. Companies that create searchable systems will find that their already- trained workforce will take advantage of those systems.

"There's a terrific opportunity for businesses to take this already trained workforce and give them access to the right kinds of information that reflect the business requirements of a particular industry, customer set, marketplace, technical environment- whatever it is. Businesses reap the rewards of improved decision-making and improved implementation," Seuss says.

Store Information Where It Can be Retrieved

Sharing information within a company is a difficult process. To make it easier, companies can keep all their information in one mega-file. Or they could imitate Northern Light and use browser technology that searches information that's scattered all over the place. All the search browser has to know is where to go. It could be instructed, for instance, to search certain websites, reports and other documents.

"Let's say your database was all Microsoft Word documents," he posits. "You would put them in a particular file location on your network, and our computer would access them on a regular basis, download the new ones, index them and classify them." You could store the information anywhere in the world as long as the browser knows where to get it.

Make it Simple for the End User

The end user doesn't want to pour through loads of information. Whatever system you use should allow the end user to input simple queries. The system should take care of everything else.

"Where information is coming from on that results list is not the problem of the end user. That's the problem of the search engine," Seuss says. "All the end user wants to do is sit down, put in the customer's name, and have all the information that's important about that customer come back on the results list. Then they select the articles they want to read and click through to those articles." After all, if the system is cumbersome to use, it won't be used. Period.

"That end user just wants to sit down, express their needs for information and have it appear instantaneously and magically from all over the world, right there on the screen," Seuss says. "They want to be well-prepared for their sales call or make a better advertising decision or make a better technical decision, depending on what the topic is that they're researching."

And when it comes to information sharing, that's what it's all about - getting the right information in the hands of an employee who needs it. You may not be as expert at the job as Northern Light is. Hey, that's why other businesses outsource the job to them. But by putting a little thought into your internal systems, you can create unique systems that do the job just fine.