atw: Re: Knowledge management

Peter
Yes, the cost might well be a factor, but I have no insight.  Clearly not
all modules have to be purchased, since so many departments are using it in
a scaled down manner for managing critical government records only.

The nameless department with the full implementation has a budget in the
billions and manages a lot of sensitive (ie, sensitive to the
public/taxes/the law/public safety & welfare) areas of gov't business, so I
can see why it makes sense for them as an investment, even purely from an
audit perspective.

BTW - brilliant stuff for an auditor, would reduce the job to a faction of
the norm, just in terms of research and identification of all records and
decision making, eg,complex / controversial tenders.

One of the really neat things, well, one aspect that I particularly liked
(among many) was that "electronic signatures" finally take on meaning, with
approvals & decision outcomes from dispersed committee members, for example,
being all via email; a single note sent out, requesting agreement /
qualifications, and the single email trail uploaded to Trim under the
relevant folder.  Ah, beautiful.  :-)  The way it was always meant to be.
No ink.  No one has to be in the same room.  The authority is still
exercised and a permanent record of exactly what transpired / from whom is
maintained.  If anyone inappropriately tried to remove or alter records, the
audit trail shows who, when, and what.  Shredders are no longer anyone's
best friend.

Organizations like banks and financial institutions, record monsters like
universities, major IT companies, and such should all be using this, or
something like it, but they don't, which is astonishing, particularly given
the size of their existing IT budgets.  I'm sure this would be easily
affordable for a lot of private companies, in the IT spending scheme of
things, and an investment that would repay it's value in a myriad of ways in
a very short period of time.  There is a deep suspicion and resistance to
true knowledge management, as well as a paranoia about one's own worth if
the company can find everything you're produced ... would they still need
you?  I suspect many such psychological reasons lurk behind the limp
rhetoric that keeps knowledge management on the meaningless fringes.

Curious that there doesn't seem to be anything else like Trim, but then,
even back in the olden days, Trim had the market corned for file records.
Maybe no one else saw the future and only Trim has been quitely plugging
away building something that no one else would never dream of attempting.

Anyway, it's a beautiful system, and it's real knowledge management, for
grown ups, not a dressed up repository and not a dinky little wiki or
such.   Oh yes, content sharing is easy on Trim too, not just formal
documents. Knowledge dumping is easy and worthwhile when the search function
is so rich and truly works.

CH





On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:01 PM, Peter Martin <peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Caz.H:
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:05:31 +1000,  you wrote:
> > Christine
> > As others have alluded to, and you seem to already appreciate,
> SharePoint=
>  is not much
> > more than a document repository, with permissions, upload, book-out=
>  functions, and
> > because it's online, it allows people to share material by sending a URL=
>  rather than
> > having to attach documents. It's limited, and would be useless for a
> whole=
>  of
> > organization solution, due to rudimentary functionality and significant=
>  structural
> > limits.  Some people might like to call SharePoint a collaboration tool,=
>  but that's a
> > stretch.  At best it's a good-enough dumping ground for small projects=
>  needing a not
> > overly cumbersome way to to share material for a period of time.
> >
> > Remember TRIM?  Yes, the old, old, filing application, that used to be=
>  confined to
> > allocating a file number for hardcopy files with bright coloured number=
>  tabs, and
> > recording a file name and a brief description, file owner, etc.
> >
> > Well, Trim has morphed into an altogether more sophisticated knowledge=
>  management
> > solution.
> >
> > Many government departments now use it to capture, track and store=
>  ministerial or
> > secretarial documents, for example.  However, it can do far more.
> >
> > One major gov't department has as policy that all shared and personal=
>  drives will be
> > phased out - within another couple of years, I believe - and everything=
>  will be saved
> > and managed in TRIM.  TRIM takes everything, emails, ordinary documents,=
>  scanned
> > documents, photo's, you name it.  It has very rich functionality and=
>  provides an audit
> > trail of every action, whether an amendment or just a check out.  The=
>  search functions
> > allow complex searching using multiple parameters.  Highly scalable too,=
>  of course.
> > Access and permissions are fully managed, whether to block, allow read=
>  only, or read /
> > write.
> >
> > The department in question already has it fully implemented, and
> everyone=
>  is supposed
> > to use it for everything, at least in theory, so the behavioral change
> is=
>  well under
> > way.  The final step will  be removing access to all drives, thus making=
>  TRIM
> > unavoidable.
> >
> > Having used it for a few months (I avoided it for a few months too), I'm=
>  impressed,
> > really impressed.  It's the only solution that I've ever seen that makes=
>  sense for
> > retention of corporate knowledge.  It's great stuff.  I have only seen
> the=
>  full-blown
> > implementation (call capability) in the one department.  Have not seen
> it=
>  in use at all
> > in the private sector (no surprise there).
> >
>
> Now that's interesting news.   I remember TRIM from way back when (ok, a=
>  decade ago) .... and it was a fairly impressing application in those
> days.=
>
>
> What I also remember, unfortunately, was the costing estimate for it Way=
>  Back When....   Which meant, for the place I was working at the time,
> that=
>  it fell into the category of  Real Nice to Have But....
>
> So if it's still in that market position, I can understand it being very=
>  useful for big organizations but not exactly scalable enough in the
> general=
>  cost direction of DOWN to be more universally feasible.
>
> Meanwhile, does it fit with various trends like reusable / translatable
> XML=
>  and topic clouds and such thingys ?
> Interested to hear how it progressed....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -Peter M
> =A0peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> =A0
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-- 
Carolyn Hart


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