Travel, Technology and More…

Computers have changed everything in the business world. From the way we manage data, provide customer service to the way we share information and more. Technology has taken nearly every function to an entirely new level.

Corporate knowledge is usually diffused among papers, emails, files on server drives, and people’s thoughts. It is a major challenge to collect it all in one central repository. The people that retain this information are the company’s greatest asset and when they leave, large chunks of this information are usually lost. The organization and preservation of this corporate knowledge to be collected, organized, shared, searched and utilized is called knowledge management.

This growing corporate knowledge is the company’s greatest asset. As employees innovate the systems they use, this knowledge base is updated in real time ensuring that current and future employees are benefiting from the most recent and relevant experience the workforce can offer. The consequences of employee turnover and changing workforce is minimized or removed all together. The long term result is a more innovative, nimble and productive corporate culture. As aptly put by Benjamin Disraeli, ‘The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.’

Is it simply the cataloging of all the documentation that resides on server hard drives, Outlook inboxes, and the filing cabinets of employees? Or is there something more scientific and strategic about it? Is it an archiving function appropriately delegated to a support team, or should it be something on the CEO’s radar?

There are no one-size-fits-all solutions available; nor is there a specific technology, product, or vendor offering custom knowledge management practices. The corporate specific business objectives drive the knowledge management (KM) strategy to create value and to leverage, improve, and refine the firm’s competences and knowledge assets.

NASA’s four primary success factors for KM are in this graphic below:

The IT based KM tools usually fall into one of the following categories:

• Groupware systems – facilitate collaboration between workers. They may assist workers in sharing appointment calendars or sending messages between them. The best known groupware system is Lotus Notes. Many web based collaborative tools are also effective.
• The intranet and extranet – is essentially a small-scale version of the internet, operating with similar functionality, but existing solely within the company. It allows for the integration of multimedia communication and can act as a platform for groupware applications and publishing. It not only enhances collaboration, productivity, and socialization, but also to influences organizational culture and acts as a repository for embedded knowledge. Intranet wiki are one such example.
• Data warehousing & data mining – the process of warehousing data, extraction, and distribution to discover meaningful patterns and rules.
• Decision Support Systems – to access and manipulate data so as to enhance decision-making and problem solving.
• Content management systems – are responsible for the creation, management, and distribution of content on the intranet, extranet, or a website.
• Document management systems – systems that aid in the publishing, storage, indexing, and retrieval of documents.
• Artificial intelligence tools
• Simulation tools – are used for modeling a real world scenario and for testing the effects of scenarios which are either unsafe or not economical to perform in the real world.
• Semantic networks

Knowledge Management is more about managing people, culture, and organizational practices. Effective KM initiatives use technology tools to support and enhance the business objective driven practices. Overly ambitious projects, a lack of attention to organizational cultures, and unsophisticated technology have doomed KM efforts in the past. But approaching knowledge management in a simpler, more tactical fashion where the emphasis is placed on the application of knowledge can be the key. Identifying your organization’s KM priorities, carefully focusing your communities of practice on these priorities, and upgrading your intranet to be a more of a knowledge platform will help you quickly develop a relevant, meaningful, and beneficial KM initiative.

Confused over what technologies to embrace this year? The buzz on tech trends for the coming year point at cloud computing, mobility, virtualization, and a slew of other technologies. Tech business priorities focus on improving productivity, followed by reducing operational costs, and improving customer service.

The top ‘10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2012’, according to Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company covered everything from increased use of media tablets, to the explosion of mobile-centric applications (predicting 70 billion available apps by 2014), through to ‘Big Data’ challenges, next-generation analytics capabilities and social networking.

The Mobile Age. With the Smartphone now ubiquitous–and the tablet gaining ground–SMEs will begin mobilizing their core business applications en masse in 2012. While email and other collaboration tools might already be second-nature for mobile users, areas such as mobile payments, time tracking, and field service apps should see increased adoption. The possibilities of what we use our Smartphone’s for now are endless and very naturally at the forefront of all trends. While iOS dominates the tablet market today, Gartner says it expects iOS/Android will dominate the market with 80% of tablets shipped by 2015.

• Mobile Interfaces. The user interface (IU) paradigm is changing to adapt to mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video. HTML5 – the fifth iteration of the HTML standard lets developers create richer, more interactive applications than ever.
• Mobile Apps. Apple and Android provide hundreds of thousands of mobile apps to mobile users. This is expected to grow from consumer-only phenomena to an enterprise focus.
• Location marketing. Listing on Foursquare or Google Places, location marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of doing business.

Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how increasingly consumer devices will connect to the Internet with the technologies for identifying, sensing and communicating. Key elements of the IoT include:

• Embedded sensors: Sensors that detect and communicate changes are being embedded, not just in mobile devices, but in an increasing number of places and objects.
• Image Recognition: Image recognition technologies strive to identify objects, people, buildings, places logos, and anything else that has value to consumers and enterprises. Smartphones and tablets equipped with cameras have pushed this technology from mainly industrial applications to broad consumer and enterprise applications.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) payment: NFC allows users to make payments by waving their mobile phone in front of a compatible reader. Once NFC is embedded in a critical mass of phones for payment, industries such as public transportation, airlines, retail and healthcare can explore other areas in which NFC technology can improve efficiency and customer service.

Mobil Cloud Services

Move to Cloud Computing. It’s the best fit for SMEs. Basically, cloud computing means that applications, files and documents reside in an offsite data centre, not on your computer’s hard drive, and you and your employees can access them via the Internet, anytime and anywhere. Advantages include:

• Cost savings. You eliminate the need for a costly infrastructure and, depending on your budget and needs, can pick and choose the services you want to outsource. You can increase or decrease the amount of storage required to match your stage of business and you aren’t purchasing servers that are under-used when you install them, then overburdened as your business expands.

• Security. Contrary to concerns  of data security with cloud computing, good providers offer better security and privacy than most SMEs have internally because they have 24/7 monitoring, management and reporting features that many companies might not otherwise be able to afford. In addition, data stored in a cloud does not suffer fire damage or theft.  

Social Enterprise. Enterprises will be driven by social media with increasing ease of access, allowing businesses to produce, find and convey information more effectively. However, businesses must ensure their social media campaigns are tailored to suit not merely the clients’ needs, but also the platforms. The seamless integration of social media with Smartphone’s further adds urgency to adapt all corporate communications to this platform.

Gamification. Broadly speaking, gamification aims to integrate game dynamics to a website, online content or campaign in a bid to drive participation and, ultimately, awareness of your brand. The idea is to add gaming elements to tasks and processes that are ordinarily tedious to consumers.  Technology research company Gartner predicts gamified services will become as important to companies’ marketing departments as Facebook or Twitter.

Rather than becoming overwhelmed with all that technology offers – and is likely to offer – take a good look at the services that will benefit your small business the most. The trick is to use technology to your advantage.

You might wonder what that fancy digital looking box pictured left is and what it’s used for. This two-dimensional bar code, called quick response codes (QR codes) are mobile phone readable bar code – a bar code on steroids.

Quick take your smartphone and scan this code. If you do not have the app to read it, just download a free app and test it out.

A QR code is a type of matrix bar code first designed by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of any kind of data (e.g., binary, alphanumeric, or Kanji symbols).

QR codes can also be described as encoded hyperlinks that can be printed on promotional material and also be used digitally—you can append a QR code to a Tweet, or displayed on a web page. When you scan or read a QR code with your camera-enabled Smartphone, you can link to digital content on the web; activate a number of phone functions including email, IM and SMS; and connect the mobile device to a web browser. These codes are a mobile friendly way to point potential customers who aren’t in front of their computers to online resources.

This technology blurs the distinction between smart phones, digital destination and content, and paper-based communication mediums. The information encoded could be:

• Personal or company contact information.
• An embedded phone number which the phone can dial, or a company home page URL or a specific destination on a social network (i.e. company fan page).
• An RSS feed, SMS or an arbitrary text message.
• An email address or a calendar event with location, title, start and end time, alarm and zone.
• A physical address with location coordinates information.

The technical specifications for a QR Code are set down in the ISO-18004 standard so they are the same all over the world. To make things a bit more robust, the QR Code also contains its own error correction data, internal orientation calibration and self-alignment markers. In this way it doesn’t matter whether the QR code is upside down or wrapped around a curved surface, the message will still get through.

QR Codes are not in widespread use yet, but all the technology parts are in place and ready to be exploited. The platform is mature, it’s an ISO standard, and can be effectively used in Indonesia which has a growing smart phone user base by companies and consumers. The ease of use and versatility provides instant value in mobile strategies for product sales, information access and promotional programs.

The key is to be ready on the other end of the code with some content that actually intrigues the user, and makes them get out their phone and scan.

It is just a 3-step process to link the physical world to mobile for an interactive experience:

STEP 1
Create your own QR code of the information with any online QR code generator. Include a shortened url (sign up with www.bit.ly) for website link, contact information, map or directions and even instant payment through PayPal for products or services. Some online generators are:

–          www.qrstuff.com

–          www.icandy.com

–          www.stickybits.com

STEP 2
Manage campaign and publish your codes wherever you like. Print the code on marketing materials, stickers or even behind business cards.

STEP 3
Track with Real-Time Analytics by tracking the url statistics. This is especially important when you want to measure the results of a marketing campaign using QR codes. Just log in to your bit.ly account and get statistics. So when a user scans your QR code and reviews the linked information, that scan will be included in the data the next time you run your report.