It’s a common mistake, when thinking about social tools, to imagine only platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as the totality of “social media.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. In point of fact, one of the key capabilities of social media tools is the collaborative, knowledge-sharing capacity of internal knowledge management solutions, which are also called Wikis. And so, in this edition of the loosely connected social media in P2P series, I’d like to talk about a use-case for Wikis:

What is a Wiki?

A Wiki is a website that is developed in a collaborative fashion with content contributions from different community members. According to itself, Wikipedia is a free web-based collaborative multilingual encyclopedia project that has 19 million articles in 282 different languages written collaboratively by volunteer contributors from around the world.

A wiki captures and organizes information on a platform that is both easy to read and easy to search. It is also easy for users to create articles and make quick contributions. The editing process is also quick and easy and provides an audit trail to understand what changes to content were made when, and by whom.

How is a Wiki Valuable in a B2B Context?

Lew Platt, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, once said that “If only HP knew what it knows, it would make three times more profit tomorrow.” Platt understood that if his company could truly harness the collective intelligence that resided within his global organization, the value that could be unlocked would be exponential. As business operations become more information and knowledge-driven and less activity based, the legacy knowledge management practices that view “knowledge” as a static object that requires a deliberate process to manage becomes less and less relevant each day.

In reality, things change, priorities shift, and new information becomes available, making “knowledge” a moving target. A major problem for most enterprises is that the most critical knowledge resides in far-flung places across the organization – on laptops, in notebooks, in email folders, or in the minds of employees. An even larger problem for many enterprises is that they’re probably unaware of who actually possesses the best information and who the real experts are on a given topic. Enterprises need platforms that can easily capture and share the collective knowledge of their workforces and encourage and reward those who contribute.

• B2B Use Case #1: Requirements Gathering: The aggregation of category spend is a classic sourcing strategy that can yield significant savings by driving volume discounts across fewer suppliers. A major challenge in this process is gaining consensus around final requirements from different stakeholders. Leveraging a wiki to develop, negotiate, and finalize requirements would put control of the process in the hands of the budget holders, enable a democratic back and forth collaboration, and provide visibility to all throughout the process.
• B2B Use Case #2: Best Practices in Category Management: The days of 30-year tenures are behind us. In fact, 25% of all workers have been with their current employer for less than one year. This means that roughly 25% of an enterprise’s employees (and knowledge) leave every year. Organizations cannot be crippled by the employment trends of the day and must be able to capture and retain best practices. Utilizing a wiki to develop the strategies that define how the different spend categories should be managed to the benefit of the enterprise can ensure that the collective wisdom in the sourcing, procuring, and usage of different categories is centrally captured and as markets and needs shift are adapted as needed.

Final Thoughts

Wikis as an internal knowledge management tool can have a tremendous impact on business results. The simple ability for employees to know what the organization knows at any given time can cut down on timelines, eliminate rework caused by incomplete information, shrink the time required to complicate tactical activities, and even afford better training opportunities for everyone in the organization. Truly, using wikis as part of a P2P workflow offers significant benefits to the enterprise beyond basic knowledge management.

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