Soc Nets, Wiki's, Blogs vs CRM for Org Knowledge Management

I don't have the time to go to many events anymore. But I did attend a Churchill Club event. It was titled "Succeeding with Web 2.0 Within the Organization" (or something like that). The panel were a group of pragmatists. They ranged from hands on managers to strategists from Best Buy, Serena Software, Oracle AppsLab, and Avenue ARazorfish. The moderator was from Forrester Research. They talked about their individual experiences with using social networks (Facebook), a combination of blogging and social network, wiki's and another internally developed programs in order to make their organizations more effective and bring people together.

Couple of months before I went to an impressive PARC talk by Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School on Enterprise 2.0. Very impressive, evangelical and empowering talk with great examples. For instance, how simple wiki's have transformed the enterprise landscape. PARC talks are open to public and almost always great.

There was something about the Churchill talk that bothered me. But it wasn't until hearing about people using blogging and social networks in unusual ways that I realized, they were talking about and old topic discussed in all Business Schools. Knowledge Management -- i.e. knowledge acquisition, retention, dispersion etc.

A good example was from Best Buy. One of the salesmen was always asked about available colors for a dishwasher. He made a small display of sample colors, printed it and put it on the floor model :-) Then he blogged about it, and someone noticed, and told others etc. There were other examples about use of FB and wiki's.

The one tool that was not used or mentioned was a CRM as an internal knowledge acquisition and management tool.

I am no CRM expert. But I think it makes a lot more sense than FB or other social networks. SocNets are user centric and limited to immediate contacts. Wiki's, on the other hand, are the most open of all tools -- and one of my favorites. But in a huge organization the lack of structure can reduce the signal to noise. If CRM is good for the customers, why not for the people who have an immediate and direct contact with the customers? Employees can give feedback and share ideas -- anonymously if needed. The acquired knowledge can then percolate up and down the org chart. Mid and higher level managers, or their proxies, can then trap the good ideas, discuss them and share them with other groups and get further refinements and feedback. Best practices can then be generated and refined. This hybrid model of open and structured sharing can get everyone involved and makes sure that the right information and business practices get used in the right place at the right time.

If there are references to this, I would love to hear about it.

Cheers, E