Posted by David Towert on Wed, Oct 15, 2008 @ 10:35 AM
One interesting thing to come out of conversations with enterprise IT thought leaders at the Gartner Portals Collaboration and Content summit in LA last month was people are still wary of Knowledge Management solutions. My impression is that KM reached peak hype in the late 1990s and has since delivered mixed results. I've previously heard of KM deployments being referred to as ‘knowledge landfills' so I wasn't really surprised.
What did surprise me is that our Taglocity Groups solution seemed to getting branded as a knowledge management solution. We initially positioned it, in part, as a knowledge sharing solution but no matter how much I explain that knowledge sharing is different to knowledge management, the connection persists. So we'll just change it from knowledge sharing to information sharing.
Many people use the words ‘knowledge' and ‘information' interchangeably anyway, and certainly the market hasn't helped to differentiate between the two. Internet research reveals all kinds of ways to describe the differences, but this article on Wikipedia touches on the pain Taglocity Groups solves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload. It states "Email remains a major source of information overload..."
This is applicable to us because Taglocity Groups provides a platform to minimize the disruptions and inbox clutter that non-actionable informational email creates. Instead, this type of email belongs in a group inbox for people to access when and how they need it.
So how does this sound for new positioning: Taglocity Groups is a non-disruptive email productivity and information sharing solution for agile enterprises to reduce email overload and transfer knowledge?
Hmmm, can't seem to get away from the K word. Let's try this then: Taglocity Groups is a private online service for groups of people to collaborate via email, share information, locate expertise, and reduce email overload. Yes, I think this will help keep Taglocity from getting lumped in with last century's cumbersome knowledge management solutions!