I am conducting a series of interviews with Samuel Driessen, Information Architect at Océ, about their Enterprise 2.0 implementation and adoption experiences. In this post I will cover their experiences with wikis and lessons learned. Earlier, I wrote out their micro-messaging experiences. Océ is a leading international provider of digital document management technology and services. Samuel is located in the Netherlands and his responsibilities include both the information architecture for structured information in applications such as PLMS and SAP and the unstructured information in places such as email and knowledge management programs.

As I mentioned before, I really like this dual role. It makes so much sense to have these two information sources under the same architectural leadership. Usually knowledge management and IT data management are siloed, limiting the effectiveness of both. This is the first time I have seen this and I commend the vision of Océ. This excellent concept could be a separate blog post but the story today is about their wiki experiences.

Samuel said that part of his role is looking for opportunities for taking Web 2.0 social media inside the organization. He also supports efforts started by others. In the case of wikis, a software engineering manager began the first effort. This manager wanted to create an internal version of the Wikipedia to share best practices and refine processes in their R&D group. He wanted a method to collect, make accessible, and keep current their R&D practices.

This effort was a big success. Lots of people in the R&D group use it, if only to read the content. Samuel said this application is a great way to introduce wikis into an enterprise.  He said that the use of a wiki with open editing privileges assumes that everyone in the enterprise is smart and can make intelligent contributions to the firm. Working together people can refine and improve processes in a bottom up way that creates a greater sense of engagement. This all happens? at Océ.

People assumed responsibility for their areas of expertise. They often followed updates to their entries. When there was change by someone else, it usually started a conversation over best practices. Sometimes management was brought into these conversations to get support and offer guidance.  Any differences have been resolved without edit wars.  Some people put in original content and others are good at cleaning up the format and language of contributions by others.

Samuel said that the open platform of the wiki has trigged a sense of empowerment by employees. He also said that it works better as resource for this purposes as you can see content immediately and do not have to open documents that may or may not be what you need.

At the same time, Samuel said that wikis are not the solution to everything. They have not been as useful for file sharing but that may, in part, be a limitation of the tool they are using.  Samuel said that since they have other tools for activities such as file sharing and blogging, this makes the wiki better as it is only used for what it does best. He feels it is not a good practice to stretch wikis to tasks they are not designed for.

There are three types of wikis at Océ now. The first one was the R&D wiki just described. More recently, a corporate wiki has been established to provide wiki functionality across the enterprise. It has four main sections: expertise wikis, department wikis, product wikis and project wikis. The expertise wiki includes a subsection that indexes abbreviations used in the firm. This index was the responsibility of one person who felt it was better to crowd source the task through the wiki. It has been successful and is a good example of an ideal task for a wiki.

The product and project wikis were moved out the R&D wikis to provide greater access. One project wiki is used to collect materials for learning purposes and for exploring how a wiki can be used for this goal.

The third type of wiki at Océ is used to share information outside the enterprise. For example, Samuel set up a section here to share information within the Dutch knowledge management group. It contains people from large Dutch-based international organizations such as Shell, Heineken, and Unilever. They set up meeting agendas and share presentations in this wiki.

In the future, Samuel wants to explore ways to use semantic analysis to get a richer understanding of the wiki content.  The content is all now within one wiki platform. At first, there had been separate wikis. When these wikis were integrated they discovered a number of teams working on similar efforts that were not fully aware of this. These teams were able to share useful information and learn from each other. Samuel would like to be able to explore relationships between content on an ongoing basis for similar results.

Samuel is also continuing to explore the relationship between wikis and other more formal tools in the enterprise. He wants to maintain a balanced approach where each tool is only used for the tasks is best designed for. At the same time, he would like the tools to better integrate and share content.  For example, wikis are often used for collaborative editing of a document. Then the final version is placed into a more formal tool.

Océ has a traditional corporate intranet and Samuel is on the steering committee. The committee agreed that about 80-90% of the content of their intranet should be on the wiki or other platforms than the intranet. He feels it is process information and should easily be changed by the crowd. Samuel has suggested that they make a list of these pages and migrate them to the wiki or other platforms. At the same time he does not want to limit migration to the wiki. Samuel wants to tell intranet authors especially, and employees in general, what the options are for information sharing as he explained in this blog post, Where Do I Share and Store My Information? He wants to tell authors about wiki’s, blogs, file sharing, etc. Then they can start to think about options and choose the best place for their information.

Samuel has also proposed an innovation wiki, together with a colleague. This proposal is still waiting for formal approval, but seems likely to be approved. Many managers support it and want to give it a try. He is waiting for formal approval, but could set this up in a minute. Because of the Océ culture Samuel wants formal approval first and commitment from the R&D board. He wants them to commit to actually pick up the good ideas that will be generated on the wiki, provide resources, so the ideas can realized.

Wikis have been successful at Océ because they were implemented in a thoughtful way that aligned with business needs, company culture, and the capabilities within wikis. They are not seen as a be-all cure but one more tool with specific capabilities that is added to the total mix of tools.