Overview

Institutionalizing Business and Operational Knowledge are critical components of any business organization.  The capture and easy deployment of organizational knowledge improves employee productivity regardless of whether they are a senior marketing executive or a customer service representative.  Knowledge is a business asset. The value of capturing and maintaining a businesses critical operational knowledge is no different for an IT organization.  In fact, in an environment that is considered less mature and more volatile by industry experts, the importance of institutionalized application knowledge and documentation is significantly increased.

The need for capturing critical application knowledge is exacerbated given the current industry trends of outsourcing, mergers and acquisitions, and a retiring workforce.  In many IT organizations, key workers personally hold critical application knowledge that is undocumented and unavailable to other team members or others within the business organization.  In addition, many applications are complex and include countless modifications that have been made overtime.  In many cases the application knowledge (such as business functionality, sample reports, screen flows, and problem resolution techniques) is inconsistent, unavailable, or out of date.

Protecting this information (which ultimately reflects the organization’s IT investment) involves developing, managing, and maintaining application knowledge repository.  The institutionalized application knowledge needs to be available to the entire IT organization anywhere in the world using a standard web browser interface that requires no additional software.  Without the investment of capturing this critical application knowledge, business and government IT organizations may face such situations as decreased service levels, business disruption, costly re-creation of information, and expensive training requirements.

CAI has addressed the need of its clients for capturing critical application knowledge through the Application Knowledge Capture (AKC) service offering.  Through a field-proven structured process, CAI gathers, formats, and distributes application knowledge components using standard web technologies.

To ensure that all data is collected and converted into valuable information, CAI employs a four phase process. This process focuses on identifying data collection from existing sources, program and object library reviews, and structured interviews with key knowledge workers.

Using a customized category structure, structured interview questionnaires, data capture templates, web browser-based templates, and one-step publishing. In this way critical application knowledge is made available to the entire business organization anywhere in the world.