2005 KM Promise and Reality Awards finalists

Each year at our KMWorld & Intranets Conference and Exposition, we celebrate the success and promise of knowledge management by presenting the KMWorld Awards. This year, we received more than 135 combined nominations in both the Promise and Reality categories. While all submissions were noteworthy, we identified the following finalists. Space here limits us from going into more detail, but keep an eye on our Web site for more thorough descriptions.

KM Promise

Many companies promise that their technology is the best knowledge management solution. One of the greatest challenges for organizations purchasing those technologies is to determine which company will deliver on the promise. This award is given to the organization that is delivering its promise to customers by providing innovative technology solutions for implementing and integrating knowledge management practices into their business processes. The award-winning organization demonstrates how it goes beyond simply delivering technology to working with clients to ensure that both the technology and knowledge processes are embedded in the work processes. In other words, it helps organizations realize positive business results.

BranchIt (www.branchitcorp.com)
BranchIt provides companies with privacy-protected, permission-based access to both personal and profession relationships, and continuously mines e-mail traffic, personal contacts, phone records and other corporate correspondence across the enterprise to analyze and interpret employee correspondence patterns.

EMC (www.emc/documentum.com)
Through a single platform, EMC Documentum software enables people to collaboratively create, manage, deliver and archive the content that drives business operations, from documents and discussions to e-mail, Web pages, records and rich media.

ISYS Search Software (www.isys-search.com)
ISYS delivers a broad range of well-engineered products designed for searching desktops, networks, Web sites and intranets.

KANA (www.kana.com)
KANA's solutions for assisted, self- and proactive service enable companies to resolve customer requests quickly and accurately across multiple channels.

Knova Software (www.knova.com)
Knova's suites of customer service applications automate the resolution process across multiple channels including contact centers, help desk, e-mail and self-service sites.

Mark Logic (www.marklogic.com)
Mark Logic Server enables companies to convert, query, manipulate and render XML content using the W3C-standard XQuery language.

Metastorm (www.metastorm.com)
Roundtrip BPM Suite Metastorm's business process management software enables modeling, automating and controlling processes, resulting in in improved business performance through increased process efficiency, control and agility.

OneSource (www.onesource.com)
OneSource offers an extensive library of integrated, company-linked business information on large and midsize organizations, covering 1.7 million companies and 6 million executives.

OutStart (www.outstart.com)
OutStart's software enables individuals throughout the value chain--including employees, customers, partners and suppliers--to access information via a Web-based interface.

Siderean Software (www.siderean.com)
Siderean's Seamark Navigator reveals the full scope of digital assets and catalogue items available to enterprise users and Web shoppers before the search process even begins.

Stellent (www.stellent.com)
Stellent Universal Content Management enables easy deployment of multiple line-of-business applications and scales to support multisite management and enterprisewide content management needs.

Ultimus (www.ultimus.com) Ultimus enables enterprises worldwide to increase their profits and improve customer service by modeling, automating, managing and optimizing every business process.

Vivisimo (www.vivisimo.com) Vivisimo's clustering engine dynamically organizes search results or textual information thematically into spontaneously generated folders, enabling users to see the entire information landscape in a single view, focus on areas of interest and discover unexpected items and relationships.

ZyLAB (www.zylab.com) ZyLAB'S ZyIMAGE offers organizations a modular approach to content/records management and enables companies to digitally file and manage any type of information, including electronic files, e-mail and paper files.

KM Reality

In many organizations, knowledge management is just rhetoric. This award recognizes an organization in which knowledge management is a positive reality. The recipient of the KM Reality Award demonstrates leadership in the implementation of knowledge management practices and processes by realizing measurable business benefits. The knowledge management program will have:

• been in place for a minimum of two years,

• demonstrated senior management support, and

• defined metrics to evaluate the program and its impact on organizational goals.

Awwa Research Foundation (www.awwarf.org)
The Awwa Research Foundation is a member-supported, international, nonprofit organization that sponsors research to enable water utilities, public health agencies and other professionals to provide safe and affordable drinking water to consumers. The foundation initiated an in-house KM initiative to:

• establish an organizational culture to support knowledge management and improve sharing of information among staff and customers; • implement an enterprise content management system including document management, workflow, collaboration and Web content management;

• implement user-friendly communication tools;

• improve customer feedback mechanisms; and

• digitize legacy reports.

Florida Combined Life Insurance Company (www.bcbsfl.com/index.cfm?section=&fuseaction=subsidiaries.fcl)
Florida Combined Life Insurance Company's (FCL) challenge was to maintain product profitability and support effective product management in a highly competitive market. Management needed a good understanding of the activity cost of providing its products and services. With SAS (sas.com) Activity-Based Management, FCL was able to develop a pricing model that allowed the company to:

• determine customer price based on specific attributes of a customer,

• perform "what-if" analysis based on numerous pricing scenarios, and

• customize the price as an unbundled rate, bundled rate or on a per-member-per-month basis.

The information is used to generate regular reports on customer profitability to determine when contractual adjustments are necessary. Customers have embraced the information and have proved willing to pay more for high-quality, reliable service.

IBM (www.ibm.com)
IBM initiated an enterprisewide knowledge management program in 1994. By practicing what it preaches it has optimized investments and operational efficiency in its services business by systematically capturing and reusing critical knowledge assets.

Montgomery County (Maryland) government
(www.montgomerycountymd.gov)
To meet the need of a new document management system, the county implemented ZyLAB's (www.zylab.com) ZyIMAGE document management, storage and retrieval solution in order to scan checks into digital images and store them. The Department of Finance further expanded the ZyIMAGE system to handle correspondence, distribute bills and transfer tax data collections. The county's Department of Technology decided to Web-enable the ZyLAB solution by purchasing a ZyIMAGE Web server. That component will allow the Department of Finance to include additional applications and to incrementally add other government departments to the system.

Oglethorpe Power (www.opc.com)
Oglethorpe Power, a large power supply cooperative, restructured in the late 1990s to divide a vertically integrated generation and transmission business into three specialized operating companies. Oglethorpe's Shared Services IT uses a Stellent (stellent.com) Universal Content Management-powered intranet to manage nearly all of the corporation's business-critical content, including electronic and hard-copy records.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
(www.pillsburylaw.com)
By deploying technology from BranchIt (www.branchitcorp.com), the firm halved the cost of gathering outside lists for merger-related communications, reduced the time of updating contact lists by several months, and within a two-week time frame had more than 1.4 million new relationships shared.

Tellabs (www.tellabs.com)
Within six weeks of implementing Knova's (knova.com) solutions, Tellabs frontline support team increased first-call resolution by 40%. First-tier agents now handle about 50% of inquiries and only need to escalate the most difficult issues to second-tier agents. As a result, the company is saving an estimated $400,000 each year: resolving a case at tier one costs an average of only $50 vs. $120 at the second tier.5