We Matter

eTouch was named one of KMWorld's 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management. After being included in August 2010 as one of KMWorld's Trend Setting Products of 2010, we were really honored to also be included in this knowledge-management-specific list.

Read the eTouch press release, our CEO blog post and KMWorld article.

A Fire Hose of Information

My interest was immediately piqued by the startling title -- "Don't You Dare Email This Story" -- of this article in The Wall Street Journal.

The article is about information overload. No surprises there, as we're overloaded with information at every turn from colleagues, friends, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, with news articles, blogs and so on and so on. We can't seem to take a vacation during which we can completely disconnect, often because of the fear of even more overload when we return relaxed and refreshed.

The reporter begins her article with this stat:

"Information workers, who comprise about 63% of the U.S. work force, are each bombarded with 1.6 gigabytes of information on average every day through emails, reports, blogs, text messages, calls and more, according to preliminary data from a report coming later this year, an update of the 2003 "How Much Information?" report."

But it gets more interesting as reporter Andrea Coombes writes:

"U.S. companies lose an estimated $900 billion a year in lost productivity because of information overload, according to Basex, a research and consulting firm."

Wait, what? We have so much information, it is making us unproductive. Geesh. Didn't you think it was supposed to do the opposite? I mean, our competitors can't catch us off guard because we're reading the same things they are every day; and we're always on the bleeding edge of industry trends, because we know what everyone is doing and thinking every minute. If only that was the case.

Instead, a lot of this great 'content' out there is just noise. Not all of it; there's lots of important, successful thought leaders saying and writing valuable things. But we have to weed through it all - separate the weak from the chaff. It isn't easy to do. Tools can help.

This WSJ reporter gives suggestions, and there are some valuable tips in there.

I've found that sharing links, sites, articles and an occasional IM session to get status updates with my colleagues on our wiki that functions as our intranet works wonders.

What works for you?

A Wiki for All Reasons

Just to keep you in the loop, this week we announced another new client. As always, I find it fascinating all the different types of enterprises and ventures with a wiki commonality.

This time, SamePage was selected by Growth Dynamics International (GDI) as the secure networking, collaboration and content-management platform for members of its online learning website, Lifelong Learning Community. Its global members will take online courses, complete private assignments, as well as shared work, and interact regularly with other members in groups and discussions.

It's kind of a self-help / motivational group with common goals and interests. Not an 'enterprise' group, by any means. Yet they should benefit tremendously from having a secure platform that allows them to share select information, collaboration worldwide and work together.

“We spent quite a bit of time researching potential solutions before we came upon SamePage and knew it was the perfect solution for our collaboration, security, information-sharing and content needs,” said Doug Fike, director of GDI, which founded L3Community.com. “Most CMS options didn’t allow for enough collaboration; more socially focused options didn’t have the structure and security we needed. SamePage offers the best combination for our virtual community, and it is easy to use for our non-technical members.”

Read more about SamePage document management and security features.

What do you use your wiki for?

Content Migration's a Snap

A couple of months ago, I spoke with a reporter from EContent Magazine about content migration. She was interested in learning about the process, however difficult or easy it may be, of moving content into a new and better software product. [The article is slated for the March issue, and I'll post it when it's live.] Of course, she didn't only want to hear from me about how great SamePage enterprise wiki features are, so we got in touch with a customer.

I put her in touch with Dave Collins, the founder of Penchant Software, which is now a division of 3PD, the nation's largest direct-to-home delivery company. I hadn't previously heard much detail about Dave's experiences with SamePage. I was thrilled when he raved about his migration to our enterprise wiki software, made easy with our Universal Import Tool. Dave had so much valuable insight into the process that we decided to interview him more and put together a case study about his process and experiences.


You can download the case study PDF from http://etouch.net/customers/testimonial.html.

Dave transitioned his massive HELP desk documents into SamePage a few years ago after learning about wikis in an MBA program. (Hooray for Web 2.0-savvy university professors!) His biggest concerns with a migration were that he couldn't have a lot of down time, and he couldn't lose ANY documentation, videos, hyperlinks or anything else. With the use of our tool, he didn't.

“I had no idea how fast it would be, but it was great,” recalls Collins. “With the next release, we modified our help URL to go directly to the wiki, and that was it. Being so easy – that’s what you always hope for.”

SamePage immediately made Dave's life easier.

“SamePage removed all of our choke points…. It’s a million times better process for managing and updating content," explains Collins. The sky's the limit. SamePage is an easy way to quickly organize a large amount of content. It doesn't need much training...”

Read more about Penchant's easy migration to SamePage.