Mining Your Organization's Information for Real Value

Getting the Most Out of CubeTree Part III

Many customers have been speaking with us recently about different ways they use CubeTree. One of the most striking applications I've heard about is using it to share "tribal knowledge" about the business for staying competitive in the marketplace and gathering competitive intelligence. Tribal knowledge is information 'known' yet undocumented and passed from person to person.

Organizations that are globally dispersed, with sales executives in many regions, each responsible for their own accounts and customers, need to communicate frequently about the competition they are facing. These CubeTree customers found that in some cases they were facing stiff competition for accounts where they should have a distinct advantage because they had done business with that customer in another region. Executives often didn't have tools that indicated there was an engagement in another region, or didn't know enough of the details to leverage the relationship in their account strategy. Several CubeTree customers have told me about how they use our solution to make the connections between people that their corporate intranet had not.

The primary difference between a traditional corporate intranet and a social enterprise solution is in how they are structured. The intranet's structure is usually articulated by a small group of people within the company; it tends to be a static environment where people go to download information but rarely post anything or interact. If an intranet admin doesn't have or know about a key piece of information, that data may not be revealed to the rest of the organization. Then when the information emerges it is difficult to alter the structure. Especially in low margin verticals, it is critical to the success of an organization to keep up with the pace of business, where information is constantly surfacing and is more valuable the quicker it can be shared with the right people.

In the case of a social enterprise solution, employees have access to a simple, open and feature rich tool-set which allows the structure to emerge and form dynamically.

With CubeTree, users get a set of collaboration tools, customized for the enterprise, for file sharing, blogs, wikis, sharing links, micro-blogging and more. The ease of contributing content makes the volume of shared data exponential -- with few barriers to entry. All of the data gets into the system. All of the content is indexed and discoverable; making it possible to mine an organization's collective consciousness for information that pertains to a specific, competitive topic. Users can follow the information critical to them and build a natural network of ties with other individuals that allow for the constant discovery and delivery of critical information; keeping them "environmentally aware" of information as it becomes available.

Using a social enterprise solution, like CubeTree, for sharing competitive intelligence distribution, these customers found that they were able to share and find pertinent information more quickly and accurately. Individuals were able to indicate where and when they were competing for business and others were able to respond proactively with information on customer relations, compelling selling points, competitors and best practices. It has been a more efficient and effective mode for sharing competitive tribal knowledge and competing in fast paced sales environments.