In the global business world of today organizations are constantly looking for innovative ways of increasing their competitive advantage. One of the most critical areas is the management of its most important resource, knowledge. A company that has made a business of developing new and inventive knowledge management practices is Teltech.
Teltech is a developer of new practices for information and knowledge management. It has created a successful business out of a set of practices that can and should be adopted by firms whose primary business is not information business. Information management innovations developed by Teltech are relevant to almost any organization. As evidence of this success Teltech personnel are being asked more and more not just to provide external expertise and information, but to help their clients design new knowledge management environments. In the following paragraphs we will take a look at a few of these practices.
According to Thomas H. Davenport, PhD "A key premise of Teltech's business model is that people are not only guides to information, but also an important repository of expertise.
Portrait of Henry Ford (ca. 1919)
English: Ford Motor Company Headquarters, Dearborn...
1961 Ford H-Series trucksTeltech does not attempt to capture the experts' knowledge in a database (though within the vendor service there is a database of past search results), but only the topics about which they are expert, and the means for connecting topics to people. Capturing the knowledge itself on such a broad range of topics would not be feasible, though Teltech is investigating the feasibility of capturing frequently-asked questions and answers.
Teltech clients find it very helpful to talk to experts when they have a technical problem. As one client, a VP of Technology at an aerospace firm, stated, "There is nothing like talking to someone who has spent their entire life working on a problem." Another client described a situation in which an...