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TiNK is a registered |
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The story of Alex and Benjamin
Benjamin, who very recently turned forty but still has the looks of a young thirty-something, celebrates his fifth year with SmartCorp today.
He is the Chief Operations Officer of SmartCorp, a medium sized, well respected knowledge economy organization. Benjamin is looking forward to the noon luncheon his Chief Executive Officer, Boris, will invite him to at his preferred Italian Eatery. It’s a bright and sunny day, and while work on occasion has been challenging, days like these, being celebrated by colleagues, make up for all those nights of hard labor.
Benjamin enters his office at the SmartCorp building, whistling the latest of the greatest hits he listened to on his radio.
It’s going to be a great day … or is it?
Benjamin is quickly led to questioning his slightly presumptive and quite erroneous assessment of the day when he sees Christopher positioned at the edge of his desk.
Christopher looks far from happy, and launches into a complex and convoluted story about his collaborator Denis, who sent the wrong version of a specifi cations document to one of their key clients. Said client was on the phone with Christopher about ten minutes after receipt of the document, complaining about lack of professionalism, lack of quality, non-covered risks for themselves as well as for SmartCorp.
After some poking around, Christopher finds out that he had not been informed of the promises made by Eric, the account manager, to this client. Their promises turn out to be almost impossible to fulfill and aren’t even within the scope of services of SmartCorp.
Big issue. Christopher, being on a roll, continues fulminating about a problem with another important client, which had been timely flagged by the client but sat in the mailbox of Frank, a collaborator on extended leave. With an “And the root cause of this is your ICT department”, Christopher storms out, leaving a flabbergasted Benjamin gasping for air. And he hasn’t even made it to his chair yet.
Barely avoiding being pinned behind his own door trying to hang up his jacket, Benjamin is sized by Gabrielle, the head of the server room. She tells him about big issues with the servers, which kept her staff in until the early hours.
The 500 gigabyte additional server space installed only fi ve months ago has filled up, with all servers running in excess of 95% capacity, resulting in significant quality of service problems at the user end. The memories of the bright and shiny faces of his kids wishing him a wonderful day at the offi ce have all but disappeared, leaving large dark thunderclouds stacking up at his mental horizon. It looks like more than rain … it looks like a full hurricane warning needs to come in effect, now.
And not a moment too soon. The offi ce hurricane, Helen, formally known as SmartCorp’s legal counsel, seizes control of his office bare seconds after Gabrielle has left it. She had to revise multiple contracts, each written by another one of SmartCorp’s account managers, each with different varieties of the general terms and conditions, none of them complete, and quite a number of them exposing SmartCorp to significant risks which could have been avoided if they had listened to her and used the standards available on the shared drive.
Benjamin recovers remarkably under the onslaught, and has the presence of mind to call in a few of the account managers that happen to be in the office.
They claim they cannot begin to understand the shared drive folder structure Helen has set up. Benjamin tactically directs the hostilities to take place outside his door, to allow him to think over what happened in the past minutes, and the warring parties leave.
Leaning back, he takes a deep breath and a sip of coffee, only to be interrupted by the insistent bling of his Blackberry. He chokes, spilling coffee all over his shirt, and swears several profanities before looking at the screen of his PDA.
It is Isabel, the R&D manager, with an urgent request for the identification of a specialist in risk management for one of their prime research projects.
Benjamin does the only thing he can do at this point. He runs … yet another day from hell and it is only 8:23. He likes challenges but he’d rather be
working on strategic ideas than putting out fires all the time.
The sun is shining brightly, and he already regrets not having taken the day off to tour the coastline with his new convertible.
With hindsight, although Benjamin does not realize it, 8:27:29 becomes the tipping point of the day. This is the moment when Benjamin encounters Alex at the water cooler. Alex is the innovation manager of SmartCorp, always looking for ideal solutions and methodologies to optimize the internal processes of the organization. A relative stranger to Alex, Benjamin feels strangely inclined to share the horror story of the morning with him.
Alex, a kind and bright-eyed thirty-something, listens emphatically and smiles as the story twists and turns to Benjamin’s leap for freedom for the water cooler. He appears to fi nd the entire story highly entertaining. Having arrived at the end, Benjamin realizes the conversation has been pretty one-sided and politely enquires as to the state of Alex’s initiatives.
Still smiling, Alex starts talking about the essential nature of information, communication and knowledge in an organization. He explains how SmartCorp has a lot of smart people, doing smart things, but they appear to miss signifi cant opportunities to use these smarts in a constructive, value added manner. Benjamin
starts to realize that these are exactly the issues he has been confronted with this morning. “You probably have no solution for these issues, have you?” he implores.
Alex just smiles, and beckons Benjamin to follow him to his office. Benjamin starts to get an inkling of an idea that this young innovation manager might have a solution for at least some of his issues, and better understands that Cheshire cat smile. And he plunges down the rabbit hole.
Benjamin and Alex join Ilse, one of the innovation team managers. “Ilse, can you please show TINK4u to Benjamin,” Alex addresses Ilse, and leaning over to Benjamin, he says “We’ll start with the server issue of Gabrielle.” Alex explains the new ICMS technology which SmartCorp is testing.
Ilse slides behind her computer, logs in to TINK4u and clicks a couple of buttons
in the Administrator interface. Instantaneously a report with groups of fi les and a couple of figures appears. Ilse quickly reviews the data, and explains
to Benjamin: “31,24% of the 2.5 Terrabyte of disk space on the server appears to be filled with redundant files and different versions of fi les already present
elsewhere on the network. The report you see on the screen details the exact files which are responsible for these redundancies. We can use the information contained in the report to launch the cleanup operation, either manually or fully automatic, and reduce the versioning to the bare minimum.” Alex briefly fl ashes the famous Alice in Wonderland cat’s smile. “One problem resolved, as well
as a solution to keep this issue under control in the future” he categorically states. “On to the next issue.”
Tapping into the TINK4u interface, Ilse accesses the BROWSE functionality. She
orders the system to create a virtual folder structure according to type of information – standard components. The system immediately shows a tree structure with all types of information, among which legal information. She selects legal information and the system replies with a subbranch within which ‘standard
components – contracts’ is displayed. Selecting this, the system displays a list of all legal contract components with the indication of whether they are mandatory or optional. Ilse then shows Benjamin how to get the same crucial information from a number of different possible angles.
“I do believe this addresses our legal counsel’s key issue, both for now and for the future, does it not?” Alex asks Benjamin with a mock grin. Benjamin can only nod, but a hint of a smile starts to show on his face. He asks Alex whether it would be possible to build a solution which would create a contract with the correct legal clauses based on a few simple rules. Alex smiles: “We’re one step ahead of you there, dear Benjamin, we’re currently implementing TINKdg, another
ICMS solution, which will allow us to do just that.”
“But why don’t you take the wheel of my shiny new car?” Alex invites Benjamin to sit down and assume the controls of TINK4u. At fi rst a little hesitant, Benjamin quickly warms to the no-nonsense interface. He creates a virtual folder
according to client/project/subproject and immediately identifies the different versions of the document Eric had been working on, both in the document management system and on the fi le servers. Backing up, he tries to create a different virtual folder according to status/information type/author and again finds all the documents.
“This is amazing,” he shouts, “anyone can browse the available information from their own specific context … why didn’t we buy this sooner?”
“I know,” Alex replies, “but you still have a few open issues, haven’t you?” Again the Cheshire cat smile flashes across his face, as he takes Benjamin’s Blackberry out of his hands, and quickly scrolls to Isabel’s urgent message.
Ilse takes control of the chair and keyboard, and Alex asks her to enter a couple of keywords on the expertise requirements regarding risk management which Isabel is looking for, reading them off Benjamin’s Blackberry. Ilse enters the information in the EXPERTISE functionality and a list of collaborators fl ashes
on screen, with percentage of relevance regarding experience and specialty in the matter. Much to his surprise, Benjamin finds that the person he was planning on recommending to Isabel only ranks fi fth, with three times less relevant experience than the top two selected by the system. Confessing this to Alex, the innovation manager simply shrugs and says he had the same happening to him a couple of times in the past few days. The TINK4u tool has proven to be an eye-opener, even for people with many years of experience in the company. “We really don’t know what we know, but we are starting to know we don’t know”
With four out of six problems solved, Benjamin starts thinking about his lunch again.
Benjamin dictates a couple of terms which characterize the required knowledge concerning the solutions as promised by Eric the account manager to the critical client. After two seconds, the system comes back with information which shows that two months ago, a prototype solving that specific problem was built by
the R&D department. The system also indicates the two specialists that had been working on the prototype. Alex explains the way in which TINK4u identifies
knowledge traces based on information and communication from experts, as profiled in the system. “Guess what, we might finally be done with reinventing
the wheel,” Alex exclaims.
Alex sits down behind the keyboard and starts querying the system for Frank’s emails. In a few seconds, he not only finds all these mails but also every mail sent pertaining to the subject. It becomes crystal clear that Christopher had been in copy of most of the critical mails, and that he was more than capable of handling the problem himself before it spun out of control. Alex configures a simple security rule which allows Christopher to query all emails on his projects with this particular client. “There we go,” Alex states, “No more hiding
behind miscommunication. Each of us can be informed, and will have just enough relevant information available at all times to provide due diligence to our clients, and ultimately our shareholders. And that, dear Benjamin, is, I believe, six for six!”
At last, Benjamin will have adequate time to address the key business challenges, those challenges which will generate additional revenue and higher
margins. He feels happy again, and knows what he will be talking about to his CEO.
And Alex, well, he felt extremely happy about a job well done. He realized ICMS is a key partner and supplier, with a clear vision and operational approach. “Mmm, it took 10 minutes to address Benjamin’s problems,… I wonder which quantum improvements we’ll see when we roll out this solution to the entire organization. The only issue Benjamin will have is to find back the car keys to his sweet convertible.”
And whistling softly while spinning the key of the blue Boxter on his finger, Alex walked off to the parking lot, to go get his wife for the promised day at the beach. After all, he had only come in to work to bring back the keys to the stick shift he blew up the day before.
