Barbara French left an interesting question on SageCircle announces the Analyst Relations Wiki*, a tool to help AR teams be more efficient and effective. Basically, she asked why use a wiki instead of deploying more efficient PDF search technology on the existing PDFs?
We picked the wiki technology, because it became the logical choice after we did an analysis of the situation using the POST framework from Forrester’s Groundswell research: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. This same analysis process is valuable to AR teams for their own decision making. Here is an overly simplified summary of our extensive analysis in making our choice:
- People – AR managers are strapped for time. They have different levels of experience and as a consequence need access to different levels of information. They also have different levels of on-line sophistication.
- Objectives – Save AR managers time and make them more effective by providing an efficient and easy-to-use interface to get best practices, templates, checklists and other tools based on SageCircle’s extensive and growing library of intellectual property.
- Strategy – Consolidate IP currently residing in disparate formats (e.g., blog entries, Word, PDF, Excel, JPEG, and PowerPoint) into a repository that ensures easy access and the ability to better organize, add and refresh content while enhancing version control.
- Technology – After analyzing all the choices we decided that a Web 2.0-based tool was best suited to provide us with the functionality we needed
One of the big advantages of the wiki over a collection of PDFs is that we can easily embed templates and checklists in the best practice for “at your fingertips” download. This really supports the objective of saving the AR manager time and effort.
In addition to providing a platform for our content, using a wiki has also given us the chance to develop real world experience with this technology that we can now share with our clients. Nothing replaces rolling up your sleeves and developing a paid service based on new technology. I can guarantee you that we made many a false start and mistake as we labored to understand how to use this new fangled platform.
Wiki technology can be used by AR teams as an internal repository, as a collaborative environment, or as a way to distribute information externally, Should a client decide to explore using a wiki as a way of delivering information to industry analysts, we will now be able to help them do so quickly and efficiently.
Bottom Line: The decision to use a wiki as a content delivery was made based on a POST analysis of the situation. AR managers considering the use of any social media, even a blog, need to carefully evaluate their objectives and what they need to accomplish before picking a tool to deploy.
* Interested in learning more about the SageCircle AR Wiki and how it can save you time and make you more effective? Send an email to info [at] sagecircle dot com to arrange for a call and demo of this groundbreaking new tool for AR managers.
Since 2000, SageCircle has helped analyst relations teams to focus on business value by encouraging innovative thinking that leverages insights and drives revenue.
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