Less is more with expertise matching tool
From the KMWorld'99 Conference and Expo, Orbital Software has unveiled their second software product, Organik PeopleFinder. Similar to its Organik KnowledgeWare Version 2.0 (released and profiled in KMWorld this spring), the new tool seems to be a toned down version to meet the simpler needs of potential users.
"We had users who said 'I don't want to ask questions, I just want to find experts,'" said Kevin Dorren, CEO of Orbital Software.
Dorren explained further that the KnowledgeWare product offers users the ability to ask questions to a knowledge base and if not found there, get steered to an expert to ask the question. PeopleFinder ($40 per user) seems to simplify that process and is more like a search tool or the "Yahoo of experts," he said.
With the tool a user can plug in a query like "I want to find someone with C++ programming skills," and PeopleFinder will come back with results from both static and dynamic data sources, many of which are not within the Orbital system. For instance, the static data including name, location and Email may come from an HR system through a CORBA based API. The dynamic information, including a "rank" of expertise level, is provided via Orbital's technology, which presents the package similar to Internet search engine results.
"People are the key to knowledge management," said Dorren, who during a session addressed several questions from a standing room-only audience-seeming to reinforce Dorren's view that KM practitioners are more eager to find knowledge from people than information from documents.
Some audience questions pointed to weaknesses in PeopleWare and its cohort KnowledgeWare. For example, there is no way for KnowledgeWare to know whether an answer from an "expert" is correct, however the questioner has the ability after the fact to give feedback on the quality of both answer and expert.
While expertise is tracked by what kinds of information the user provides to the system (documents, public E-mails etc.) and manual updates, an audience member questioned the completeness of expertise. Dorren conceded a lack of perfection, but pointed out that it could be the difference of calling 5 likely qualifieds versus 40 unknowns.
Several questions came up regarding Abuzz, a developer of a very similar product. Dorren conceded that the companies used to compete directly, however the impression they have is that Abuzz will not be selling enterprise software since its acquisition by The Times Co., publishers of the New York Times