Know-How Exchange : Other

Thanks telemoxie, I had tried to search for other existing answers, but those are more related to project management and what I'm looking for is more wiki or knowledgebase style. I'll drop you a note w/more details as well...

many years ago, I was working with a client who sold collaborative software. As I was researching the market, I found this site (Marketingprofs) and I thought I would try to participate as a way to better understand collaborative software and knowledge bases and so forth, and I have been a fan ever since.

I have no doubt that if we work together, we can find the most elegant and most fully featured technical solution. However, an average or poor solution which people accept and use will be better than a fantastic solution if people do not use it.

I believe your major challenges will be political and not technical.

What level of support do you have from senior management? Can you direct everyone to use the solution, or will you need to ask people to use it, to encourage them to use it, to provide incentives for them to use it, and to hope that they used it?

What level of organizational support will you have? For example, suppose people forward you information in a variety of formats. Some may send information by e-mail, some may place a phone call, some might even send a fax. We might wish and hope that they will provide information according to our requested format, but which is more important, gathering information in the format we wish, or gathering the most accurate and complete information by any means possible? Will this project enjoy ongoing clerical support so that market intelligence can be transcribed into the new, elegant, wonderfully technical solution?

If this were my project, I would put more effort into encouraging and rewarding participation, and less effort into selecting a technically wonderful solution. For example, couldn't you just set up a Linked-in group?

Again, I do not know how much authority you have to get the job done. I am shooting in the dark, and I may be way off base. But this sounds like a fun project, and I would very much enjoy working on it with you. Good luck.

As one who has pushed for our company to use collaborative software within our internal group I know that you are spot on when you say that our challenge will be adoption as opposed to technical. The interesting part of this particular project is that it is being spearheaded by our COO as a 'resource' for our various marketing departments, so I have a good feeling that there will be some top down push for our various marketing directors and their teams to use it.
Unfortunately, I don't even have any budget at this point, so I really don't know what we may be willing to invest and while I'd love to work with you, I don't want to string you along either! Thanks for your insight, Dave - I'll be definitely keeping your suggestions in mind as we move forward.