Customer Experiences

We've been talking to many customers lately about their experiences with KN. You can hear a few present their highlights at the upcoming KMWorld and ECMWest conferences. We also have heard from top strategists who work with large organizations around the world. Here is what one of our colleagues in the field stated today about how KN can help manufacturing customers:

"Automotive companies have invested heavily in more responsive lean manufacturing processes, just-in-time inventory systems, synchronized design and development processes. Today, a significant percentage of the automobile is developed and manufactured by OEM supplier networks. Consequently, the cost and quality of a vehicle are a function of the productivity of a network of firms working in collaboration. Thus, identifying and accessing expertise within the organization and uncovering connections across the supply chain are critical elements of competitive advantage. KN can provide these just-in-time expertise location capabilities to allow customers to find, use and internally share their knowledge-based networks to achieve sustainable competitive advantage."

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2006
    I have a question regarding KN's ability to work across Active Directory servers. Is is possible to build a KN network across more than one active directory? So in the example of linking together an automible supply chain, KN would cross the traditional organizational IT boundaries.  How would this model look? Thanks. Tom

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2006
    Tom – It depends upon the configuration and functionality the customer is looking for. It is supported at some level, but the concept of internal and external contacts may not be ideal. In the automotive example KN provides the tool for uncovering expertise withIn the organization and connections to/with external contacts.

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2006
    Dear KN Team, Since the Beta NGs are down, where should we go for KN community NGing, etc?

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2006
    We'll get back to you soon.

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2006
    All KN TAP customers who have had access to Betaplace previously will now have access to the new KN TAP Connect site that includes newsgroups. These customers need to create a Connect newsgroup ID and password to access the KN newsgroups on Connect. This is a one-time thing. To do this: Once you successfully log in to the KN TAP site, go to the newsgroups page by following the Newsgroups link on the left sidebar. Click on the "Set Newsgroup Password" button at the bottom of the page and follow the steps to create the new password. Make sure you note the newsgroup ID that is provided to you. You will then need to update Outlook Express with the new user ID & password, and keep the server name the same i.e. betanews.microsoft.com. Note that it will take up to 4 hours before the new newsgroup password can be used. For all other customers, we will post more information to this blog as soon as we can.

  • Anonymous
    November 01, 2006
    I don't think my firm is a TAP customer, though I have been very active in this project.  How do we get involved in the TAP program? I REALLY wantneed to keep connected.

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2007
    I completely agree with the premise that automotive OEMs need to collaborate well across organizational  boundaries to be successful, and that this is more true than it have has been before.  I would just note, that they also need to collaborate internally but across organizationa silos -- sometimes those divisions can present more challenges than interfirm collaboration!  There's huge value in this just within a sin gle company.  

  • Anonymous
    October 06, 2007
    Dear KN Team, Since the Beta NGs are down, where should we go for KN community NGing, etc?

  • Anonymous
    January 06, 2008
    interesting article......I'm a supporter of the KN community