KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

CONNECTING PEOPLE TO CONTENT

Create, Surface, and Share Knowledge for a
Smarter Organization

KNOB

BEST PRACTICES REPORT

2014 APQC ALL

IF CONTENT IS KING, THEN CONNECTION TO

CONTENT IS LIKE KNOWING THE EMPEROR...
Eric Schmidt, former CEO and executive chairman at Google, has pointed out that, if all human communication
were recorded from the dawn of time to the start of this millennium, it would take about five billion gigabytes of
storage space to hold it all. Today, he observes, we create that much data every two days.
Such a quantum shift in the speed of technology change has made it increasingly complex for business
organizations to deliver the information and knowledge content that is needed by their various stakeholder
groups. These groups are pleading for real-time, on-demand access to the content that is right for them in order
to do their work effectively. Unfortunately, many companies are failing to meet the urgent informational needs of
their stakeholders and are finding that the situation is worsening as time passes.
There are leaders among us, and St. Charles Consulting Group is honored to partner with APQC in learning from
these leaders and championing the very timely Best Practices Study: Connecting People to Content.
In partnership with APQC and in active collaboration with a number of APQC members, St. Charles set out to ask
and answer these two key questions:
1. How are the best companies managing their data-information-knowledge assets and related processes that
result in the desired delivery of needed information?
2. What can other organizations learn from the best in order to enhance their content connection environment
and improve their operating results?
The pages of this report contain valuable, actionable answers to these questions. You will find that the report is
written succinctly, with rich observations and deliberate recommendations. To start with, for a high-level view, we
encourage you to begin by reviewing the Maturity Model for Connecting People to Content (Figure 2, page 6).
Hopefully you can quickly gauge where your organization stands on the content connection continuum and what
opportunities for improvement might be available for exploration in this study.
At St. Charles, our business is to help clients implement systems, processes, programs, and tools that allow their
people to connect to the content they need, when and where they need it. We would be happy to serve as a
thought partner as you consider what it will take for your organization to move to the next level. Regardless of
where you are along the content management path, our talented professionals are seasoned guides available to
accelerate your progress.
Best regards,
Phil Davis
Managing Partner
St. Charles Consulting Group

2015 APQC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PROJECT PERSONNEL AND COPYRIGHT

PROJECT TEAM
Lauren Trees, research program manager, APQC
Elizabeth Kaigh, research specialist, APQC
Mercy Harper, research specialist, APQC

Subject Matter Expertise

Darcy Lemons, senior consultant, APQC

Editor
Paige Leavitt
Lauren Trees

ABOUT APQC
APQC is a member-based nonprofit and one of the leading proponents of benchmarking and best practice business research. Working with more than 500 organizations worldwide in all industries, APQC focuses on providing
organizations with the information they need to work smarter, faster, and with confidence. Every day we uncover
the processes and practices that push organizations from good to great. Visit us at www.apqc.org and learn how
you can make best practices your practices.

Copyright
2015 APQC, 123 North Post Oak Lane, Third Floor, Houston, Texas 77024-7797 USA. This report cannot be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, faxing,
recording, or information storage and retrieval. Additional copies of the report may be purchased from APQC by
calling 800-776-9676 (U.S.) or +1-713-681-4020 or online at www.apqc.org. Quantity discounts are available.
ISBN: 978-1-60197-212-5

Membership Information
For information about how to become a member of APQC and to receive publications and other benefits, call 800776-9676 or +1-713-681-4020 or visit our web site at www.apqc.org.

Statement of Purpose
The purpose of publishing this report is to provide insight into the processes and practices associated with certain
issues. It should be used as an educational learning tool and is not a recipe or step-by-step procedure to be
copied or duplicated in any way. This report may not represent current organizational processes, policies, or
practices because changes may have occurred since the completion of this study.
2

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PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
RESEARCH CHAMPION

SPONSOR ORGANIZATIONS

BEST-PRACTICE ORGANIZATIONS

Bristol-Myers Squibb

AT&T *

Cenovus Energy

EY

Chevron Corp.

MetLife

ConocoPhillips

MWH Global Inc.

ExxonMobil Corp.

Nalco, an Ecolab Company

Eli Lilly

Wipro Ltd.

NextEra Energy Inc.

Protiviti

*Participated as a data-only partner and did not host a site visit.

Sealed Air Corp.

Schlumberger

2015 APQC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In many ways, the field of enterprise content
management faces more daunting challenges than
ever before. Along with the proliferation of
traditional document types, employees are
increasingly generating new forms of content, from
wiki articles and social media conversation threads to
graphics-rich presentations and YouTube-style
videos.

The results were even more illuminating when we

asked respondents why their organizations were less
than effective at content management. Relatively
fewapproximately one in fivecited poor
technology as the root cause. Instead, the vast
majority said their biggest challenges centered on
change management and organizational structure
and accountability (Figure 1). In short, employees
werent following the processes in place to manage
content, or the organizations had not defined
sufficient ownership models for the tools and
approaches.

The volume of content presents logistical concerns in

terms of storage capacity, but it also poses larger
questions. For example, what types of content are
easiest for employees to use and learn from? What
are the best tools to help people find what they need
among a broad range of sources? How can people
differentiate authoritative content from unverified
ideas and suggestions published by colleagues? And
how can organizations maximize the value of their
content by delivering targeted recommendations
directly to employees in the context of their work?

After reviewing these results, APQC launched its

second comprehensive Best Practices Study on
content management in May 2014, the results of
which are encapsulated in this report. The research
aimed to investigate how organizations:
adapt to new forms of content and technologies
for delivering information;

Seeking answers to these questions, APQC surveyed

500 professionals about all aspects of their
organizations content management programs in
early 2014. One of the survey questions focused on
the big picture: How effective are enterprise content
management systems in terms of surfacing relevant
content and enabling employees to find and access
what they need?

leverage metadata and search capabilities to

surface relevant content on demand;

We didnt expect people to tell us that their

organizations content management practices were
perfect, but we were surprised by the dismal picture
painted by the responses. Less than one in four
participants rated their organizations content
management as effective, whereas 43 percent said
their firms were minimally or not at all effective at
managing enterprise content.

manage the end-to-end content life cycle in order

to minimize redundancy and ensure employees
can trust the available resources.

integrate content into processes and applications

so that it is immediately available in the flow of
work;
engage communities of practice and social
networks to source, circulate, and provide
continuous feedback on content; and

Over the course of this study, APQC and the sponsor

organizations examined content management
practices at five best-practice organizations (also
referred to as partners throughout this report). The

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Challenges Preventing Organizations from Achieving Effective Content Management

Figure 1
study team identified many positive attributes of the
best-practice programs, but one unifying
characteristic is how attuned the content teams are to
the needs of content stakeholders and end users
inside their organizations.

and link people to available resources. As an

organization hones its strategy and processes in
alignment with suppliers and consumers of content, it
is able to connect supply to demand, enabling
meaningful connections and generating business
value.

The partners thoroughly understand their target

audiences for content, and the result is that their
tools and processes align with how people want to
contribute, access, share, and reuse organizational
knowledge.

The vast majority of

organizations say their
content management
challenges center on change
management, organizational
structure, and
accountability.

The Research Champion for this study, St. Charles

Consulting Group, distilled this and other related
concepts into a five-level maturity model (Figure 2)
describing how organizations connect people to
content.
The model includes technology as an enabler, but the
bulk of the attributes focus on people- and processrelated tactics to engage employees, solicit content,

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Maturity Model for Connecting People to Content

Figure 2
St. Charles Consulting Group, 2015

We suspect that few organizations will ever reach the pinnacle of maturity on St. Charles Consulting Groups
model, which denotes a fully integrated content environment capable of anticipating content consumers needs,
focusing content suppliers on those needs, and seamlessly delivering content via unified processes and optimized
technology. However, our hope is that the findings described in this report will help readers advance their
content management programs toward more aligned strategies, systematic processes, and user-oriented
technologies for content contribution, classification, distribution, and sharing.

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THE BEST PRACTICES

As part of this research, the study team identified 20 best practices associated with enterprise content
management and sharing. These 20 best practices, categorized by theme, are listed below.

DEVELOPING A STRATEGY TO CONNECT PEOPLE TO CONTENT

1. Position content as a strategic asset, and tie its creation and use to business goals. The best-practice partners
make explicit connections between how employees interact with content and the overall performance of the
business.
2. Clearly distribute accountability between those who own content-related processes and systems and those
who own the actual content. The partners have massively different approaches to staffing and resourcing
their content management programs, but they are unified in defining explicit roles and responsibilities for both
content teams and suppliers and consumers of content out in the business.
3. Design the content strategy around stakeholder needs. The partners clearly define the internal and external
audiences for content and then base decisions about content management processes, tools, and
improvements around the needs of those audiences.

CREATING CONTENT PEOPLE WANT

4. Align the type and format of available content to the intended audience. The partners design content to
meet the preferences of an increasingly young, impatient, mobile, and collaborative work force.
5. Create specific roles or processes to identify content gaps. Based on the content needs and demographics of
their work forces, the partners rely on subject matter experts or defined processes to surface gaps in existing
content.

MANAGING THE END-TO-END LIFE CYCLE

6. Establish distinct channels for vetted and unvetted content. The partners ensure that employees can
distinguish authoritative content they can trust from informal community- and user-generated content, which
helps people decide how to use the various resources.
7. For content contributions, balance metadata requirements with the need for a streamlined user experience.
The partners recognize that content needs to be tagged so that it can be found, butwhere possiblethey
streamline the process by leveraging auto-populated or standard metadata.
8. Maintain strong accountability for content review cycles, and dont hesitate to dispense with materials of
questionable value. The partners prevent outdated content from cluttering up repositories through a
combination of mechanisms, including assigning clear ownership for content and repositories, establishing
fixed review cycles, and disposing of content that has not been updated or used in a given timeframe.
9. Use technology migrations as an opportunity to clear out outdated content. Although it is often possible to
port huge volumes of content to new or updated systems, many partners take a more thoughtful approach,
asking teams and departments to review their content and migrate only the newest and best materials.

2015 APQC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ENSURING CONTENT IS FINDABLE AND ACCESSIBLE IN THE FLOW OF WORK

10.Create taxonomies and organizing frameworks that reflect how users think about content. User engagement
helps build employee buy-in for taxonomies, and it ensures that taxonomic terms and relationships represent
the way information is actually used throughout the organization.
11.Use scope, metadata, and manual curation to ensure that search functions return the most relevant results.
On average, the partners do not have significantly better search technology than sponsors; however, they meet
the searching needs of their internal consumers through sound decision making and effective process
management.
12.Monitor analytics to enhance search results and content recommendations. The partners track what
employees search for and how they interact with content to optimize search and push content directly to
employees.
13.Integrate content into business applications and processes. The partners make content easily accessible by
building it directly into process documentation, project sites, and software applications and creating links and
customized alerts.
14.Provide mobile apps to connect people to content through smartphones and tablets. Four of five partners
have dedicated enterprise mobile applications and work to ensure that content is accessible, readable, and
secure on mobile devices.

INTEGRATING CONTENT AND SOCIAL CHANNELS

15.Use communities and social networks to surface needs, incubate content, and make recommendations.
When employee needs bubble up on social channels, the partners prioritize the creation (or clarification) of
content to meet those needs.
16.Combine people and content search in a seamless environment. Employees inevitably encounter problems
that content alone cannot solve, at which point they need to reach out to experts. The partners make finding
relevant expertise easy by combining content search with expertise location.

MANAGING CHANGE AND EVALUATING SUCCESS

17.Train employees to be better searchers and consumers of content. The partners recognize that searching an
enterprise system is different than using a consumer search engine and requires a unique skillset.
18.Measure engagement with content and the user experience. The partners track the health of their content
management approaches by measuring how many people are using them and how satisfied they are with what
is available.
19.Use metrics as conversation openers. The partners leverage data as a clear, visual way of guiding
conversations with senior leaders, content owners, and communities.
20.Find a way to measureor at least demonstratethe value provided by content. Some partners calculate
the value or ROI from content management in order to show business impact.

2015 APQC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THE BEST-PRACTICE ORGANIZATIONS

Below are brief overviews of the five best-practice organizations that participated in this study.

EY
EY is a global audit, tax, transaction, and advisory services firm. The firm competes in a market where insights are
the product, so content is a key business differentiator. EYs content management strategy focuses on bringing
relevant, impactful, and meaningful content to EYs people for them to be successful and directly to the market to
support exceptional client service. The content management team uses a disciplined approach to continually
engage with business stakeholders across EYs multiple service lines to see how they are doing, learn whether any
priorities have changed, and mine intellectual capital.
EY is currently in the process of moving to Microsoft SharePoint as the mainstay of its content sharing capability.
The firm looks at the migration as an opportunity to optimize its content by establishing a formal content
management life cycle, maximizing findability through a single metadata structure for internal and external
content, and using metrics and status reporting to ensure that the content strategy remains on target.

METLIFE
MetLife is a global provider of life insurance, annuities, employee benefits, and assets management. This study
looks at content management practices in the customer service, operations, and group underwriting organizations
within its group, voluntary, and worksite benefits line of business. MetLife aligns content with strategy by
embedding KM and content solutions in strategic initiatives at the enterprise, line of business, and business-unit
levels. KM is a key element of initiatives and projects, just like training and change management, said Director of
Knowledge Management Robert Burns.
The customer service, operations, and group underwriting part of the business uses OpenTexts Livelink as its
document management system. For knowledge exchange, it uses intranet sites along with Microsoft SharePoint.
The organization has a central KM team that is responsible for delivering the right content to the right people at
the right time. The KM team works with other roles (including knowledge champions, knowledge coordinators,
and knowledge owners) to manage content. The KM team tracks a range of indicators to assess its content
management efforts, including project value, efficiency gains, and quality. MetLife also has a closed loop process
whereby metrics, value, and feedback results are analyzed and used as inputs to strategic and tactical planning.
Specific improvements are created in partnership with the various business roles and the KM team.

MWH GLOBAL INC.

MWH Global is an engineering and consulting firm focused on wet infrastructure, including water treatment,
supply, and power. MWHs content management approach aims to deliver information and expertise to
employees in the flow and on the go. To accomplish this, the KM team tries to streamline the knowledge sharing
experience for employees, make it meaningful by putting the right information in the right place at the right time,
and help employees engage in dynamic exchanges via social tools.

2015 APQC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Most of MWHs staff members are people with scientific, engineering, design, or technical backgrounds. The type
of work that MWH does and the skillsets of its work force determine the types of knowledge content that the
organization needs to manage: namely, technical templates, project templates, forms, and checklists for
consulting engagements. Because its people rely on vetted, authoritative content, MWH deploys a multi-tiered
approach to content managementcollaborative content in its Yammer communities and project team sites is
loosely governed, but content in its technical library and department portals is tightly controlled.

NALCO, AN ECOLAB COMPANY

Nalco, an Ecolab Company, specializes in water, energy, and air applications for light and heavy industry. Nalcos
business strategy involves acquiring knowledge, educating engineers and salespeople about that knowledge, and
then applying the knowledge to client engagements. The organizations content management strategy
emphasizes making technical information and expertise available to field personnel when and where they need it.
Most of Nalcos knowledge environmentincluding a library comprised of expert-authored content, communities
of practice, and expertise location profilesis built on Microsoft SharePoint.
Nalco has a decentralized approach to knowledge and content management, in which a small core KM team
supports a distributed network of content authors and owners throughout the business. The KM team owns the
processes and approaches for content, but the business owns the actual content and is accountable for
identifying gaps, authoring documents, and adding metadata and keywords to ensure users can retrieve
appropriate resources. The KM team acts as a consultant by sharing usage data and search logs to help the
business identify content needs and manage existing resources.

WIPRO LTD.
Wipro is a global IT services, consulting, and outsourcing organization. The firm views content and knowledge
management as key to its business strategy for delivering integrated and innovative solutions to customers and
for growing and retaining its global work force. Wipro has a central KM team that includes dedicated members for
content management. The team is responsible for managing Wipros content repositories; turning employeegenerated content into reusable knowledge; and interfacing with teams, business units, industry verticals, and
accounts to drive knowledge and content initiatives.
Wipros key content management technology is Microsoft SharePoint, and customized SharePoint collaboration
features are in use across the organization. The organization leverages Yammer as its main collaboration platform,
as well as several standalone .net solutions for different aspects of content and knowledge management. Wipros
KM team uses analytics to measure the health of its content management initiatives and to push relevant content
directly to employees. Major initiativesincluding gamification and mobile access to contentfocus on engaging
Wipros large Millennial work force and providing learning and reuse opportunities for employees of all ages.

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CONNECTION INSIGHT
PUT THIS RESEARCH TO WORK ... YOUR WORK
St. Charles Consulting Group, Research Champion
Connecting people to content ... It sounds so simple,
yet as knowledge management professionals we all
know how critical it is, particularly given the
accelerated technology evolution that both drives and
defines our business world. It is in fact largely because
of technological change that the challenge for
companies to connect people to content is as
significant as it is. Content is being generated quickly,
by many different resources, and via so many
different channels that content management
strategies are choking on the current volume of data
and urgent demands for information and knowledge
within the enterprise.

helped APQC sponsor the first Knowledge

Management Conference (in 1995) that allowed
thought leaders from around the world to collaborate
on best practices to address these and related
questions.
In 2014, some 20 years after the first Knowledge
Management Conference, APQC presented us with
the opportunity to collaborate as the Research
Champion for this study. We jumped at the
opportunity to take our understanding of the
Connecting People to Content imperative to a new
level.

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHTS DISTURB

THE STATUS QUO

Fortunately, APQC identified some leading

corporations that are setting the bar for Connecting
People To Content. This research report details some
of the key success factors that are integral to their
success equipping stakeholders with the knowledge
necessary to truly make a difference. Together, their
best practices provide a strategic framework that
others can leverage in order to bring significant
improvements to their own organizations.

During the study, we were fortunate to gain insights

from five partner organizations and then to
collaborate with APQC and other study participants to
formulate the 20 best practices for connecting people
to content.
Based on insights from the KM advisors at EY,
MetLife, MWH Global, Nalco, and Wipro we not only
validated some of our client experiences, but also
gained many new methods and creative approaches
that the partners are taking to enterprise content
management.

ST. CHARLES AS RESEARCH

SPONSOR
From its founding in 2002, St. Charles Consulting
Group has partnered with clients to develop content
management approaches that position their leaders
and knowledge workers to answer such questions as:
What information is available? ... Where can I find
support? ... Has this been done before? ... How do I
execute my job better?

For readers of this report, these new insights should

serve as disturbances, in a positive way, that
encourage knowledge workers to refresh their
thinking using an objective assessment of how well
business objectives for connecting people and
content are being achieved.

Even before the formation of St. Charles Consulting

Group, one of its founding partners, Robert Hiebeler,
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to identify those best practice areas that are (or

should be) the priorities for making changes.

As noted in previous APQC

research, effectively
connecting people to content
requires knowledge to be
placed in the pathway of
work so that employees trip
over itin short, so that its
almost impossible to ignore
its value.

Some questions for consideration include:

1. Where in your business is it most important to
provide content to employees at their point-ofneed (e.g., critical customer-facing processes,
employee learning and development, supply chain
execution, internal execution processes, financial
processes, environmental and safety)?
2. For each important process area, where do you
stand currently in the Maturity Model in relation to
the five key characteristics and maturity levels?
How well do you surface the right content to your
people?

Bob Hiebeler, St. Charles

Consulting Group

3. Using the 20 best practices as assessment

questions, which insights disturb you enough to
take action?
4. What are the most significant gaps between your
current and desired state?

WHERE DO YOU STAND?

TAKE ACTION

One resounding observation from the study is that

organizations need to clearly align their content
management strategies to support their strategic
goals and operational initiatives. In order to avoid
serious misalignment we recommend that you start
by benchmarking your current state by using a
combination of the Maturity Model that we created
for Connecting People To Content (see page 6) and
the disruptive insights you can glean from reviewing
the 20 best practices delineated in this report.

Once you have identified the major gaps, you now

have the ability to articulate the corrective actions
necessary to close these gaps. At St. Charles we have
facilitated deliberate and systematic workshops
around this process with our clients by taking
the articulated gaps and helping design a practical
approach to developing new processes, tools, and
technologies that help them deliver on their desired
state.

SO WHAT? NOW WHAT?

In addition to our Maturity Model, St. Charles

Consulting has also developed a complementary
Diagnostic Survey. The survey helps your team and
stakeholders discover insights about where you
stand and identify some potential gaps to bridge
when moving toward these 20 best practices. If you
are interested in taking this survey, or just need some
help getting started, please don't hesitate to contact
us for support.

More specifically, to use these findings effectively,

we recommend that you start with a clear position
statement outlining what critical content needs to be
surfaced and indicating which stakeholder groups
need to be connected to the various categories and
components of content. From the articulation of this
desired state compared to the benchmark of the
current state, it is generally a straightforward process

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ABOUT ST. CHARLES CONSULTING GROUP

The St. Charles Consulting Group was founded in
2002 in St. Charles, Illinois (a western suburb of
Chicago) by two former partners of Arthur
Andersenone from its renowned Center for
Learning & Personal Growth, based in St. Charles,
and the other from Andersens global knowledge
management practice, based in Chicago.

Charles Consulting Group has helped organizations

around the world in varying industries to connect
their people, processes and technology in support
of their objectives to prepare their people for their
tomorrow.
We currently operate out of four locationsSt.
Charles, Dallas, Phoenix, and Madisonserving a
client base that is broad and diverse. At present,
we actively support dozens of clients with
learning, talent, knowledge management, and
process initiatives with many of our clients in the
Fortune 1,000 space with significant global
operations.

First with our founders participation with APQCs

creation of the Process Classification FrameworkSM
(PCF) in 1992, and later with our development of
Process Visibility, a foundation for user-oriented
information design, we have focused on allowing
knowledge to be organized and later delivered in
the context of what the worker was doing. St.

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2015 APQC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This excerpt from the APQC: Connecting People

To Content study report was provided to you by

the report and discuss how we can support your

Shawn Eckert
+1.602.284.3855

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