Siemens needed information on ShareNet to be presented in context. Having other users' feedback on a piece of information can make all the difference in determining if it will be useful in another situation. This type of information does not usually fit in traditional form fields. ArsDigita's professional services developers overcame this by leveraging ready-made KMS features such as discussion forums and chat rooms. The developers also made extensive use of the KMS general commenting function, which allows you to add comments to any piece of data in the system, or to reference related data. This provides searchers with a tight grid of results which they can evaluate based on related items and other users' comments.

By providing information as a mixture of both formal data and informal commentary, the ArsDigita KMS made ShareNet into a powerful service - central to Siemens ICN global business operations. ShareNet won the American Productivity and Quality Council's "Best Global Knowledge Management Network" award in 1999, and today, Siemens is expanding the use of ShareNet into its other business divisions as well.

ShareNet provides Siemens ICN with a global collaboration platform for its employees. Members of the Siemens ICN sales force record information gathered on the front lines about their customers, competitors and partners which can then be used immediately by their fellow sales people anywhere in the world. Additionally, this same information can be used by product developers to tailor their offerings to better suit the demands of the current market. The product developers complete the circle by entering references to technical papers, books, and other resources that help to keep the sales team informed of the latest state of the products.

Users of ShareNet are able to rate or comment on any piece of information in the system. Ratings provide you with another criterion for evaluating information. This keeps less valuable content from cluttering the system without erasing it (since it may become valuable later). Comments, meanwhile, provide valuable feedback to the original submitter and useful context to other searchers. ShareNet also lets you link related pieces of information to one another so future searchers can be pointed to a related item they would otherwise have missed (see image below). Notice the text "Link from Site 59..." The KMS lets you create links between pieces of information - visible on both documents.

ShareNet is a structured system for categorizing and recording information that is valuable to the company as a whole. Using a clear and consistent user interface (to be discussed later), you are led through a series of forms to enter a new item into the system. Certain pieces of information are required. For example, when entering a new competitor into the system, you must specify what the competitor does, where they are located, etc. When all the required data has been provided, you can publish the new information, making it visible to other users of the system. This formal approach to data entry ensures that all the information in the system is functionally complete.

Some information does not require a formal structure, however, or cannot be categorized. You can also post messages in informal discussion forums or chat in real time with other users in free-style chat rooms. Posts made in discussion forums are automatically emailed to the user who started the forum, as well as to anyone who signed up to receive emails of new posts. This allows you to benefit passively from a discussion forum without even taking part in it.

Of course, not all useful information can be represented in text form. Documents, drawings, photographs, or any other kind of file can be uploaded into the system. Once uploaded, these files can be linked, rated, commented and edited in the same way as all the other information on the site.

After logging in, all ShareNet members begin using the site from the same page. Urgent requests and the latest news items are presented at the top of the page for quick access. Lower on the page is the "ShareNet Knowledge Space," where you can browse the system by category, enter data into the system, or engage in one of the "People to People" areas such as the Discussion Forums or Chat. There is even an "Orientation" area for new users.

Notice that the Knowledge Browsing and Knowledge Input headings precede the same list of category links. This lets you enter data in the same manner they would use to ultimately find it - by category. The flexible architecture of the ArsDigita KMS allows for the creation of new categories and sub-categories as Siemens' knowledge base grows. You can also perform keyword searches that will return items from anywhere in the Knowledge Space including posts in discussion forums.

Browsing the ShareNet Knowledge Space is exactly like browsing any other category-based search engine. Notice, however, that once an item is found, you are given several possible things to do with it, presented as links at the top of the page (see image above). You can save the item or email it to a friend. You can also sign up to receive alerts if or when the item changes. You can also leave feedback about how useful the item was, or to clarify a point that may have been unclear. Clicking the link "give feedback" you are taken to a form for entering a comment:

The most important aspect of running a knowledge management system is the effective entry and categorization of information. Here are the steps you would take to enter information about a newly discovered competitor:

A simple form is used to gather the basic information about the new competitor. The basic information form leads you to a checklist page (see image below). All the types of structured data about competitors are listed with required items marked with an asterisk.

The new competitor entry can be published once all the required information has been provided, but you can still make the entry more useful by linking the competitor to other items. For example, by linking the competitor to a particular market, users browsing that market would see links to their competitors operating there. You can find a market to link to this competitor by browsing to the "Markets" section from the checklist page. Entries in the Markets section now contain buttons allowing you to link the market to the new competitor.

With all the appropriate data in place, you can publish the new competitor entry by clicking on a link at the bottom of the checklist page. The KMS verifies that all the required data has been provided, and makes the entry publicly visible. Siemens employees may benefit from this information and rate it highly, or the entry may not be useful at all. User comments improve and refine the more valuable entries in the system, while the rating system keeps less useful entries out of the way.

ArsDigita's professional services department built ShareNet using the ready-made components that make up the KMS. The KMS is a suite of applications devoted to communication and knowledge sharing. The KMS applications run on the ArsDigita Community System (ACS) platform either together or independently.

Because the ACS and the KMS components were already written and thoroughly tested, the development of ShareNet was quicker and cheaper than if the entire system had to be built from scratch. Basic functions like user authorization and permissions were already implemented in the ACS, so they required no additional work at all. Thanks to the modular architecture of the ACS and the KMS, ArsDigita's developers integrated ShareNet easily.

Keeping Siemens' worldwide sales force abreast of the company's latest technology and best practices requires collaboration on an enormous scale. To accomplish this, sales people must be able to stay in communication with their fellow employees. ArsDigita's KMS provides a structure in which Siemens' employees can record valuable information for use by other employees. Opening both formal and informal communication channels, the KMS has proven itself as a robust, scalable system.