Here’s a really interesting post on newscientist.com.

The article itself discusses the potential of using email data to predict a business crisis within an Enterprise. The example used is Enron. After the demise of the company in 2001, federal agents gained access to the email records for 150 senior staff during the last 18 months. Ben Collingsworth and Ronaldo Menezes at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne identified key events in Enron’s demise, such as the August 2001 resignation of CEO Jeffrey Skilling. They then examined the number of emails sent, and the groups that exchanged the messages, in the period around these events.

The results were profound and it really is worth checking out the post.

The really interesting thing is that the insight gained by researchers looking at the email data was achieved without even using the content within the emails. It was developed simply by looking at the networks of connections between different senders.

The exciting thing for us (and our customers) here at KnowledgeMill is that our KMCS product is designed from the ground up to provide business insight from day one. The researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and the Florida Institute of Technology had to take an existing set of email data, massage it into various database models, and carry out a mining exercise that was probably fairly arduous. The practical advice that really comes out of this research is that large enterprises must focus on putting their email data into the right place – this has to be a scaleable, searchable, and intelligent email repository. This means that business intelligence can be extracted in real time the moment the first set of emails are added.

In the Enron example, the email data was only a small subset of the real data set (18 months, 150 staff) but has been shown to have huge business value. Imagine the power of having all of your companies email within a single repository, or perhaps even better, all of your most valuable email data, but also being able to search and interpret the content. Predicting a crisis is just one possibility as shown in this article, but there are many others – reusing knowledge, tracking down experts, locating the most influencial people, tracking down key contacts at customers, identifying the most profitable deals when comparing effort, to name but a few. Avoiding marketing nonsense, this really does provide key differentiators for businesses who adopt best practice.

We really don’t like using this particular blog for any kind of sales purpose (it’s more for industry-related thoughts) – but somehow we couldn’t resist the alignment with our core KMCS platform. Business Intelligence has always been a forefront element of the KMCS design and is baked in at the lowest level (within the database repository). We hope you’ll forgive us for mentioning it Below we’ve added an example screenshot from the KMCS Business Intelligence functionality. We have the ability to show many different dimensions of the data through the UI to visualise communication patterns and business influence at the individual, team, department, context, regional, and enterprise level both inside and outside an organisation. The screenshot shows the influence that an individual (Joe Bloggs) has with different customer organisations. The closer the organisation, the stronger the influence (based on the amount of email correspondence and number of related documents). The data is entirely fictional and not related to any of KnowledgeMill’s real customers.

I’m looking forward to the Fantastic Tavern Lock Inn on 23/9 – http://thefantastictavern.co.uk/. Which got me to thinking about “innovation”. The word is often bandied about, but what does it really mean? A dictionary would be a good place to start I thought (more thinking??). The noun in-uh-vey-shuh n (see what I did there) means “something new or different introduced”. Not exactly enlightening but, interestingly, the word’s been around since 1540. Which suggests that we’ve been doing it (whatever “it” is) for a while now. Maybe Google can help, then. Why wouldn’t it? It hasn’t let me down yet (something there for the MS posse to get excited about?). How about “Innovation is the creative process that takes us from where we are now to where we want to be”? Hmm, better. Colloquially, the word “innovation” is often synonymous with the output of the process – Dysons, iPads, KnowledgeMill’s email & document management software (couldn’t resist a wee plug there) but it seems there’s more to it than the end result. So why bother? Innovation’s about positive change, making something or someone “better”. Back in the 16th century there was clearly a demand for innovators but today, more than ever, we need innovators. Every business and organisation is trying to deal with the impacts of globalisation, a changing workforce and the fickle, ever-changing aspirations of their clients. It will be the creativity and entrepreneurship of a new generation of innovators who will develop the new products, services and ways of working needed to achieve sales (yes folks, we need to sell stuff) and meet customer expectations. However, such individuals are in short supply. How do we develop, nurture and grow these strange creatures? Could you spot one in the pub? What do they have in common with each other? What can we learn from their experiences? Today, innovation is about much more than new products. It’s about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs. It’s about ideas but it’s also about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time. Most importantly, innovation is about people. Talented, committed collections of like-minded people that share ideas and are energised by their peers. This innovation stuff doesn’t just happen but how do you coordinate without stifling? I’m not a big fan of metrics – “Your department must come up with 7 innovations this year or you’re fired” kind of thing. How about empowering your people – trying carrots rather than sticks? People would kill for a Fantastic Tavern Award wouldn’t they? KnowledgeMill is striving to create an innovative culture – one in which our people can thrive and our business grow. We also recognise that we don’t live and work in a vacuum. Which is why we’ll not only be taking part in the Lock Inn but are delighted to be sponsoring the Effectiveness Award. See you on the 23rd!