SAP Knowledge Warehouse 4.0 Provides Web-Enabled
Environment, Online Information Repository and
Wealth of SAP Content
ACTION ITEMS
Recently at SAPPHIRE'99 Nice, the SAP European user conference, SAP AG, the world's leading provider of enterprise business solutions, announced SAP Knowledge Warehouse 4.0 (previously known as InfoDB).
Knowledge Warehouse 4.0 is the newly enhanced version of a comprehensive knowledge management solution that provides companies with a Web-enabled information-gathering environment, rich content and powerful tools to create a network of information resources for transferring knowledge and enhancing employee performance. SAP Knowledge Warehouse, available in the third quarter of this year, comes preloaded with a wealth of SAP training and documentation materials to jump-start customers in creating a unique platform, such as a companywide intranet, for ongoing knowledge sharing at all levels.
"Organizations are recognizing that knowledge has become as crucial a productivity factor as raw materials, labor and capital," said Gerhard Oswald, SAP AG executive board member. "Using SAP Knowledge Warehouse, companies will be able to connect those who know with those who need to know, making individual knowledge reusable. SAP is uniquely capable of providing companies with a content-rich infrastructure and intuitive authoring tools to create the knowledge they need to continuously improve productivity and stay competitive."
The combination of SAP Knowledge Warehouse, for unstructured information, and SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW), for structured data, provides a comprehensive foundation for a company's broad-ranging business intelligence requirements. Decision-support and analysis solutions such as SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM) sit atop this foundation and rely on information stored there to deliver an industrywide, strategic business perspective. SAP Knowledge Warehouse extends the mySAP.com Internet business strategy that creates collaborative markets and facilitates dynamic relationships, which SAP also announced recently.
Authoring Environment to Capture and Transfer Knowledge
SAP Knowledge Warehouse is highly scalable, Web-enabled and fully integrated with SAP R/3 workflow processes and Microsoft Office applications. The solution is designed to help companies manage all manner of unstructured information, including non-SAP-related data, and deliver the information in real time to those who need it. The solution also provides full translation support.
The content management, Web-enabled viewing and translation tools actively support ongoing dialogues between employees to foster continuous learning, encourage reuse of materials and eliminate redundant content. People who use the software can create hyperlinks to their most frequently needed documents and be automatically notified of new or updated information. Tight integration between SAP Knowledge Warehouse and R/3 also provides a window into a company's human resources database, so training courses and any other kind of information can be highly tailored to employees' job roles, skill levels and interests.
"Our employees possess a rich array of professional experiences, educational backgrounds and on-the-job learning that practically cries out to be shared across the company," said Susanne Ebersohn, manager, Business Unit Training at HiServ Hightech International Services GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany. "We see tremendous potential for using the authoring tools, document-linking capabilities and huge catalog of SAP training materials in SAP Knowledge Warehouse 4.0 to capture our organization's collective wisdom on an intranet site where all our employees can easily find what they need and make updates at any time."
Rich SAP Content for a Quick Start
SAP Knowledge Warehouse provides users with the entire realm of SAP role-based end-user and project-team training courses in up to 14 languages, as well as the online documentation, the SAP glossary and application help resources, with the added benefit of ongoing "live" information updates directly from SAP. Embedded hyperlinks between the documentation and training materials in SAP Knowledge Warehouse and the execution layer of R/3 allow users to reach into the online repository for step-by-step instructions on completing a transaction, such as a sales order or expense report, without having to leave the screen in which they are working. Customers also can build links between logical information objects for any type of content in SAP Knowledge Warehouse, including help functions. Each logical information object holds together multiple physical information objects, such as special language-, release-, country- or industry-specific versions of the documents. These logical links help customers maintain information easily and economically.
More than 250 SAP customers currently leverage the previous version of SAP Knowledge Warehouse for their project-team and end-user training, online documentation and intranet needs. SAPNet, the SAP knowledge repository of documentation and training materials, which contains more than 800,000 documents, is entirely driven by SAP Knowledge Warehouse.
About SAP
SAP, the world's largest enterprise software company, provides companies of all sizes with business solutions that deliver A Better Return on Information. SAP products and services integrate an organization from financials and human resources to manufacturing and sales and distribution. This integration enables companies to optimize supply chains, strengthen customer relationships, and make more accurate management decisions. Founded in 1972, SAP today leverages a global network of people, processes and products to assure customer success. SAP is listed on several exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." The SAP World Wide Web site can be found at http://www.sap.com.