In this session, Hughes and Hodler will focus on Multimodal GraphRAG (mmGraphRAG), a transformative step forward in bridging multimodal data through innovative search and analytics frameworks, and demonstrate how integrating the semantic richness of images and text with the contextual reasoning power of graphs provides a comprehensive, explainable, and actionable approach to solving complex data challenges.

Attendees will learn how to incorporate images into GraphRAG and customize graph schemas, and be provided with the tools to explore how mmGraphRAG can be applied to their own domains. 

For more information on the conference, check out the schedule here.

The post David Hughes Speaking at ODSC’s AI Builders Summit appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Approaching fragmented and disparate data requires a balance of discovery, facilitation, analysis, and usability design. Are you looking to get the right people involved? Do you know where to begin to organize and get insights from your content and data across the enterprise? 

Download the Knowledge Graph Design Workshop Brochure

Our 2-day workshop will ensure your organization has the right foundation and roadmap to drive understanding and development of a starter semantic design that’s powered by ontologies and knowledge graphs. Our workshop is broken up into 4 key phases:

• Align – Interactive design efforts will guide workshop participants through a succinct set of definitions, case studies, and value points to ensure all stakeholders are aligned on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of knowledge graphs and semantic data models, and are baselined with clear expectations and best practices
• Design – We will drive clear, practical, and tailored conversations that enrich and expand user development. User identification oriented exercises are used to identify user differentiators, outline guiding use cases, and define key user needs.
• Model – The semantic design workshop methodology will engage workshop participants in a step-by-step process to understand end users, map, and prioritize content and data or metadata facets, their relationships, and properties, and identify your starting enterprise data model.
• Plan + Roadmap – We will facilitate discussions regarding next steps to achieve a fully implementable semantic design. At the end of the workshop, EK consultants will develop a roadmap, rooted in the findings of the workshop, detailing next steps and practical recommendations.

Outcomes

• A shared vision and alignment of enterprise data and knowledge graph and ontology models and related business value.
• A starter knowledge and data model that follows ontology and knowledge graph best practices and lays the foundation for advanced AI capabilities.
• An agile roadmap with a clear path forward around which to proceed, plan, and build an enterprise knowledge graph that represents your organization’s knowledge.

Interested in booking a Knowledge Graph Design Workshop for your team or organization? Contact us here.

The post Knowledge Graph Design Workshop appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Knowledge graphs are new and exciting tools. They provide a different way of managing information and can be used to solve a wide range of problems. Early adopters of this technology typically start with a small, targeted solution to “try it out.” This is a smart way to learn about any new technology, but all too often the project stops at a point solution or becomes pigeonholed for solving one problem when it can be used to solve so many more. The organizations that can grow and expand their graph solution have three things in common:

• A backlog of use cases,
• An enterprise ontology, and
• Marketing and change management.

Knowledge graphs can solve many different types of problems. They can be recommendation engines, search enhancers, AI engines, data fabrics, or knowledge portals. That first solution that an organization picks only does one of these things, and it may also be targeted to just one department or one problem. This is a great way to start, but it can also lead to a stovepipe solution that misses some of the real power of graphs. 

When we start knowledge graph projects with new clients, we always run a workshop with business users from across the organization. During this workshop, we share examples of what can be done with knowledge graphs and help them identify a backlog of use cases that their new knowledge graph can solve. This approach creates excitement for the new technology and gives the project team and the business a vision for how to add to what was built as part of the first solution. Once the first solution is effectively launched, the organization has a roadmap for what is next. If you have already launched your solution and do not have a backlog of use cases, that is okay. You can host a graph workshop at any time to create a list of the next projects. The most important thing is to get that backlog in place and begin to share it with your leadership team so that they can budget for the next project.

The structure of a graph is defined by an ontology. Think of an ontology as a model describing the information assets of the business and how they fit together. Graph databases are easy to change, so organizations can get started with simple knowledge graphs that solve targeted problems without an ontologist. The problem is, the solution will be designed to solve a specific problem rather than being aligned with the business as a whole. A good ontologist will design a model that both solves the initial problem being addressed and aligns with the larger business model of the organization. For example, a graph-enhanced search at a manufacturing company may have products, customers, factories, parts, employees, and designs. The search could be augmented with a simple knowledge graph that describes parts. An ontologist would use this opportunity to model the relationships of all of the organization’s entities up front. This more inclusive approach would allow for a wider range of search results and could serve as the baseline for a number of other projects. This same graph could fuel a recommendation service or chatbot for their customers. It could also be used as the map for their data elements to create a data fabric that simplifies the way people access data within the organization. One graph, properly designed, can easily expand to become the enterprise backbone for a number of different enterprise-centric applications.

Building a backlog of use cases and creating a proper ontology helps ensure that there is a framework and plan to grow. The final challenge in turning a point solution into an enterprise knowledge graph has to do with marketing the solution. Knowledge graphs and graph databases are still new, and the number of things they can do is very broad (see Using Knowledge Graph Data Models to Solve Real Business Problems). As a result, executives often do not know what to do with knowledge graphs. It is important to set success criteria for your point solution and regularly communicate the value it adds to the business. This brings attention to the solution and opens the door for discussions about expanding the knowledge graph. Once you have the executive’s attention, educate them as to what knowledge graphs can do through the industry literature and the backlog of use cases that you have already gathered. This will allow executives to see how they can get even greater value from their investment and drive more funding for your knowledge graph.

Knowledge graphs are powerful information management tools that are only now becoming fully understood. The leading graph database vendors offer free downloads of their software so that organizations can start to understand the true power of these tools. Unfortunately, too often these downloads are used only for small projects that disappear over time. The simple steps I have described above can pave the way to turn your initial project into an enterprise platform powering numerous, critical Artificial Intelligence solutions.

Learn more about how we enable this for our clients by contacting us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com.

The post Elevating Your Point Solution to an Enterprise Knowledge Graph appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Download the KM Strategy Workshop Brochure

Leading organizations have made the strategic investments in all elements of KM necessary to transform their organization, but many others are only now realizing the value of, and critical need for, enterprise KM. Getting the necessary investment to move forward with a strategic KM initiative at an enterprise-level can take time to get budget approvals and require “proof” that there will be a return. This KM Strategy Workshop is an ideal option for those who want to bring key stakeholders together to build a case for KM when the senior leadership is not yet ready to make a full investment.

Topics Covered

• KM and Business Challenges
• KM Outcomes and Business Returns
• Content and Data Strategy
• Total Transformation Strategy, Planning, and Budgeting
• Advanced KM Technology Options, Features, and Roadmapping

Workshop Outcomes

The KM Strategy Workshop will deliver a common understanding of the business value and anticipated outcomes of KM within the specific context of your organization. Through a series of interactive discussions and activities, participants will be facilitated through problem identification and prioritization exercises, culminating in a guided series of recommendations from EK’s world-leading experts. The 2-day workshop (12 hours) will deliver an initial vision and roadmap to shape KM efforts, help to obtain executive support and buy-in, and guide budgeting and out-year planning to deliver measurable progress.

• Training, Facilitation, and Coaching to design a sustainable KM strategy
• A report outlining KM and business value for your organization
• An Actionable Roadmap to guide your organization to KM maturity

Interested in booking a KM Strategy Workshop for your team or organization? Contact us here.

The post Knowledge Management Strategy Workshop appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

The Solution

This organization originally found EK using the KM Maturity Self-Assessment, which served as EK’s initial insight into the company and acted as the first input for both the KM Survey Report and KM Strategy Workshop Report. EK began the engagement by conducting various knowledge gathering activities, including interviews and focus groups, to assess the organization’s KM environment at a high level. In order to maximize the efficiency of client resources, EK developed and delivered a KM survey to a wider base of stakeholders to further identify their current KM strengths, challenges, areas for improvement, and priorities as cost-effectively as possible. The outputs of this time-saving survey were then compiled into a KM Survey Report.

Leveraging the KM baseline established by the report, EK planned and conducted a series of KM Strategy workshops in four 4-hour sessions over the course of 2 weeks, facilitating a total of 16 hours of activities with participants and accelerating the knowledge gathering process. These workshops resulted in a comprehensive KM Strategy Workshop Report and Roadmap that included targeted recommendations on how to achieve this organization’s desired target state, emphasizing quick wins and immediate benefits.

The EK Difference

EK began by engaging stakeholders at every level of the organization through interviews, focus groups, and a KM survey to quickly obtain a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s current capabilities. The interviews and focus groups were highly beneficial to this engagement as they allowed EK consultants to engage directly with stakeholders to uncover common problems and elicit consistent themes throughout the process. Because the organization comprised thousands of employees, interviews and focus groups were not enough to obtain a representative sample size. For this reason, EK also created and delivered a KM survey that was distributed to significantly more employees to increase representation and maximize EK’s time with the client. EK worked directly with the primary points of contact from the organization to specifically tailor the survey questions to relevant issues that they had been facing from all across the organization in order to streamline responses and ensure the results were immediately actionable. As a result, EK was able to obtain high qualitative value from direct interactions in the interviews and focus groups, as well as quantitative data and insights from the KM survey, creating a more comprehensive understanding of the organization’s challenges in a shorter period of time.

Further, the KM Strategy Workshops included facilitated lectures and interactive activities on Knowledge Management (KM), Agile, KM Objectives and Success Criteria, KM Challenges and Prioritization, Personas, Content Strategy, Taxonomy Design, Search Design, Governance, Change Management, and Organizational Challenges and Solutioning. These activities were designed to not only inform participants on these subject areas and the value they can provide to an organization, but also to encourage them to engage with one another interactively in applying these concepts to the actual problems they had been facing on a daily basis. By doing so, employees were simultaneously able to see tangible value in the KM solutions and concepts they were learning about, as well as garner enthusiasm and buy-in towards them because of the challenges they could potentially resolve. Furthermore, EK discovered tremendous value in bringing together stakeholders from across the organization, varying in geographic location, business unit, tenure, and experience level, to solve KM challenges together. This resulted in stakeholders finding common ground with one another and uncovering enterprise challenges that were applicable to all levels of the organization, demonstrating the immediate value of KM.

The Results

The results of this workshop, as delivered in the KM Strategy Workshop Report and Roadmap, were targeted recommendations in the form of KM solutions that, with the right investment and execution, can solve all or many of the KM challenges that the organization had been facing. These recommendations were broken down by priority and used realistic constraints such as budget, time, and resourcing. Key success outcomes of the engagement include:

• The KM Survey Report allowed this organization to obtain a broad view of KM needs and challenges from across the organization, as well as tailor the workshop activities and inputs to be organizationally specific and highly applicable to real-world use cases.
• The KM Strategy Workshop Report and Timeline provided a comprehensive overview of all the insights and outputs obtained by EK during the engagement. This included workshop activities and outputs, pain points and areas for improvement, pointed recommendations for how to most effectively progress towards their technical and non-technical KM Target State, and an actionable roadmap that integrated and depicted these recommendations in tandem with one another. This was also instrumental in aligning the stakeholders on where to go from here, reiterating next steps and focusing on expediting an increase in the awareness of KM and its value across the organization.

EK also developed starting points for a business case and further investment in KM by building an excellent relationship with the client and organization as a whole, garnering extensive positive feedback from interview, focus group, and workshop participants as well as buy-in from key stakeholders involved with the engagement. The workshop sessions equipped participants with an agreed-upon definition of KM and an understanding of where it can provide support in their daily work, pushing leadership to strongly consider future KM initiatives. Overall, EK was able to rapidly foster significant organizational interest in and awareness of KM and the KM solutions offered by EK.

The post KM Strategy Workshop and Roadmap for a Global Product Testing Organization appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

The Solution

EK engaged with N-CATT to host three different full-day workshops. Each engagement consisted of: 1) conducting a tailored survey to assess workshop participants’ needs, 2) facilitating the data workshop, and 3) developing a data strategy for the organization. 

To start each engagement, EK sent out a tailored version of our proprietary Data Management Maturity Benchmark as an initial self-assessment for participants to report on their data practices and capabilities. The survey covered the areas of individual data usage, data processes, data tools, and data challenges and opportunities. Through analyzing these results, EK designed workshops tailored to the participants’ skill levels, built a compelling narrative for the workshop’s purpose and value, and identified realms of data management where N-CATT could realize marked improvement in maturity, such as through targeted trainings and strategic initiatives dedicated to advancements within data processes, including automation.

These activities included lecture-style sessions on data governance and advanced applications of data, live demonstrations of machine learning, and interactive sessions where participants worked alongside facilitators to create relevant data personas and learned to manipulate data using wide ranging applications such as Python and/or Excel. All workshop sessions and activities were highly interactive, allowing participants to dive into specific questions tied to their experiences or projects. 

After each workshop, EK worked with N-CATT to iteratively define a data strategy and roadmap resulting from the assessment and workshop findings. Each iteration provided N-CATT with strategic steps towards realizing their goal of becoming a central source for data management training, standards-setting, and dataset collection and sharing across transportation agencies.

The EK Difference

As the largest consultancy in the world that is dedicated to knowledge and data management, EK has extensive experience building tailored solutions to companies’ data management challenges. EK’s unique experience building data management and governance solutions comes from having worked with organizations in various industries and maturity levels, bringing lessons learned across each of these realms, and working towards advanced knowledge-based, data engineering capabilities, such as knowledge graphs. This experience allowed us to deliver tailored workshops that not only addressed N-CATT’s current challenges, but also provided a glimpse into what the future of data could look like at the organization. 

Additionally, EK leveraged our extensive experience in facilitation to deliver an interactive workshop that addressed participants’ specific needs and questions from the initial assessment, during both virtual and in-person sessions. The facilitators’ experience with data management allowed them to build strong connections with the participants and learn about the participants’ experiences and use cases to answer relevant questions.

The Results

EK delivered three tailored workshops and corresponding data strategies. Workshop participants gained concrete skills and experience that were immediately implementable within their agencies through activities such as hands-on data analysis and persona definition. EK received direct feedback from participants about the relevance of the workshop sessions to their work, with participants stating that “this is already going to help me in my work 100 times over,” and “this is exactly what I’ve been looking for to take back to my agency.” 

Through these workshops and subsequent data strategies, EK has established itself as a trusted partner to N-CATT and a leading provider of data management capabilities.

The post N-CATT – Data Strategy, Data Management and Data Governance Workshop appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

EK has worked with organizations across the world who are looking for their workforce to become more adaptable to changing circumstances. They face similar challenges:

• Staff is hindered by silos
• Ingrained staff
• Uncertainty of how to measure change
• Day-to-day responsibilities take precedence over strategic initiatives
• Lack of accountability to see change through
• Fear and mistrust amongst staff because change hasn’t gone well in the past
• Vision for change seems too high-level or impractical to execute

Change management – changing mindsets, changing behaviors, and then reinforcing and sustaining those changes over time – is not simple, but it doesn’t have to be hard. There are ways to work with your organization instead of against it to set up the right structure, processes and relationships to support change at either the business-unit or enterprise-level. At EK, our change management experts practice what we refer to as Integrated Change Management (ICM). ICM combines leadership strategy, employee engagement, processes, success-metrics, and training to ensure swift and sustained adoption of change. It places your people at the center of the process to make change real, and ensure it sticks.

EK’s ICM offerings include:

One Day Workshop

Our one-day workshop is all about knowledge transfer and setting a clear plan of actionable next steps. Our change managements experts will empower your staff to:

• Align on succinct, clear purpose for intended change.
• Establish ‘numbers and narrative’ that report real ROI for the organization.
• Develop key messaging that can be repurposed across different communication vehicles.
• Identify influencers and resistors to the change.
• Utilize Integrated Change best practices and principles for staff to use in managing any change initiative.

Build a Solid Foundation

Over the course of 6-8 weeks, our change management experts will work alongside your team, providing customized coaching to set a change strategy that sets your organization up for success. In preparing your people to implement the change strategy independently, our work will include:

• Breaking down the vision for change into concrete milestones with measurable success criteria.
• Assembling a team that will lead and support the execution of the change initiative, and teaching them best practices to support their work.
• Identifying what processes and transitions will be impacted by the change.
• Determining how the organization can support employees throughout the transition.
• Coaching senior leadership to help them understand how they can best support upcoming changes.

At the completion of the 6-8 weeks, you can expect to receive the following deliverables: Enterprise Alignment, Scope Definition, Measurable Success Criteria, an established Change Team, Leadership Coaching, Risk Assessment, and an Influencer Analysis.

Full Engagement

EK is equipped to lead your organization through the strategy, design, and implementation of a highly customized Integrated Change Plan. Integrated Change is a three-phase approach – Aligning, Surfacing, and Realizing – with each phase building on the work accomplished in the preceding phase. Central to our work, we will collect data at every stage to determine if your organization is on track to meet its milestones and then adapt the Integrated Change Plan as necessary.

In the first phase, we align leadership’s vision to the organization’s operational strategy, and work to get everyone on the same page regarding why the change is necessary. We remove ambiguity, define success metrics and coach leaders on how they can best contribute to sustainable change.

In the second phase, we bring to the surface the thoughts and concerns of staff and mid-level managers regarding the change. Through this process, we proactively uncover the ways in which people would passively or actively resist the change and devise a plan with built-in mitigation strategies and specific data-points to guide iteration and communicate impact.

In the third phase, we realize the vision and the intention of the change by implementing the Integrated Change Management plan with established check-in points. At each check-in, a high-level brief is provided with concrete data supporting areas in which the change is taking hold and where more focus is needed. Clear direction is provided to leaders, empowering them to make data-driven decisions and adapt in real-time to save the organization time and resources.

Contact us to find out what offering is best for your organization at info@enterprise-knowledge.com.

The post Integrated Change Management appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

Regardless of whether you’re building an organization-wide intranet or designing a strategy to mature knowledge management within your organization, these efforts will succeed or fail based on how you engage your end users. Too often, KM efforts suffer from not involving end users early, frequently or consistently, or from a lack of buy-in and adoption due to solutions that are barely contextualized to what an end user wants or needs. EK’s Applied Design Thinking offerings leverage the best of Design Thinking to empower you to proactively engage your end users and gather the support you need to collaborate and build solutions

EK leverages Design Thinking for KM via an array of formats, ranging from an introductory workshop for your key stakeholders to get started in designing your KM strategy, to a project-long engagement to design a user-centric taxonomy. Regardless of what offering your organization leverages, the outcomes you receive will be tangible, practical, and tailored to your unique needs.

EK’s Design Thinking for KM offerings include:

1-Day Design Thinking for KM Workshop

Put users at the center of your KM strategy with EK’s Design Thinking for Knowledge Management Workshop. Over the course of a day, you and your team of stakeholders will be brought together to understand your end users, define and prioritize KM solutions, and translate those into immediate actions to mature knowledge management within your organization.

5-Day Design Thinking Sprint

For the complete array of KM initiatives, EK consultants will help facilitate a strong, user-centered start or the strategic reset you need to move forward. Over the course of five business days, EK consultants will guide your team through a highly customized design sprint, where you and your team will answer questions, and design, prototype, and test ideas with end users by:

• Confirming your end users and identifying the challenge on Day 1;
• Determining the scope of the challenge to focus team efforts on Day 2;
• Brainstorming potential ideas to solve for the defined scope on Day 3;
• Building prototypes to demonstrate ideas tangibly on Day 4; and
• Testing these prototypes with end users on Day 5.

End-to-End Integrated Engagment

Across all of our effort, EK consultants will leverage a Design Thinking approach, embedded into the context of your specific KM project and timeline. We will identify where your greatest needs are, and deliver practical, valuable activities designed to help you better gather and leverage user insights. These activities may include a mix of KM user interviews, focus groups, and design workshops, along with observations and immersions, coupled with ongoing scoping and prioritizing to ensure you and your team stay on track.

Contact us to find out what offering is best for your organization at info@enterprise-knowledge.com

The post Applied Design Thinking appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

EK consultant Claire Brawdy will be facilitating a workshop titled “The Design Thinking Mindset” at the

“I’m incredibly excited to represent EK and speak at this year’s Code(Her) Conference – it’s an honor to be speaking at a conference whose mission is to empower women in tech. It’s a topic important to EK, and clearly aligns with our values” Brawdy said.

Register for the conference using the code CHC2017 to get a 10% discount!

About Enterprise Knowledge

Enterprise Knowledge (EK) is a services firm that integrates Knowledge Management, Information Management, Information Technology, and Agile Approaches to deliver comprehensive solutions. Our mission is to form true partnerships with our clients, listening and collaborating to create tailored, practical, and results-oriented solutions that enable them to thrive and adapt to changing needs.

About the Code(Her) Conference

Organized by DC Web Women, the 2017 Code(Her) Conference is the premier 2-day conference where women come together to learn the latest in technology, with an emphasis on immersive “hands-on” training from some of the industry’s top experts in an informal, informative and inclusive environment. All conference sessions are designed to teach or introduce to participants practical skills, techniques, or ideas that can be applied at work or in participants’ daily lives.

The post Brawdy to Speak at 2017 Code(Her) Conference appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.

I’m a big fan of workshops for several reasons:

Value

They provide maximum impact at minimal cost to the client. I’m the first to recognize that not every organization needs, or can afford, a lengthy engagement where a team of consultants are embedded on a client site.

Impact

They provide a direct impact opportunity to point an organization in the right direction and align goals. Many of the organizations with whom we work possess the expert, conscientious, “doers” in house, and only need a limited engagement workshop to ensure they’re leveraging our experience and best practices.

Alignment

They ensure an aligned understanding and vision for goals, actions, and potential returns. The core act of getting the right people in the room is incredibly powerful. Having all voices heard and creating a shared roadmap to success powers the overall initiative and allows everyone to know each other more directly, which in turn leads to greater collaboration.

Regardless of the subject matter around which we’re running a workshop, from Agile Strategy, to Taxonomy Design, to Action Oriented Search, to KM Roadmapping we focus our workshops around providing the utmost value, impact, and alignment.

To that end, we focus our workshops to have the following characteristics:

Balanced Participation

As superhero facilitators, our mission is to ensure that all voices are heard, and that we respectfully inject our own experience and recommendations into the culture of the organization. Though we may be flying in to save the day, that doesn’t mean we’re talking more or louder than anyone else. Our role is to empower and guide the discussion.

Practical Best Practices

Our role is not to “vanquish the villain,” but to empower the organization with the approach and best practices to own that task. To that end, providing real world stories of success and failure from the hundreds of organizations with whom we’ve worked provides the practical context necessary to think workshop in real terms.

Actionable Results

One of the most critical keys to a successful workshop is ensuring that, at its conclusion, there are clear deliverables and next steps. There are many who can complete a workshop and leave people feeling good. That’s not enough. A truly impactful workshop will have clear actions, deadlines, and an accompanying view to the future (or roadmap) as a product.

Ownership

Along with those actions and deadlines, each workshop should help to identify the internal heroes and protagonists of the organization who can help to progress the roadmap.

Fun and Energy

At times I think our greatest superpower of all is infusing an organization with the excitement and energy to make real progress to address their challenges. This is possible because we truly believe in what we do and love helping organizations understand and internalize the value that could be realized if they align to address their challenges and goals.

Are you looking up in the sky for your Agile KM Superhero? Send a signal to info@enterprise-knowledge.com and we’ll answer the call.

Workshop Brochures

The post Making Workshops Work appeared first on Enterprise Knowledge.