Almost every big company has its own in-house experts. These experts have specific skills and knowledge that can prove useful in helping their colleagues and seniors. Locating in-house experts in a company is not an easy task and most companies end up making this tougher than it already is. Many problems remain unsolved and new innovations never get thought of and employees end up feeling that their potential is not being used properly by the organization. These things are very harmful for a business organization at any point in time.

Today, in tough economic situation, expertise locator systems have become very sought after in corporate IT. The basic problem is with the centrally managed effort, which most companies use for the purpose of locating experts. In such a set up, the system identifies and classifies experts in an easy to search database that holds the description of their expertise and knowledge. This approach has flaws because firstly, most large corporations are dynamic in nature; they are always changing in one way or the other.

Thus, the credentials of a so-called “expert” are always changing. Secondly, a centrally managed database offers no help in gauging the soft skills such as communication and reliability of a person. They only list their area of technical expertise. The database system currently in use cannot offer any help in this aspect without crossing ethnical and social limits.

The best answer to this problem of locating experts is usage of socio computing tools:

1. Internal blogs and Wikis: Employees maintain blogs to communicate and to organize their work. All types of messages can be posted on blogs. This way, technical knowledge and communication skills, both can be assessed. The basic function of expertise locator system helps its users to make enlightened choices regarding selection of an expert. The most commonly sought qualities are experience, communication skills, trustworthiness, extent of knowledge, and awareness of other subjects. Unlike current systems, blogs eliminate the need of relying on someone else’s judgment. Users can assess the blogs themselves. Another advantage of blogs is that they help the users to explore previously unlisted options.

By blogging, a blogger can display the window of his or her expertise. Wikis (WebPages) allow more than one user to add, delete or edit content. This application has become useful for sharing information and for collaboration in areas of software development. They can offer great insights about authors and editors whose articles are on display. They are one of the best sources of expertise identification.

2. Social Networking and Tagging: Social networking websites offer their members an opportunity to network based on common interests and professional relations. In a business setting, a social networking website can help employees look outside their department for expertise. This helps in breaking organizational barrier. An application that lists people who have worked together on projects in the past is also immensely helpful.

Tagging is also a potentially useful social tool. It refers to the affixing of keywords to the name, images, documents and pages of a certain person on the Internet. For an expertise locator system, employees of an organization can have tags to describe their work profiles, projects, hobbies and more.

Tags can be used for purpose of evaluating a person’s past helpfulness and his/her expertise. People can be tagged on their new areas of expertise from time to time.

Actions and interactions that take place in blogs, wikis and social networking websites provide subtle hints that are altogether absent from current expertise search system. A system that goes through blogs and social networks for information offers better information.

Thus, the social computing is a tool that can help organizations manage their in-house expertise better.

written by REI Circle (www.reicircle.com)