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AskMe Corporation Introduces New Corporate Knowledge Sharing Technology
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SEATTLE, October 30, 2000 - AskMe Corporation (www.askmecorp.com), the leading provider of enterprise knowledge sharing solutions for corporations and online businesses, today announced the launch of version 3.0 of its AskMe Enterprise software. AskMe Enterprise provides a new context for communication within large organizations, allowing employees to easily share their knowledge with other employees, partners, suppliers, and customers. AskMe Enterprise' s knowledge sharing technology saves and catalogues employees' tacit knowledge-knowledge residing in their minds-in a corporate knowledgebase where it can be easily accessed by other employees. The software also allows employees to easily identify others within an organization who have specific knowledge, to search out existing information stored in the company's knowledgebase, and to share information with partners, suppliers, and customers throughout the Internet and across extranets.
"The collective intelligence of employees is the most important asset for today' s information age companies, yet nearly 90% of that intelligence is locked up in employees' heads and unavailable to others," said Udai Shekawat, co-founder and chief executive officer of AskMe Corporation. "AskMe Enterprise provides employees with an entirely new way to share information with each other, and makes this information immediately available to a wide variety of audiences through a company-wide knowledgebase."
AskMe Enterprise represents the leading edge of a new trend in software: enterprise software that intelligently combines proprietary search engines with real human expertise. AskMe' s sophisticated technology solves two of the most vexing problems for corporations everywhere: how to facilitate better communications between employees, workgroups, vendors, suppliers, and customers; and how to retain and share the knowledge exchanged during those communications
How it Works
AskMe Enterprise is based on the same platform that powers AskMe Corporation's award-winning consumer Web site, AskMe.com. AskMe.com currently attracts over 3 million unique users a month, has more than 136,000 experts, and over 2.7 million answered questions in its knowledgebase. This technology has proven to be highly scalable, and is well suited for the needs of a broad range of businesses, from mid-sized organizations to large, multinational corporations. AskMe Enterprise is extremely easy to use and requires virtually no employee training time. Employees can find experts and ask questions pertaining to their business problems directly from their Web browser. When selecting experts, employees can review a person's title, job function, qualifications, previous answers, and ratings from other users. Once the question is asked, the expert receives an e-mail notification about the question. They then log into the AskMe Enterprise application, answer the question, attach any relevant files, documents or links, and send the answer. The answer is automatically stored in the company's knowledgebase for immediate access by other employees.
Benefits
AskMe Enterprise gives companies a strong competitive advantage by allowing them to leverage their employees' knowledge and experience, and then share that collective knowledge with other employees, partners, suppliers, and customers via an intranet, the Internet, or extranets. What follows is a list of some of the benefits of AskMe Enterprise 3.0.
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Improves productivity
by helping employees, partners, suppliers, and customers quickly find
the resources and information needed to solve business problems; |
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Streamlines communication
by reducing organizational bottlenecks; |
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Automatically captures
and retains the company’s most important assets—the collective
knowledge of its employees—and facilitates sharing of this knowledge
with employees and others worldwide; |
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Integrates with existing
intranet, extranet, and e-mail systems; |
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Decreases repetitive
questions to key employees, reduces time spent searching for answers,
and reduces the load on customer and technical support. |
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Interoperability
The AskMe Enterprise server is highly scalable, capable of handling millions of users and knowledge transactions each day, and includes a very powerful and scalable natural language search capability. Built on Microsoft Windows2000 Server and SQL Server 7.0 database, the server is extremely robust with high availability, including support for load balancing, full backup, and recovery. The AskMe Enterprise client is entirely Web-based and can seamlessly integrate into heterogeneous corporate computing environments. The AskMe Enterprise client is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer (4.0 or higher) and Netscape Navigator (4.0 or higher) with optional add-on utilities that plug into popular e-mail programs, such as Microsoft Outlook (98 and 2000).
Market Growth
According to a report by Dataquest, knowledge management software will be one of the primary drivers of competitive advantage for corporations as they try to better leverage their knowledge assets. Corporations understand that efficient collaboration and knowledge sharing among employees, partners, suppliers, and customers is becoming a strategic imperative, which, in turn, will drive strong market demand for knowledge sharing products. According to Softbank Venture Capital analyst Rob Shavell, "...research we've done indicates, that it [knowledge sharing] will be one of the fastest growing sectors..over the next three to four years."
Pricing and Availability
AskMe Enterprise 3.0 is currently available through AskMe Corporation's sales department, which can be contacted at 206-937-9972, or at corpsales@askme.com. AskMe Enterprise is available as a hosted service, or can be deployed internally through a software licensing program. Pricing for AskMe Enterprise is dependant on the type of licensing, and the amount of customization and integration desired by the customer.
About AskMe Corporation
AskMe Corporation is the leading provider of knowledge sharing solutions to Global 2000 companies. The privately held company was founded in 1999 by former senior technologists from Microsoft, who envisioned a new way to unlock the knowledge in peoples' minds and share it with others. The company's flagship product, AskMe Enterprise, is the most widely deployed enterprise knowledge sharing platform in the world - more than ten million people have used the AskMe platform. The Seattle, Washington-based company is made up of experienced technology professionals from industry - leading companies such as Microsoft, Intel, and Internet Security Systems.
AskMe, AskMe.com, and AskMe Enterprise are trademarks of AskMe Corporation.
To get more information about AskMe Enterprise, click here.
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