MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 16, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WhoKnows today announced that the WhoKnows expertise discovery solution now fully supports Microsoft® Office 365™, SharePoint®, and Yammer® software applications, enabling millions of corporate users to find and connect with the right colleagues quickly and easily. This latest release automatically augments employee profiles in SharePoint with skills or expertise information and recommends colleagues directly within the Office 365, SharePoint, and Yammer user interfaces. Now, companies using these Microsoft products can put the entirety of their organizational expertise at the fingertips of every employee.
"Knowledge, especially the deep, intuitive kind that many skilled employees have is essential to a company's competitive sustainability. Surprisingly many companies are not capturing this knowledge nor are they sharing it with those who need it and should have it. Fortunately, WhoKnows is an effective platform for gathering those deep smarts so any employee can access knowledge," said Ken Ball, co-author of Surviving the Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees. "When knowledge sources are combined, companies can accelerate performance and innovation in all areas—sales, marketing, service, and product development."
WhoKnows helps corporations address the challenge of comprehending the full scope of their workforce capabilities. The company's revolutionary approach creates profiles—or augments existing ones, such as those already in SharePoint—automatically based on how employees work online, equipping enterprise leaders with an always accurate and up-to-date understanding of who knows what within their organizations.
"The automatic discovery and publishing of skills from WhoKnows enhances Microsoft implementations without a doubt," commented Rob Collins, CEO of RCP Consultants in Denver, Colorado. "The typical step to populate these applications with user information is to integrate and synchronize with Active Directory, but that only provides rudimentary profile information, such as name, title, email address, phone number, and group. Skills and expertise information does not naturally get flowed in through this process."
WhoKnows dramatically reduces the upfront and ongoing administration cost and effort associated with getting this critical information into Microsoft systems. First, WhoKnows eliminates the time and cost associated with integrating employee skills information into SharePoint from other enterprise systems, such as human resource or customer relationship management systems. The second, and arguably biggest, benefit is that WhoKnows removes the onus typically placed on the employee to update their skills information manually.
"Removing the barriers that hinder employees in solving business problems is a key role of the chief executive. Recommending fellow employees who can help with issues, directly from within Microsoft applications, offers a big advantage to companies," said Chris Macomber, CEO of WhoKnows. "You will finally be able to make the best use of every single colleague in your organization, and drive productivity, innovation, and growth from the ground up—ultimately driving positive return for shareholders."
About WhoKnows
WhoKnows helps enterprises understand who knows what in their organizations. The company's expertise-discovery software automates the never-ending job of building accurate employee profiles and recommending people when needed based on skills or expertise. Companies with large workforces or highly distributed teams rely on WhoKnows to fuel productivity, innovation, and growth through more efficient and effective collaboration. For more information, visit www.whoknows.com.
*Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint, and Yammer are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.