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	August 7, 2003

WHAT BUSINESS NEEDS: A CORPORATE 'MAPQUEST' We've all seen and used the online mapping services like Mapquest and Mappoint that will give you an instant map, and driving directions, for any address on the planet. So how come this technology hasn't been adapted to the corporate market, so that any employee of a large organization can see, visually, where any other employee fits in the organizational structure? Such an innovation would seem to have lots of benefits: Integrate with other Social Software, and thus help people find and connect with people with needed expertise or experience Improve morale, by showing that everyone has a place on the organization chart Articulate each employee's unique role and competencies Provide all the employee's contact information (physical address, phone, e-mail etc.) in one single place, and hence replace awkward corporate directories Automatic, simultaneous, easy updating of both the organization chart and the directory Presumably Mapquest and Mappoint are database-driven, which suits this technology perfectly for a corporate application. While even a single hierarchical view of every employee in the company would be a great advance, such a structure would even allow the increasingly 'matrixed' organization to show employees and relationships in multiple ways: (a) their geographic 'location', (b) their functional/heirarchical 'location', (c) their membership and position in cross-functional, cross-geography communities and networks, etc. And the 'drill down' functionality would allow you to see exactly where the employee sits at any level of granularity from a physical layout of a single office floor to the 30,000 foot view from the executive suite, where the employee would appear as a mere 'dot' (but where the chain of responsibility up would still be visible, so one can go through 'channels' if appropriate). I remember seeing something like this from a colleague in the banking industry a while ago, so I'm sure such a thing exists. If anyone knows of existing commercial products that meet these requirements, or 'best practices' that have been put together by companies for their own needs, I'd like to hear about them. If there aren't any, there may be an opportunity here for a great new, useful software product. 2:12:04 PM  trackback []  comment []

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