The Sonjara Blog is where we post ideas, great articles, experiences, and other ramblings that we think are relevant to our clients and partners.
One of the most valuable assets that most people think of is the content and data contained in a technology investment. Even so, it is often shocking how little planning there is for content or data protection or migration when the funding ends for a technology investment.
The final asset relates to the systems, processes, and approaches that an organization uses to support and promote the technology investment. This includes the "offline" elements streamlined and perfected as well as the broader analysis brought to the investment by years of experience.
The actual investment in technology is both over and undervalued by many non-IT practioners; either folks seem to believe that once you invest in one platform type, you can never change again, OR they believe that switching platforms is a trivial decision.
The investment is divided into two types:
Building online communities is hard. Killing them is easy.
Brand and reputation are important for technology investments, especially in today's world of social media and search engine optimization. Something as simple as changing the name of the website can destroy years of marketing effort.
One of the services we offer at Sonjara is the Technology Evaluation. Usually a client has inherited an existing website or application and they need an independent evaluation of what state it is in and what should they do next. Here are all the steps and stages of a technology evaluation of an existing code base.
What happens to ICT4D technology when the funding ends? How do we transition and capture what we have gained to the next generation?
I argue that technology investments generate intangible assets that are routinely undermined or thrown away because they are not explicitly identified. In this blog series, I will outline the most common elements of intangible assets in international development projects, such as:
What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge management is about creating systems to allow the generation, capture and archival of data and information, so that it can be efficiently found and used to inform.