From community towards enterprise – a taxonomy-based search for experts

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a version of the Spree expert finding framework [BAA+07] tailored for enterprises. Whereas expert finding services have been very successful on the Web, enterprise level solutions are still scarce. This comes as a surprise, as the process of finding the right person (to ask) among colleagues requires a considerable percentage of most employees' time yielding a high potential for optimization. The core of Spree is an expert finding algorithm that automatically maps questions to the most qualified experts using a domain-specific topic taxonomy as intermediate. Apart from the framework itself, we describe the challenges and design decisions that have to be taken into consideration when implementing expert finding solutions in enterprises. These include the selection of an appropriate domain taxonomy, the motivation of employees to share their knowledge and privacy related concerns.