Dale Moore is a UK-based content specialist and contributing author at Jinfo. Jinfo research is at the heart of the business information industry. Every day they work with information pros who are reimagining information services. Their focus is on aligning information services with corporate strategy and initiatives.
The following is a summary of Dale's comprehensive review of Attensa.
“The ethos behind the Attensa platform, as a knowledge management and current awareness tool, is not finding relevant information, but using what you already have.”
“This is quite a different take on the problem of dealing with information overload. The emphasis is firmly on filtering out what you don’t want while honing in on the relevant stuff. The ability to combine premium content with other content, wherever it comes from, push it to the right people and measure its impact – all in one seamless interface – can only be a good thing.”
“The value and return on investment from this product comes in several forms. It brings together content from a wide variety of sources and platforms, thereby saving time and money by removing the need to go and search in lots of different places. Part of the management function allows administrators to report on content usage, so those premium subscription sources can be monitored according to usage against other free, or lower cost, publicly available alternatives to see whether they are providing real value for money.”
“While there are several other providers with comparable products operating in similar markets, none seem to offer the genuine open-endedness of Attensa.”
“Attensa is clearly a different beast from content providers as the emphasis is on managing content and creating intelligence using the content organizations already have or need to “pull in” from other disparate sources.”
“Information Managers, acting as administrators, can aggregate both internal and external sources of information, apply contextual filters and tags and trigger the individual preferences the platform uses to automatically deliver the right information in the context of the work that’s being accomplished. From the system perspective, the execution of this is quite simple, and this is exactly what Attensa provides.”
“From the people perspective, the hard part is understanding exactly what colleagues in teams across the organization actually need. However, by carefully setting up the Catalog and Topics and monitoring what people are doing, some real insights to user consumption and sharing can be gained. Administrators can analyze reports to help them do this.”
“The interface is slick, minimalist and user friendly with a shallow learning curve. Users get to focus on the article content with minimum distraction and have a decent range of sharing options. Administrators have plenty of control over how streams are built, how briefings are put together, what gets published, what categories are established and what filters are created to further streamline and target the content. They also get to curate the content by way of annotations.”
This is just a sample of the detailed analysis in the full review. A heartfelt thank you from the entire Attensa team goes out to Dale and the Jinfo crew for this thorough and thoughtful review. Thanks.
Dale has worked as an information manager since 1997. He specializes in low cost/high value tools and techniques that support content findability based on taxonomies and metadata.
In the full review Dale looks at how well the Attensa provides the ability to set up and manage content streams, which content sources customers can include, and how it allows users to create the exact mix of information needed. You can access the full review via the Jinfo website. It is available to Jinfo subscribers or for a one-time purchase.
Dale goes into detail about the technology behind Attensa. The ethos of the platform is not about finding relevant information but using what you already have. This adds up to a different take on the problem of dealing with information overload.
