Lotus has announced details of Raven, its knowledge management suite that it claims will save companies money by allowing them to make better use of their internal knowledge resources.

Raven will ship as a standalone server product in the middle of the year. It is currently in alpha testing with 20 Lotus customers and will go into beta this spring.

Knowledge management is a key strategic area for Lotus and one where it has a significant headstart on rival Microsoft. But analysts warned that while the products are what customers need, Lotus shouldn't get too hung up on the knowledge management buzzword.

Scott Cooper, vice president knowledge management product group, speaking here at Lotusphere, said substandard performance and the inability to find experts or information was costing companies thousands of dollars. Analyst projections show that figure is rising.

IDC estimated that the cost per employee of ineffective knowledge management was $5000 in 1999 and will rise to $5850 by 2003. "In a world where we are all connected, the cost of finding information is increasing rather than decreasing," said Cooper.

Raven offers three main functions, all of which are aggregated within a portal-type interface on the user's desktop. First is access to content services such as HTML, NSF and file servers within an entire organisation. "Think of it as a Yahoo for the internal information you care about," said Cooper.

The second key function, called Team Spaces, helps companies monitor what the competition is doing through external news and information sources. The third component is the portal user interface, which lets a company organise activities across all teams.

Julie Zutz, knowledge management coordinator at IT consultancy Keane, a pilot site for Raven, said the suite enables faster proposal development, shortens plan, build and manage delivery cycles, and improves Keane's position as an employer and for client selection.

But while Raven is a technology product, implementing it is more of a business issue than a technical one, according to Zutz. "It's 30 per cent technology and 70 per cent how people use it," she said.

Scott Smith, managing principal within IBM Global Services, said he agreed. "It starts with people and ends with technology. Knowledge management is a business issue, it's not a technical whiz-bang solution."

But while technology may take a back seat in knowledge management, and some larger organisations may create dedicated knowledge management departments, IT management can still play a role, according to Eric Woods, senior analyst at Ovum.

"More forward thinking IT professionals are seeing it as an important way to expand their position, to move from managing plumbing to managing the business strategy. People who understand what technology can and cannot do have an important role," said Woods.

Implementing Raven will require considerable care and planning or it risks becoming a labyrinth of unstructured data, or "a big dustbin in the sky," according to Ashim Pal, senior analyst at Meta Group. Pal estimates that around 10 per cent of organisations will create dedicated knowledge management departments.

The warning to Lotus is not to lean too heavily on the term 'knowledge management', since it can confuse customers and may have a short shelf life.

"It really gives them a big lead over the competition and some valuable stuff for customers. However, positioning it as knowledge management is risky," said Pal.

"Knowledge management is something people will always need, but it has got its year in the sun - like push technology had. The danger for Lotus is that they become a knowledge management company, and when knowledge management loses visibility, they fade with it. I'd rather they positioned it as a portal building product," he added.

"Lots of users don't want to know about knowledge management but do want certain elements of it, such as better collaboration and competitive intelligence. But they are weary of the grandiose title," said Ovum's Woods.