Does anyone have any experience with this or any recommendations for software that might push us in the right direction?
I have experience with this pain point but have not yet conquered it myself. I can’t recommend any specific software for the reasons you allude to, i.e. tailoring access to different information needs based on roles. It’s hard to find one that serves them all.
In the U.S. at least Sharepoint is still a constant across large enterprise work groups. (I think it has more to do with workflow inertia than adoption due the pleasure of using it, but that’s beside the point.) As such, my personal criteria for the solution you’re aiming at would include: “Can this be deployed to and accessed from Sharepoint easily?” It doesn’t mean I like or endorse Sharepoint, but it’s where a lot of the digital work traffic still happens, and so long as I am constrained to that I work with it and meet it where it’s at.
There is probably some analog for smaller companies that can use more lightweight tools, whether it’s a Basecamp site or Wiki for research as others have mentioned. Rather than adding something, integrate with what they already traffic if possible.
And of course if you just apply user-centered principles to this problem of “how do we present research to different audiences in a way that is tailored to their needs?” you might find the answer is more of an approach than a specific tool or solution.
An example I take inspiration from is Steve Portigal’s podcast interview with Gregg Bernstein, specifically the topic of telling the same “research stories” multiple ways and making that itself more of a competency:
GB: “One thing we try to do is…make everyone a researcher…”
…and he goes on to describe an Evernote for business account they used at Mailchimp which allows anyone to browse research artifacts in their own way on their time.
I think the same episode also references a urinal poster artifact, like a research 1-pager. Might be a different episode but even if it’s an extreme example, it really illustrates the point about meeting the workflow and people where they’re at.
Good luck!
