Looking for Knowledge Management System Suggestions

I am looking for a corporate knowledge management solution and would like to find out what others out there are using. Currently the IT department uses a simple dokuwiki to keep notes about different systems, procedures, policies, documentation, etc. Believe it or not the wiki works well for the department and you can quickly find most of the information you need about the systems we manage – but we really need to take it a step further.

The rest of the company basically just uses file shares with no formal organization, version control, or security (multiple versions of documents in multiple locations) and a staff website that is not organized, updated, or managed as well as it should be.

We are looking for a more formal company wide knowledge management solution that we can use to manage both internal knowledge for employees and external knowledge for our customers.

Here are our basic requirements:

• Easy to use, manage, and administer – IT does not want to have to be involved in the daily management of knowledge for other departments.
• Our staff and customers need to be able to search the knowledge base to get answers to questions.
• A security scheme so that internal staff has access to one set of docs and customers another.
• Version control or version history.
• Staff need to be able to submit documents (knowledge) for approval and inclusion into the knowledge base (work flow).
• Need to be able to track what knowledge our staff and customers are searching for.
• An article rating system would be a plus (Was this article helpful kind of rating).

We have seen demos from a few knowledge management solution providers: Novo Solutions, Talisma, and SilverCloud Systems.

Each of these offer a good solution but so far I am really impressed with the Novo Solutions solution. It met the requirements and I really like the way Novo Solutions integrates the KB with Help Desk/Support functions, the ability for each department to manage their own knowledge, an admin and reporting interface that is easy to use, and the price is within our budget.

I would like to hear about what some other people out there are using for their knowledge management, especially if you happen to be using a solution from one of the companies mentioned above. What do you use? How did the installation go? How much day to day administration/management is required? What do the end users (internal/external) think? Do you feel the system was worth the investment? What is one feature you wish the solution had? What is the most important thing we should consider when looking for a knowledge management solution?

Any input anyone can give would be very much appreciated. Thanks.