eknow inc is the Arlington, Virginia-based developer of eknow Integrator, the first and most mature, easy-to-use web-based tool for M&A, restructuring, and transformation initiatives. eknow Integrator has been continuously developed with customer and industry input since 1999.
History
eknow was founded in late 1998, with operations and prototyping beginning in 1999 and customer sales in 2000. Early versions of Integrator were known by the code name "S.I.X.P.," for Strategic Initiative eXecution Platform. As of June 2010, eknow Integrator has reached version 11.5.
eknow was inspired by the observation that while M&A and other large transformation initiatives represent the greatest management challenges most organizations will attempt, these critical activities are among the most poorly served by technology. Traditional and alternative software and methods are difficult to apply. They require inordinate management effort internally, inordinate IT or M&A consulting expense, or both. They ignore the critical success factors of large-scale initiative processes. They fail to integrate every important contributor into the process. Finally, traditional and alternative tools and methods embody faulty assumptions about users, processes, and value drivers in the real world. The result is low user adoption, low process compliance, and consequently poor outcomes.
Vision
eknow's vision was to address these specific shortcomings with an easy to use, highly automated, flexible web-based tool. The product would be provided as a service – as hosted software. The tool would allow management to integrate every contributor anywhere – not just the program office, or just team leads, or only trained project managers – without sacrificing scalability, security, or control. This vision was realized in eknow Integrator. Integrator was the first and only such application when developed a decade ago, and is still the most mature and easy to use in 2010.
Mission
In 2010, eknow's current mission is to continue to develop Integrator to meet evolving eknow client needs; to continue to make Integrator even easier to adopt, deploy, and use; and to provide Integrator with ever greater service levels and results for eknow clients.