Introduction to Knowledge
management- Documentation of
Knowledge, Storage (archiving) of
knowledge.
DIPLOMA IN HR&IT
Definition of knowledge
management
• KM is the process used to make knowledge. actionable to members of
the organization.
• It involves capturing, storing, retrieving, and. using knowledge.
• KM involves the creation of a KM system.
Why Knowledge Management
• Knowledge management” is a concept originating in the 1990s, when
academics (primarily Nonaka, Takeuchi and Davenport) developed the
idea of this new discipline.
• One of knowledge management’s key objectives is to use company
practices and technologies to leverage corporate knowledge.
• Traditional knowledge management systems are focused on the
ability to capture knowledge in centralized systems and make it
available at a later date.
• However, this first step had so little success that at the beginning of
the new millennium knowledge management seemed left for dead.
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
• But the advent of Enterprise 2.0 (2006) has given new life to
knowledge management thanks to the shift the focus from the
“knowledge” itself to the individuals who hold, share and use it.
• In some ways the new practices and technologies introduced by
enterprise social collaboration have distorted the perspective of how
to leverage employee knowledge through a new model of creating,
sharing and using knowledge.
• This “network” effect has allowed us to connect people with the
purpose of sharing knowledge, making that knowledge more easily
accessible.
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
• Thus, a new era opened for knowledge management through the
“knowledge-sharing” and “collaboration” movements.
• As pointed out by Emanuele Quintarelli in his post:
• “By participating in a collaborative ecosystem of knowledge, in a
single gesture organizations for the first time are able to accelerate
not only their learning skills, but also their efficiency, innovation and
agility.”
• But let’s get to the point.
• What are the reasons why knowledge management is necessary?
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
• Below I list the 5 most important reasons I believe that knowledge
management is needed within an organization:
What is knowledge management
and types of knowledge
management?
The five types of knowledge management are
explicit,-- stated clearly and in detail, leaving no room for confusion or
doubt .Explicit knowledge is structured information that's easy to
document, share, and learn
implicit,---(suggested though not directly expressed)
tacit, ---understood or implied without being stated.
declarative, of the nature of or making a declaration.
procedural.-- relating to an established or official way of doing
something.
Each typ1e plays a role in helping your business operate efficiently.
Importance of knowledge
management
• Knowledge management is a process of defining, capturing,
organizing, evaluating, sharing, and retaining all the information
assets of the organization.
• The assets include documents, policies, databases, expertise, and the
experience of employees.
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
[Link] up access to information and knowledge
• In his famous quote, Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, once
said: “If HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more
productive.”
• In other words, knowledge management makes it easier to find the
information or the people who hold the information you need. It
increases efficiency and productivity and allows you to work better,
reducing the tendency to “reinvent the wheel.”
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
[Link] decision-making processes
• Employees can improve the quality and speed of decision-making by
accessing the knowledge of the entire organization when they need it.
• When making decisions, enterprise collaboration tools facilitate the
access to opinions and experiences of different people, which may
contribute additional perspectives to the choices made.
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
[Link] innovation and cultural change
• Enable and encourage the sharing of ideas, collaboration and access
to the latest information.
• Knowledge management enables individuals to stimulate innovation
and the cultural changes needed to evolve the organization and meet
changing business needs.
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge Management
is Necessary
[Link] the efficiency of an organization’s operating units and
business processes
• With faster access to information and resources across the
organization, knowledge workers can act quickly.
• A study conducted by McKinsey & Co. in November 2011, wherein
more than 4,200 executives were interviewed worldwide, showed
that the use of social collaboration technologies has improved
business processes and the organization’s performance in general.
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge Management
is Necessary
[Link] customer satisfaction
• The sharing of knowledge and cross-collaboration help to increase the
value offered to customers. The organization is able to give faster
answers or shorten the time it takes to improve a product or service.
• According to a study by Gartner (2014,
Knowledge Management Will Transform CRM Customer Service,
behind a paywall), improving access to contextual knowledge by an
employee or a client reduces the time that a provider requires to give
an answer by 20-80 percent, increasing customer satisfaction.
•
Top 5 Reasons Why Knowledge
Management is Necessary
• Also, an organization can reduce the cost of customer support by 25
percent or more, when using appropriate knowledge management
activities.
• Of course, in this context, technology plays a very important role: it
must not be perceived simply as an enabling tool, but as a driver for
new collaborative practices and sharing of knowledge. Modern
business communication and collaboration solutions are limited at
times to include the latest trendy features, often following the trends
coming from the consumer world.
Knowledge Management System
• A knowledge management system is any kind of IT
system that stores and retrieves knowledge to improve
understanding, collaboration, and process alignment.
• Knowledge management systems can exist within
organizations or teams, but they can also be used to
center your knowledge base for your users or
customers.
Knowledge Management System
1. Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems
• Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems comprise company-
wide efforts to collect, store, disseminate, and utilize knowledge. As
you can guess, their value lies in streamlining workflows. Thanks to
them, organizations can direct their focus towards optimizing
business processes rather than spending time searching for data.
• There are three major types of enterprise-wide knowledge
management systems:
Knowledge Management System
a. Structured knowledge systems
• A structured knowledge system provides tools and databases for
maintaining knowledge documented formally in the organization.
• This includes procedural guidelines, methodologies, best practices,
research reports and white papers, case studies, employee
information, board and investor related information etc.
Knowledge Management System
• Example: Think of a company intranet that features access to such
resources and has in-built tools for collaboration among team
members, no matter co-located or remote.
• It is often the central hub of communication among different
departments and teams, between management and employees,
superiors and subordinates.
Knowledge Management System
• Individual departments, say the HR department, can use it to upload
important documents that serve as a single source of truth, such as
the employee directory, the leave policy, details of compensation
benefits etc.
• On the intranet, product teams can share launch updates, marketing
teamscan share success metrics of their campaigns, IT teams can
share security SOPs and more.
• The leadership can use it to make important announcements and
introduce company-wide changes. And the list goes on.
Knowledge Management System
b. Semi structured knowledge systems
• A semi structured knowledge system is one that provides an
infrastructure for tracking, organizing, and storing semi structured
knowledge which cannot be adequately contained in formal
documents.
• Examples of such information can be emails, Slack threads, images
and videos, or other scattered media stored in different locations with
different members of the org.
Knowledge Management System
• Document management systems, content management systems, and
company wikis are some examples of semi structured knowledge
systems.
• Popular document management systems today include Confluence,
Google Drive, Adobe Acrobat etc. For content management,
companies rely on solutions such as WordPress, Squarespace,
SharePoint, and others. While the likes of Notion, Coda, and Slab are
some of the preferred company wiki applications.
Knowledge Management System
c. Knowledge network systems
• Knowledge network systems are built to transform unstructured and
undocumented knowledge into explicit knowledge that can be stored
in a database. This can be knowledge held only by certain members or
groups in the company where finding the right person often becomes
the only way of locating the right information.
• A knowledge network bridges the gap between those who seek
answers and those who have them, by maintaining a database of
existing solutions as well as experts.
Knowledge Management System
• t also features communication tools like QnA portals where both
parties can talk and the solutions created in the communication are
then added to a database of solutions in the form of FAQs, best
practices, or other documents.
• Internal knowledge bases and help centers, public knowledge bases
on the websites of companies, customer support tools that put
customers in touch with product experts etc. are all various kinds of
knowledge network systems, whether facing internally or externally.
Knowledge Management System
2. Knowledge work systems
• Knowledge work systems are set up by companies to enable
specialized sections of employees, say engineers, product
designers, researchers, architects, scientists, financial analysts
etc., to create new know-how for the company.
• Common examples of knowledge work systems include computer-
aided design (CAD) systems, virtual reality systems for simulation
and modeling, and financial workstations.
• Such tools can run thousands of powerful calculations in seconds
to speed up business decisions, provide valuable information for
planning processes, accelerate product development, minimize
production waste, optimize service scheduling, and more.
Knowledge Management System
3. Intelligent techniques
• Artificial intelligence tools and technologies are used by companies to
capture individual and collective knowledge and to extend the
organizational knowledge base.
• A major example of intelligent techniques used by modern companies
would be an enterprise search system that employs capabilities such
as Natural Language Processing (NLP), semantic search, and Machine
Learning (ML), for knowledge discovery and to deliver a highly
relevant and customized search experience to its users.
How to choose the right knowledge
management system for your
organization
• Here are some essentials to look for while choosing knowledge management
software for your company.
1. Powerful search
• Work in an average company today is scattered across 254 applications. Once
you’ve let that sink in, imagine how frustrating and time-consuming it would be
to scan even half this number of apps for something you needed.
• This is why robus search would be the top evaluation criterion for most
organizations looking for a knowledge management tool.
• While comparing options, you should prefer ones that deep-index all content
across all file types and formats so that every resource in your company becomes
searchable. It’s a huge bonus if the search is intelligent and adapts the results as
per their relevance for the user.
How to choose the right knowledge
management system for your
organization
2. Integrations
• It’s likely you are already using a variety of systems such as intranets,
extranets, document and content management systems, CRMs etc.
for your everyday business.
• Your knowledge management software should ideally integrate with
(most of) the platforms your team is accustomed to working with, so
that they don’t waste time switching between different apps.
How to choose the right knowledge
management system for your
organization
3. Scalability
• Is your knowledge management system equipped to maintain more
information as your organization acquires it?
• Can it scale as your teams grow and your business expands?
• A scalable knowledge management system can help you avoid the
painstaking process of migrating your enterprise’s entire knowledge
base between tools at a later stage.
How to choose the right knowledge management
system for your organization
4. Access controls
• Employees, experts, customer service reps, managers, board
members, and clients/customers all need to access different sets of
information.
• Permissions and access controls help regulate the flow of information
and ensure that the right information reaches the right stakeholders.
How to choose the right
knowledge management system
for your organization
5. Reporting, insights, and analytics
• Reports and analytics let you judge the efficacy of your knowledge
management practices.
• They can help you gain insights into how many members are using the
enterprise knowledge base and in which manner.
• This is crucial for improving the knowledge base and sustaining its
usefulness.
• Recommended reading:
• How to choose the best knowledge management system for your
organization?