Knowledge Management

KM (Knowledge Management) came into existence sometime in 1995, became the rage in 2000, and fizzled out in less than a year. That’s probably because the term was over abused to sell various technologies touted as KM. Nothing could be further from the truth. KM is not a technology. It’s a concept that can be facilitated by using IT. If implemented well, it can benefit an organization in terms of better revenues, improved customer service, cost savings, or simply increased employee efficiency.

KM is better explained by first understanding the meaning of knowledge. All organizations have two kinds of

knowledge–explicit and tacit. The former can be documented, such as your company’s patents, trademarks, customer lists, and sales figures. The latter is what your employees gain over the years, after spending significant time in their respective fields.

It’s this knowledge that comes to the rescue when situations become tough. KM is the ability to capture and utilize this tacit knowledge.

The biggest and most obvious hurdle to implementing KM is therefore identifying the tacit knowledge that will be useful to your company. Once you’ve done that, prioritize the major knowledge deficit, which if taken care of, would benefit your company the most. Then tie it in with your company’s business objectives. Finally, plan out the implementation stage, mode of presentation to employees, management, etc.

As tacit knowledge lies in the minds of a few people in your organization, it is normally passed on informally. You bump into your marketing manager by the coffee machine and discuss the difficulties you’re facing with a client. On your way to the water fountain, you ask your troubleshooting expert for advice on fixing your misbehaving system. These kinds of actions are quite common, and most often prove to be useful. So the challenge is in setting up a system to capture this knowledge.

Identify the tools on your office network to capture this knowledge. A local chat site implementation is a good example. For instance, in the troubleshooting example, suppose the solution to the misbehaving system was asked over chat. It would record the conversation, which could then be kept for future reference, as it’s something everyone could benefit from.

You could also create project-report forms that have to be filled after the completion of each project. This will capture the learning from that.

Finally comes the process of sharing the captured knowledge. The easiest way of doing this is to use Web technologies.

Today, it’s easier than ever before to build an Intranet. If you already have one, then it can be used to put up all the knowledge, and present it to your employees through a Web browser. Here again, the information can be brought through chat sessions, presentations, or streaming audio/videos.

Anil Chopra