The latest wave-Knowledge management

There is one more jargon for you now and it is Knowledge management. And it is time you had some knowledge about it.

Knowledge management (KM) is about knowledge and its collective and collaborative use across an enterprise. Dataquest, the global infotech consulting group defines it as a discipline to promote a collaborative approach to creation, capture, organisation, access and use of the information resources of an organisation while Lotus Development Corp. defines KM as the systematic leveraging of information and expertise to improve organisational innovation, responsiveness, productivity and competence.

The essence of this concept is that time is of essence to a company and so is the knowledge and expertise of its employees. But then infotech professionals do not stay on for long and their knowledge is only of minimal and fleeting use to the company. As an asset, the knowledge of the professionals in a company is under-utilised simply because it is unavailable. It is estimated that only about 15 to 20 percent of the knowledge within a company is used. Knowledge management thus seeks to go beyond the recorded, archived and thus explicit knowledge that exists in the form of reports, manuals and records. KM seeks to capture the knowledge gained and internalised by the employee.

What goes into it? Knowledge management starts with knowledge creation- through activities, projects and experiences resulting in new knowledge. This knowledge is then recorded or captured in an explicit form, making it available on a public level. This recorded knowledge is then classified and organised making it easy to store, retrieve and maintain using indices and maps. Thus knowledge is made ready to be accessed, disseminated or required for use. This knowledge is then applied when required- for activities, decision making and for reference. The feedback generated during use is added onto the knowledge framework.

It can be seen that the above processes run on the basic lines of knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge application. These are the core activities of knowledge management.

What are the requisites? Looking at the requisites of the above processes, the intrinsic part outweighs the extrinsic and the explicit. For an organisation to have a KM system, the organisation culture is a key factor. It has to be an open environment without any strict hierarchy, needs a free communication network across the organisation and a collaborative and participatory style of operation. KM requires that the company acknowledges and identifies its knowledge base among other things as part of its critical success factors (CSF). In terms of operational requirements, the company needs to have experience in Intranets, groupware and collaborative computing.

Who needs it: Every company should have a knowledge management system in place, simply because knowledge is so difficult to find and its alternative cost difficult to quantify. Also because it makes sense to move forward and carry forward the experiences rather than reinvent the wheel every time. KM can be limited to select skill and knowledge areas depending upon a few factors. These are:

• The depth of knowledge involved

• As an offshoot of the above, the time required for expertise build-up

• Amount of creativity involved

• Amount of change, diversity and uniqueness in experiences

• Mission critical, time bound and complex processes

• Geographically widespread

• Availability of skilled persons in the same field

• Volatile technology and market

Besides, a measure of knowledge or intellectual capital is a pointer to having a KM system. This is one tangible measure wherein the ratio of market capitalisation to book value of a company gives an idea of how much the intrinsic and intellectual worth of a company is valued at. Anything in the region of 2 (for this ratio) is a pointer to the knowledge assets of the company and the relevance of KM.

These products can help: Software used for Intranet, groupware and collaborative computing are the basic products that go into it. This would include Microsoft Site Server, Microsoft Exchange, NetMeeting, Netscape Compass Server, Lotus Notes, Domino Server and other document management solutions.

Basically, it can be seen that KM requires more support at the decision making level and needs an appropriate open organisation culture. KM is the only answer in areas with shortage of skilled manpower, changing technology and high turnover rates.