KM is about managing knowledge - it is that simple. For a business, the purpose of KM, as a business tool, is to fulfill business objectives (e.g, higher profits) - that too is simple. When properly implemented, KM can help a business innovate faster, boost employee productivity, adapt to changes quicker, target customers and their needs more accurately, among a zillion other things - leading to better sustainability and higher profits.
What does "implementing KM" mean? Is it a complex undertaking? In simple terms, "implementing KM" means employing proper processes and tools to: (1) catpure what you know; (2) organize, systematize, classify and categorize knowledge; (3) make relevant knowledge available to the right people and the right time in the right form to enable better actions; (4) evolve knowledge base as the organization and its people learn new things; and (5) empower people with knowledge by (just-in-time) training, coaching and self-learning, improving their productivity.
Every organization already "implements KM" to some extent - it is neither new nor complex (at least it doesn't have to be). If you are labelling engineering drawings and storing them, you are already doing KM. If you are organizing customer records by their profiles, that's KM. However, you can do KM better, even a lot better, by developing a proper approach, especially with the use of wide variety of technologies available today.
Like everything else, a KM implementation has a goal, and a more tangible goal is better than an intangible one. An implementation of KM in specific contexts with specific goals has better chances of delivering measurable results. It should also be remembered that the technology doesn't do KM, it helps us do KM better, sometimes in the ways never possible before.
A typical KM implementation framework involves several steps - establishment of business goals, context analysis, knowledge mapping, gap analysis, development of a KM architecture (processes and tools), implementation, deployment, measurement, refinement, and so on. Without following such a framework, just throwing a set of IT tools for KM will most likely not yield expected benefits. A "framework" may sound complex, but it is nothing more than formalized common sense.
There are various levels of capabilities one can introduce in an organization to fill the gaps identified, ranging from very simple (minor process changes and easy technology implementations) to very complex (major process changes and difficult technology implementations). Simple capabilities are often enough to fill significant gaps, they should be introduced first, and more complex capabilities should be introduced gradually.
Some References:
# posted by
JC Reddy : 12/23/2003 12:35:00 PM
