Knowledge Management Tools in Action

Knowledge Management can be defined as a systematic discipline and set of approaches to enable information and knowledge to grow, flow, and create value in an organization. This involves people, information, workflows, enabling tools, best practices, alliances, and communities of practice.

The 21st century business landscape is marked by increasing economic and political turbulence, a faster pace of innovation, an inter-networked organizational structure, a focus on intellectual capital, and an increasing employee churn rate. Within this context, knowledge managementis being interpreted as a critical discipline for risk management, increasing productivity, knowledge retention, and more efficient innovation.

Approximately 3.2% of corporate knowledge is incorrect or becomes obsolete every year. An estimated 4.5% of knowledge is lost or hidden due to employee turnover, information mis-management, and knowledge hoarding.

While some of these are cultural problems, others can be resolved by properly aligning content management systems, information policies, and knowledge work. The following key sets of knowledge management tools, as described in action in organizations around the world: content management, taxonomies, groupware, online communities of practice, portals, social network analysis, e-learning, storytelling, wireless platforms, innovation management tools, and inter-organizational knowledge-sharing platforms.

A growing number of companies today have instituted knowledge management systems for best practices, lessons learned, product development knowledge, customer knowledge, human resource management knowledge, and methods-based knowledge. Content teams, meta-data, knowledge maps, and a workflow contextualization can ensure effective reuse of content. Content-centric knowledge management approaches like codification focus on efficiency and effectiveness of operationally focused value chains, while collaborative strategies focus on reinvention and advancement in innovation-focused value chains.

Advanced content management systems include features for seamless exploration, authoring templates, maintaining integrity of Web pages and links, periodical review, archiving, meta-data, version control, rule-setting, indexing, audits, authorized access, administration alerts, and flexible repurposing for multiple platforms and formats.

To begin with, an organization must conduct an enterprise knowledge audit to determine internal and external knowledge leverage points. Internal and external forces come into play here, ranging from customer knowledge to business intelligence via news media, which helps organizational knowledge management initiatives via workflow design and newsfeeds. Accenture implemented a Lotus-Notes-based knowledge management system in 1992. In its early years, it was beset with problems like information overflow, duplication, and redundancies.

Today, the Knowledge Xchange system has a standardized architecture and design and is accessed by 70,000 professionals to share information on project methodologies, sales cycles, current engagements, and other client learnings. Over 3,600 databases exist, and 250 knowledge managers are responsible for reviewing the content and selecting best practices. These are synthesized into special Web sections, and expert directories and external references are provided as well.