KM: Going beyond the hype

Is knowledge really manageable? At first sight, knowledge and management

appear to be uneasy bedfellows. While knowledge is largely cognitive and highly

personal, management involves organizational processes. Knowledge workers often

do not like to be managed in the traditional sense. However, knowledge is

increasingly recognized as a crucial organizational resource.

In the past few years, the term Knowledge Management has taken a new sense

with Indian corporates beginning to undertake knowledge management initiatives.

Why KM?

Organizations have begun to shift their focus away from physical capital

towards human capital recognising the vast amount of information each person

carries. With increasing globalization and cutthroat competition, organisations

are also striving to maintain their competitive advantage. In this scenario, the

knowledge and intellectual property of its employees stand out as critical

assets, which need to be managed properly. This has lead to the enhanced thrust

on extracting the combined expertise, experience and information among

organisational employees.

Says John Roberts, VP, Gartner Group," Beyond 2001, enterprises

struggling to initiate KM will get a boost from increased recognition that

knowledge and intellectual capital are enterprise assets to manage, leverage,

invest in and value".

Issues and challenges

A roadmap of the approach and path to be taken is needed. A key challenge is

fostering a culture of knowledge sharing.

Companies, which are into implementation of KM, are striving to build a

culture that thrives on creating, capturing, sharing and distributing knowledge

within the organisation. Once the core competencies and knowledge assets are

mapped, they could use KM to derive greater value, which could either be an

improvement of processes, innovative designing or improving customer service.

RoI: Is it quantifiable?

As for mapping the RoI of a KM solution, the benefits could be both tangible

and intangible. While intangible benefits could come from sharing of

intellectual assets, tangible benefits could translate into faster time to

market and possibly, greater sales adding to the bottomline.

It has been interesting to note that the market capitalization of many new

economy or knowledge-based companies exceeds that of their old economy

counterparts. KM helps these companies in harnessing ideas and reaping their

benefits

Different metrics and benchmarks could allow a company to determine the RoI

from investing in a KM solution. "The metrics depend upon the business

problem that is being addressed by the solution. Timely access to information

for stakeholders via Intranets would lead to enhancement of productivity"

says V.K.Manikandan, Client-Partner, Cambridge Technology partners.

Driver: CEO or CIO?



The key issue is who initiates a Knowledge Management drive in the

enterprise. The initiative has to ultimately come from the CEO and should

encompass all departments. Kumud Goel, Managing Director, KLG Systel says,"

The CEO has to be the driver of a KM solution and he needs to leverage on both

capital and intangible assets."

While different department heads are involved, the CIO' s role is vital.

IT in KM

IT is the enabler in the KM process. While the KM initiative is management

driven, it uses IT tools to disseminate information. Email, corporate Intranet

and enterprise portals are just ways of sharing knowledge. Technology enabled

Knowledge management solutions are mainly of two types: Content Technologies,

which involve managing explicit information and collaborative technologies which

enable communities and individuals to share information.

Technology Solutions available to CIO's would include:

• Intranets

• Enterprise Information Portals

• Document Management Systems

• Workflow management

• Self service solutions through the web to customers and partners

• Content Management

Companies need to identify their technology requirements by mapping their

information needs so as to get the best possible deliverables. Gartner Research

mentions that while certain technologies may be over hyped and have not been

able to deliver, there are others like text-mining and metadata, which could be

explored.