The Inside Out of knowledge

It is a well-known fact that a decision or opinion maker can take the best

decision only if he or she is well informed. But unfortunately, knowing

something doesn't always translate into doing it. Therefore, there's a need

to direct organizational knowledge with the right tools and methods. Time is

critical for companies to gain and retain a competitive advantage-best

achieved by turning "knowledge-intensive". 

One such example is that of Netscape Corporation, eventually acquired by

America Online, whose success in the capital market was highly dependent on

managing knowledge assets. Most companies like Sun and Oracle have had high

market capitalization because of the same reason though they have not been able

to reach the top of Fortune 500 companies in terms of sales, profits and assets.

So there is no denying that knowledge is becoming the most critical asset for

firms. But in India, as organizational knowledge and assets do not yet form an

integral part of an organization they are often not disclosed to stockholders,

and therefore not a factor in determining market capital. But the situation will

soon undergo a change.

The most enduring of tasks for KM managers is therefore capturing knowledge,

translating and transferring it across the entire organization. No two firms can

take a similar approach to managing knowledge- if a KM approach works for one

firm, it wouldn't necessarily work for another. That's because knowledge is

subjective in nature and different firms have varied ways of defining knowledge.

Even methods of approaching KM differ. For a software company, efficiency can be

improved if 'transferring techniques' are designed in a manner that software

codes can easily shared and re-used.

Managing knowledge is often made analogous to managing water. It cannot be

managed directly, but one can definitely store, refine, re-route and filter it.

Very commonly, a KM project begins by focussing on the technology rather than

laying emphasis on people and processes (of capturing and disseminating

information). In order to gain a competitive advantage, therefore, organizations

must look upon themselves as "knowledge storehouses" and treat

knowledge as a mere component, and at technology as the enabler.

The Technology Behind KM

KM technology environments constitute of Intranets, groupware technologies and packaged solutions

KM suites Several KM suites are available in the market and provide solutions for creating centralized repositories for storing and sharing data (or knowledge). These suites also provide solutions and tools for searching, retrieving, and managing data. Some packaged KM suites from large vendors are: l IBM Lotus Notes/Domino l Novell Groupwise l Hummingbird

Enterprise portal suites l Enterprise portal suites include both portals and suites for development and customization of KM suites. l IBM Information Portal l Hummingbird Information Portal l MySAPworkplace.com l Jasmine ii Portal (Computer Associates) l Sybase Enterprise Portal Solution l Microsoft Sharepoint Portal

Knowledge transfer tools Knowledge transfer tools allow companies to transfer corporate knowledge into a databank or to an employee or group of employees: l Applied Systems Intelligence l AskMe Enterprise

General support tools Collaborative technologies, data mining and business intelligence tools, web technologies for sharing knowledge and e-learning technologies

Re-use knowledge components



There's one characteristic that commonly determines the need for KM-the

re-use of bundles of information or knowledge components. A software development

company, consulting firm, or an oil company needs to reuse the same information

repeatedly in different situations. The simplest and earliest example is of a

software development company that wanted to use KM after it considered a shift

from old programming languages to object-oriented programming (OOP). OOP allows

one to create a bundle of codes that can be re-used across projects. So the

company wanted KM to help them share and re-use codes among all the members of

various teams. This helped them avoid replication of existing codes within the

same organization that saved time, zeroed in on repetitive jobs, and lessened

costs. Another example is of a consulting firm that does a lot of work in terms

of content management, creating new knowledge daily, clubbing containers, and

managing the Intranet. It needed KM to help them re-use and create new

knowledge, as the same knowledge was often needed elsewhere but in different

circumstances.

Reducing the learning curve



For the above mentioned software firm, learning time was reduced by one

third. All teams leveraged on the learning of other teams rather than learning

on their own. Strong teams began to help weaker teams. As a result of this some

teams gained expertise on individual topics creating a knowledge balance. Errors

in software development were significantly reduced and the project was completed

in half the time.

"People in organizations must adopt the culture or habit of gaining

knowledge by 'learning from others' rather than 'learning by doing'.

This significantly reduces the learning curve. As long as knowledge is scarce,

the value of the knowledge is high," claims Edward Swanstrom, Director,

eKnowledge Center. Edward developed an object-oriented change and learning

method for KM that was rated as the most advanced KM method by the Gartner Group

in 1997.

Suppose your company buys a new photocopier with advanced and useful new

features. As part of KM the only person who knows how to operate it, jots down

the operational instructions on a sheet of paper and glues it to be seen by

everyone who come to use it. Likewise, someone who knows to use it (rather than

training) can teach operational functions



like the use of Microsoft Excel and working on DOS operating system. KM managers
however must monitor such processes and integrate these with their KM platform.

Managing knowledge as a business strategy



The underlying purpose of managing knowledge is to turn the existing

knowledge (tacit and explicit) into useful information. But most organizations

haven't been able to manage knowledge effectively because of the lack in

understanding problems, opportunities, solutions, and strategies. So KM in any

organizations can be considered from three perspectives. Different companies

will employ different methods and for different purposes.

l The business

perspective will focus on why and to what extent one must invest, and exploit

knowledge. All organizational strategies, products and services and alliances

should be centered on knowledge that is available in documents, portals, and

other sources made available.

l The management

must focus on capturing, organizing, mainstreaming and monitoring

knowledge-related practices.

l The operational

perspective must focus on applying the expertise to conduct explicit

knowledge-related work and tasks.

Implementing KM



Step One: Document knowledge components: All possible sources of knowledge

components are identified, leading one to structure a taxonomy of knowledge

types. This also helps to reduce the impact on a company if a person retires or

leaves the organization. Infact this procedure would help retain information

within the organization.

Step Two: Capturing tacit and explicit information and categorizing:

Once the probable sources of information are identified, solutions needed for

capturing them would fall into place. However one of the issues facing KM

managers is transforming tacit information to explicit. This also can be sorted

out by identifying and anticipating probable sources of tacit information. For

an enterprise, the knowledge base could comprise facts, rules, models, and

concepts that define the day-to-day decisions made at every level in an

organization. However not all the available data is categorized as

knowledge-based assets, and so it involves a lot of analysis.

Step Three: Transferring knowledge components: There are several ways of

transferring information in an organization. Tools or technologies act as

enablers to transferring components. Verbal communications tools can also be

deployed and monitored.

Step Four: Monitoring changes: It is essential that the changes made after

implementing KM are continuously monitored. There are tools that will help the

monitoring process while it would be in the capacity of a KM manager, if he or

she would like to add new features or fill in any loop holes in the process.

Transferring knowledge components



There are two ways in which knowledge components are transferred within an

organization. An effective transfer of information will be a hybrid between the

two transfer methods. The hard and the soft method of transferring knowledge

components across an organization can be explained as:

Hard method: Computer systems



Hard knowledge components are taken from one group and used by another group

like in the case of re-usable codes in the above-mentioned example. Most

information or knowledge components can even be used to incorporate into

day-to-day functional procedures. For example, firms can inform employees by

telling them who knows what. In this case knowledge is transferred via

information systems using groupware, Intranet etc.

Soft method: People



Soft knowledge components, on the other hand, are less quantifiable and most

often tacit. In an organization, it can even be a seminar that one had attended,

which could lead to an idea by another who hasn't attended. Such information

can be tracked by monitoring every employee's action. Generally, transfer of

information in this case happens face-to-face, or informally chatting over

lunch.

Such information so obtained from the above two methods form repositories for

knowledge within an organization, which must be documented. The information can

be typically categorized as factual or procedural knowledge (like handbooks),

best practices, formal and informal discussions, corporate yellow pages and

directories. They are documented using collaborative systems, and retrieved

using retrieval and search tools.

Investments



It needs to be clarified that one need not make huge investments in IT

infrastructure to adopt KM. The existing infrastructure, with some minor

modifications, can be very well adapted to suit the need. This point is also

illustrated in the case study (Zensar Technologies'). Some investments may

have to be made on the software side but which depends exclusively on the kind

of need and knowledge framework of the organization. Also since methods are

different, different firms would require KM for different purposes. So for one

company it might be to retrieve the chunk of information from older workers and

passing them on to younger workers, while for another it would be the need to

significantly reduce the time to market. KM practices are quantifiable and the

RoI whatever amount is always justifiable.

New culture



Despite the best technology used, KM will fail if it is not supported by a

corporate culture that supports knowledge sharing. A non-supportive culture

exists everywhere in the world. Once knowledge is recognized, captured and

disseminated, the application of knowledge to form an idea or create new

knowledge is brought about by sharing knowledge. For which, the adoptive culture

or mindset must be changed. In most firms the senior management is not very open

to KM, which is common in traditional and governmental firms. So an

organizational culture that promotes knowledge re-use and knowledge sharing must

be created first.

"But I have found that people do want to share their knowledge,

specially when they finish an assignment and move on to other, they like to

share their learnings. This is the time when they are encouraged to contribute

to our KM platform on best practices, methodologies, tools, domain expertise and

technology and architectural solutions," says Utpala Ghosh, project manager

(Kzen), Zensar Technologies.

Like other goods knowledge also faces scarcity in the lack of proper methods

of transferring them to those that need them at the right place and time. Firms

must not overlook the link between KM and strategic planning and must start

making KM an integral part of their business strategy.