Organisations are increasingly discovering that building and managing knowledge assets is the key to providing immediate and easy access.
Organisations are increasingly discovering that building and managing knowledge assets, or knowledge management (KM) as it is popularly known, is the key to providing immediate and easy access to information to employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
A KM system aggregates organisational learning with external knowledge from customers and suppliers to help the organisation turn this asset into a sustainable competitive advantage.
Key success factors for KMS: Can a firm convert the knowledge management system (KMS) into a sustainable competitive advantage? Yes, and here’s how:
Top management support
A KM initiative necessarily has to be driven by the top management. A top-down approach works best in raising awareness and emphasising the importance of constant updates to the KMS.
Ownership
A dedicated KM team is required to drive this effort. This team is responsible for ensuring continuous and consistent absorption of research, employee knowledge, learning and new information into the KMS. This team can spot duplication of efforts across departments, if any, and thus eliminate wastage of resources.
Infrastructure
If different departments of a company were to use disparate systems, information gets isolated, resulting in islands of knowledge instead of an organisation-wide business intelligence system. A KMS integrated with the organisation’s IT systems allows effective and efficient utilisation of knowledge assets.
Deployment
This refers to the technology deployed for KMS in the organisation. It has to be flexible to adapt to existing company information systems for greater user acceptance. If it is markedly different from what employees are used to, they may shy from accessing, sharing and contributing to the KMS.
Resources
Managing information can require a significant commitment of resources as the sources of data and information grow dramatically. The expanding use of electronic information necessitates that the KMS keep pace with changing business needs and new technology solutions. Major resources include a strong IT team, finances and top management support.
Industry best practice: Connecticut-based Xerox Corp has implemented a KMS called Eureka that enables the organisation’s 23,000 engineers from around the globe to input product solutions into a knowledge base. This knowledge base holds over 50,000 problem/solution entries. If an engineer encounters a unique situation where a solution does not exist in the knowledge base, he will voluntarily input the solution into the system once the problem is resolved.
To make the interface accessible everywhere, all service engineers are provided with a laptop that is loaded with a Eureka interface, as well as electronic documentation, electronic training and diagnostic tools required for the service engineers to do their jobs.
Conclusion: Knowledge management helps organisations leverage their knowledge assets — product and customer information, employee knowledge and organisation learnings — to their best advantage.
A KMS facilitates easier sharing of knowledge across departments and geographies. As the nerve centre of the firm, it improves efficiency, increases customer satisfaction and ultimately even transforms the way they do business.
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