Knowledge management

The Nineties has seen the emergence of network is the computer' paradigm. The evolution of products built around the Microsoft Digital ...

The Nineties has seen the emergence of network is the computer8217; paradigm. The evolution of products built around the Microsoft Digital Nervous System8217; and other technologies is resulting in the move towards yet another science 8212; knowledge management. Knowledge management is receiving attention because of the competitive pressures that are forcing firms to explore all technologies to make their organisations work smarter. Modern day imperatives of getting it right the first time8217; and achieving six Sigma quality levels leave very little room for experimentation and approximate solutions.

All the knowledge of the organisation will have to be stored and used regularly to ensure accuracy in all transactions and decisions. This is a major pull factor that is moving consultants and technologists to devise better methods of harnessing business intelligence. The push factor of available technologies is enabling knowledge management to be practised as a science rather than an art. Tools like Lotus notes and othergroupware technologies running on the ubiquitous intranets, extranets and the internet itself are enabling the creation and sharing of knowledge repositories.

Building knowledge networks in organisations involves five phases. First, conducting a knowledge management survey within the organisation to identify the critical activities where improvement in performance can have a significant impact. Second, commence the creation of knowledge repositories and set up a team to ensure that the knowledge base developed is validated by available experts. Third, finalise acquisition methods and groupware and workflow tools to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge across the network. Fourth, establish collaborative working and knowledge sharing mechanisms and train all practitioners in the tools, techniques and processes. Fifth, develop and refine a knowledge performance index and measure improvements on an ongoing basis.

In an ambitious project that Aptech Consultants are currently involved in with a Europeaninsurance firm, the need emerged from the problem the company was facing in regularly training new call centre employees and keeping them updated on every customer8217;s expectations and information. Typically, it would take three weeks of formal training and even then the results were not satisfactory.

As a knowledge management response, the company has implemented a full learning management and intranet-based training access system and is now in the process of developing a comprehensive performance support system which tracks both explicit information and tacit knowledge about each customer and provides on-line business intelligence to the call centre response team to satisfy customers more effectively. The goal is to finally integrate the entire knowledge management initiative with the company8217;s enterprise-wide information system.

The real difficulty in implementing knowledge networks is the intellectual effort of an ongoing nature that will be required to ensure that real benefits accrue to theimplementing organisation. The cost itself may be only of an incremental nature, since corporate intranets are now a common feature in many companies and it is only the software that will need to be procured and implemented to get the knowledge network functional. One major challenge is the tendency for many corporate chieftains to disbelieve the notion that it is possible to capture, store, analyse and disseminate knowledge for shared usage. However, the business environment demands it and in the new millennium, effective knowledge management will be the difference between the winners and the also-rans in the corporate world.

The author is Managing Director of Aptech Limited