Steps to launch a knowledge management (KM) program

Knowledge management (KM) is a continuous process involving of capturing the knowledge and then to develop, share and to effectively use the knowledge. Here’s the step that is involved while launching a knowledge management program (Wallace, 2015):

The very first step to launch a knowledge management program would be to identify the goal. It is important to identify the target/goal before starting any program. So, it’s important here as well to first identify what the requirements are and set a clear objective. Problems don’t exist in isolation and nor do solutions. Though very early in the development stage, Apple is working towards making their own smart glasses. They’ve tried to integrate AR such that the glass can support a range of games and applications especially helpful for navigation, checking weather and be updated with the latest events/notifications.

Once the goal is identified, the next step would be to locate the source of the information. Data is everywhere, it’s for us to find it and extract information from the same. Information can be right next to us and we might still fail to identify it, so it’s important to look out for the source of information depending on the required skill sets or objectives to reach the goal. Building on the above example of Apple, they sent out an internal notice to its partners and members with a clear set of requirements of the types of functionalities they’re looking for in the companies that exist. From their wider network, they started getting some lead, which they followed through.

Next is to capture the knowledge. Locating the source is good but if you can’t acquire the knowledge, it’s of no use either. So, it’s equally important to gather the knowledge source and organize them such that they can enhance the productivity of the company (Binney, 2001). Building further into the example of Apple, they identified that to develop the smart glass they envision they would need several key technologies. So, they acquired Luxvue a company which creates super-bright, tiny but high-density displays. Then, it purchased Varvana which specializes in augmented reality headset and eye tracking. And, few more startup in Flyby and Metalio which work on AR itself.

The final step of the process is to organize, share and value knowledge. The knowledge amassed from different sources can be presented in a big picture to enhance organizational intellectual ability. For this, it’s important to organize the obtained knowledge to make the best of it. Also, it’s important to not just limit the skill with oneself but share in the organization to enhance the skill of other staff as otherwise, the skill with die with the person who holds it once he/she quits for the organization (Gold, Malhotra & Segars, 2001). It’s also important to value the knowledge it has to make the most out of it. Blockbuster had everything about the digitalization of the movies but they didn’t value the knowledge they had and acted very slowly to it, ultimately resulting in company’s demise. Adding further to the Apple’s project, the captured companies and their abilities are put together in a collaborative environment where ideas to best embed is shared. A companywide private intranet can be used to communicate and share ideas as such to incorporate all the technologies to develop the product envisioned.

An example of applied technology in this regard would be the Microsoft Services organization, which is the largest division within Microsoft. They server three-quarter of top thousand fortune companies. They incorporated KM as part of their organization program to reduce the time for decision making, faster delivery time, increase performance, and many more. One of the key aspects was retaining the knowledge as people do keep on changing but the best use of technology and proper integration of KM provided them best ability to effectively leverage of innovation and reduce revamp for anyone new joining in the role helping an organization and its client significantly.

References

Binney, D. (2001). The knowledge management spectrum - understanding the KM landscape. Journal Of Knowledge Management , 5 (1), 33-42.

Gold, A., Malhotra, A., & Segars, A. (2001). Knowledge Management: An Organizational Capabilities Perspective. Journal Of Management Information Systems , 18 (1), 185-214.

Wallace, P. (2015). Introduction to information systems (2nd ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

Knowledge is fact, information, skills you acquired through educational experiences and experience, understanding of a subject, awareness of different activity and familiarity of a fast and situation. The main purpose of knowledge management is to ensure that the information which is getting from different data or huge volume of data set then the information delivered to the appropriate place of the right time so that this knowledge helps for business decision making process (Atkinson & Gutheil, 2009). For example, I am doing agro business which had already done my grandfather from long time. For making a proper business plan I should need my grandfather strategy so if he was able to make a clear documentation on his expertise on agriculture is prior knowledge for me and overall this process is called as knowledge management system. Similarly, in simple term what we communicate in accurate information or have a right skill person at the right time to take a current decision. In order to put off fire you need a firefighter because he /she knows exactly what needs to be performed based on the situation calling an engineer or project manager will not help. This is a proper use of knowledge and it is a purpose of knowledge management (Ehrig, 2007).

The main aim of knowledge management is to enable organization to improve the quality of management decision making by ensuring that reliable a securing information and data which is available through the service lifecycle (Erl, 2009). The main objective of knowledge management is to transform knowledge from one generation to another generation or one place to another place. Basically the knowledge management is enabling service provider to be more effective and also enable all staff have clear and common understanding. Knowledge management also provides complete information on the service at given point in time (Fill, 2007). Knowledge management typically displayed within data to information, knowledge and wisdom. The basic knowledge management process is

• Data
• Information
• Knowledge
• Wisdom

Data: Data is set of fact, an embedded system industry we capture data through service management and configuration management tools. By using different SDLC system gives more data on software industry. And the main important things for knowledge management is data always needs to be accurate to get the most appropriate information.

Information: Information usually comes as outcome of data analyzing the data gives a more information. The day to day example, is a financial trend analysis on its balance sheet and income statement. Analysis of the given data gives the specific pattern or trend. Based on this pattern and trend we get the appropriate information.

Knowledge: Knowledge comes from tactical experiences, discussion, Group discussion, review others idea and innovation and innovation and soon. Knowledge is usually content based and it is dynamic. Knowledge makes of the use of available information easily.

Wisdom: when the knowledge we process is being documented shares, communicate it when we get appropriate knowledge from information and the information is getting from high volume data. So based on these documenting the knowledge, sharing, and technology or facility the same to peers and other - leads to wisdom (Singh, 2005).

References
Atkinson, C., & Gutheil, M. (2009). Conceptual modeling: Foundations and applications. Berlin, Germany: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-02463-4.

Ehrig, M. K. (2007). Measuring similarity between semantic business process models. ACM .

Erl, T. (2009). Service-oriented architecture: Con cepts, technology, and design. Upper Saddle River. NJ: Prentice Hall PTR.

Fill, H.-G. (2007). Visualisation for semantic information systems. Wiesbaden, Germany: Gabler doi:10.1007/978-3-8349-9514-8.

Singh, M. P. (2005). Semantics, processes, agents. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Knowledge Management is the process of gathering, managing and sharing employees’ knowledge capital. It is a discipline that promotes collaborative and integrated approach to creation, capture and use of enterprise’s knowledge assets (Bhojaraju, 2005). It is the set of strategies and practices used by an organization for systematic management of intellectual capital that helps to gain insight and understanding from its own experience (Wallace, 2015).

The knowledge management program is as systematic approach consisting of following steps:

1. Identify the Goal: The first step in knowledge management program is to identify the goal/objective of the system to be implemented. It is very important to identify clear goal as all the actions will be based on this initially set goal. The goal of the organization can be gathering the knowledge of employees, develop a new product, documenting the process, structuring task execution methods or centralizing organizational policies. The goal is identified by accessing and understanding the specific needs of the organization through research.

2. Locate the Sources: After identification of goal, we need to locate the sources of knowledge that could be internal (within the organization) or external (outside the organization). The explicit knowledge can be easily located as they are available in scattered form over company database, websites, social media or other tools. However locating tacit knowledge is difficult as the employees themselves may be unaware about the knowledge they possess. For this, the company may use expert location systems and social network analysis.

3. Capture the Knowledge: Once the sources of knowledge are identified, it must be acquired to take benefit from the intellectual capital. Electronic database and collaborative technologies can be used to gather the knowledge, store them systematically and make them productive for the organization.

4. Organize, Share and Value Knowledge: If the captured knowledge is not properly organized, it will not benefit the organization. All the knowledge captured may not be equally important so it should be organized based on its value for the organization and shared to concerned people. Sharing the knowledge will help the employees in accessing right information conveniently and use it for the organizational benefit that will make it valuable.

For example: The goal of a company is to develop new product. After the identification of goal, it will look for the sources of knowledge. The competitors, target market segments, products with similar benefits can help the company to get knowledge about the cost, demand and profitability of the product to be produced. From this, the company will have idea about what the target segment, potential market, production cost, estimated demand and profit associated with the proposed product. The company them organizes the captured knowledge in database to collect objective data that will help the company in deciding what are the essential attributes the product must to position itself in the market. The knowledge is then communicated to all the staffs who will be involved in the production process so that the product will come out as expected and add value to the firm.

References
Bhojaraju, G. (2005). Knowledge Management: Why do we Need for Corporate? Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 10 (2), 37-50.

Wallace, P. (2015). Introduction to Information Systems (Second ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

O’Brien & Marakas (2006), in their book Introduction to information systems, knowledge management (KM) refers to a set of strategies and practices organizations use to become more systematic about managing intellectual capital. This would help organizations to investigate all the roles these intangible assets play, the contribution of the team members in order to gain competitive advantage and productivity, and to capture the efforts and share the knowledge in gap. The objective of KMS is to support creation, transfer, and application of knowledge in organizations (Alavi & Leidner, 2001).

There are four steps in a knowledge management project. And, they are explained below:

1. Identify the goal
This is the first step where we identify precise goal of the project. It can best be determined by studying the organization’s specific needs. Let’s suppose, Jobs Dynamics, recruitment agency, aims its goal to provide quality recruitment service sending the candidates score before company interview.

2. Locate the sources
It’s important to look out for the source of information depending on the required skill sets or objectives to reach the goal. Here, JD can overview its past record of hiring the candidates once they are scored before their interview and next, sending without the scoring.

3. Capture the knowledge
There are 2 types of knowledge that can be captured; explicit and tacit. Explicit knowledge is objective and technical in nature which are already exist in databases, books, reports etc. whereas, tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge that is ingrained in a person from experiences, insights, intuitions etc. Here, Jobs Dynamics can capture the arguments based on their employee and their past experiences. At the same, time the arguments can also tally with the facts and figures of database.

4. Organize, share, and value knowledge
Finally, the knowledge shared and organized to retain value from it. The methods can be capture through the use of technology. The technology could be options of customer relationship management (CRM), websites and applications, and database management system (DBMS). Documenting and centralizing the policies and procedures to the system will result on value the knowledge. Here, Jobs Dynamics can choose the best options of scoring the candidates before day interview to the clients that will value the clients.

References

Alavi, M., & Leidner, D. E. (2001). Knowledge management and knowledge management systems: Conceptual foundations and research issues. MIS quarterly , 107-136.

O’Brien, J. A., & Marakas, G. M. (2006). Management information systems (Vol. 6). McGraw-Hill Irwin.

There are four steps in launching a knowledge management program. They have been explained below.

Identify the goal

The first step to knowledge management (KM) program is to identify the goal. It is critical to have clarity on the objective of the KM before initiating it as this will directly influence the next steps. (Wallace, 2015) For example if I am to create a network for various partner extended throughout 12 district of Nepal I would require timely dissemination and collection of information from all of them. Financial reports collection and verification is a lengthy process. The first step would be to get correct reports inside the deadline. This would be my goal.

Locate the source

Sources can contain a lot of data scattered over various areas of workplace and with related stakeholders. It is the next step in KM, to understand where these sources are bring a sense of singularity in classifying them into meaningful information. For example to collect report from partners we need to have clarity on the reporting format. This can then be oriented to the partners to provide required information in the pre-mentioned format so there is consistency in information and unnecessary information does not clog the KM.

Capture the experts

Data over time accumulates into huge bundles of information that needs to have pre planning for capture. To capture knowledge experts may be needed or various types of technologies can be utilized. But what is important to note here is that introducing new technology to capture knowledge should be easy to use and user friendly. Also to capture knowledge it is important to understand the experts in the field. Those that have access to these type of information should be noted as they will be the go to person in case of queries. Bu to locate these people search options should be easy and effective. Technology and leadership play important role in capture of knowledge but these are secondary to the organizational culture. Expectancy pressure from the leader and slacking at work behavior of the staff will result in negative capture of knowledge. Therefore knowledge capture has more to do with softer factors than hard. (Kumar, 2016)

Organizing and Sharing Strategies

After the capture of knowledge it is necessary to organize the information and share strategies to meet the goal that you have set in the beginning. These strategies should be in synergy with the preset goal and objective. Now, it is critical to understand that one cannot do everything alone but need to work in a team as a single unit. To work in teams, these knowledge and strategies should be shared and made clear to everyone in the organization. For example to understand the fund sent to partners, expenditure done is which headings and balance remaining to be utilized can be tracked from the generated information in the computer itself rather than visiting all the districts.

References

Kumar, M. (2016, July). Delhi Business Review; Rohini. RELATIVE CONTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGY TOWARDS KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE , pp. 57-73.

Wallace, P. (2015). Information System in Action. In P. Wallace, Introduction to Information System (pp. 4-9). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.