Knowledge Management
That's a very wide subject, it is hard not to use some imagination with the touch of art, especially if you are an artist. But first let us take a proper definition of knowledge management. Some of us would say it is a person, who is sponsoring all young and wise people from all over the wide world, and taking their talent to make our planet a better place for living. Well, they are not so wrong because Knowledge Management (KM) is the process of capturing, developing, sharing and using organizational knowledge. It refers to a multi-disciplinary approach to achieve organizational objectives, by making the best use of knowledge. Many large companies, public institutions, and non-profit organisations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their business strategy, information technology or human resource management departments. Several consulting companies provide advice regarding KM to these organisations. Knowledge management efforts have a long history, including on-the-job discussions, formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training, and mentoring programs. KM emerged as a scientific discipline in the earlier 1990s. It was initially supported solely by practitioners, when Skandia hired Leif Edvinsson of Sweden as the world's first Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). A broad range of thoughts on the KM discipline exists. The approaches vary by author and school. As the discipline matures, academic debates have increased regarding both the theory and practice of KM, to include the following perspectives:
• TECHNO-CENTRIC – with a focus on technology, ideally those who enhance knowledge Management and creation.
• ORGANISATIONAL – with a focus on how an organisation can be designed to facilitate knowledge processes best.
• ECOLOGICAL – with the focus of ineraction of people, identity, knowledge, and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system akin to a natural ecosystem.
Knowledge management technology can be divided into the following general categories:
• Groupware – Groupware refers to technologies that facilitate collaboration and sharing of organizational information. One of the earliest very successful products in this category was notes, provided tools for threaded disccusions, sharing of documents organization wide uniform email, etc.
• Workflow – Workflow tools allow the representation of processes associated with the creation, use, and maintenance of organizational knowledge. For example the process to create and utilize forms and documents within an organization. For example, a workflow system can do things such as send notifications to appropriate supervisors when a new document has been produced and is waiting their approval.
• Content/Document Management systems – Content/Document Management systems are systems designed to automate the process of creating web content and/or documents within an organization. The various roles required such as editors, graphic designers, writers, and producers can be explicitly modeled along with the various tasks in the process and validation criteria for moving from one step to another. All this information can be used to automate and control the process. Commercial vendors of these tools started to start either as tools to primarily support documents (e.g. Documentum) or as tools designed to support web content (e.g. Interwoven) but as the Internet grew, these functions merged and most vendors now perform both functions, management of web content and of documents. As Internet standards became adopted within most organization Intranets and Extranets, the distinction between the two essentially fadded.
• Enterprise Portals – Enterprise Portals are web sites that aggregate information across the entire organization or for groups within the organization such as project teams
• eLearning – eLearning technology enables organizations to create customized training and education software. This can include lesson plans, monitoring progress against learning goals, online classes, etc. eLearning technology enables organizations to significantly reduce the cost of training and educating their members. As with most KM technology in the business world, this was most useful for companies that employ knowledge workers; highly trained staff with areas of deep expertise such as the staff of a consulting firm. Such firms spend a significant amount on the continuing education of their employees and even have their own internal full-time schools and internal education staff.
• Scheduling and planning – Scheduling and planning tools automate the creation and maintenance of an organization's schedule: scheduling meetings, notifying people of a meeting, etc. An example of a well known scheduling tool is Microsoft Outlook. The planning aspect can integrate with project management tools such as Microsoft Project. Some of the earliest successful uses of KM technology in the business world were the development of the follwing types of tools: online versions of corporate "yellow pages" with listing of contact info, relevant knowledge, and work history. Telepresence technology enables individuals to have virtual meetings rather than having to be in the same place. Videoconferencing is the most obvious example.
Telesprence categories are neither rigidly defined nor exhaustive. Workflow for example is a significant aspect of a content or document management system and most content and document management systems have tools for developing enterprise portal. One of the most important trends in KM technology was the adoption of Internet standards. Original KM technology products such as Lotus Notes defined their own proprietary formats for email, documents, forms, etc. The explosive growth of the Internet drove most vendors to abandon proprietary formats and adopt Internet formats such as HTML, HTTP, and XML. In addition, open source and freeware tools for the creation of blogs and wikis now enable capabilities that used to require expensive commercial tools to be available for little or no cost.
Let us take a turn and see other, less confusing definitions of knowledge Management. Knowledge Management is the art of learning from known solutions. Many incidents occur frequently across the organization and solutions resolving the issue are known. By storing known solutions to incidents and problems and by making them easily accessible to service desk personnel and employees, an organization can improve efficiency significantly and speed up resolutions. The Knowledge Management application is closely linked to incident, problem, and change management in the service desk solution of „Efecte Edge“. Knowledge base records are available always to service desk personnel and can be made available to employees for self-service. And now on, the main question is 'Why the knowledge Management is important'. There are three key reasons why. For example, why is it important for a company – three key reasons why actively managing knowledge is important to a company’s success are:
1.) Facilitates decision-making capabilities
2.) Builds learning organizations by making learning routine
3.) Stimulates cultural change and innovation.
„Instead of trying to make a better robot, try to make a better man.” Shimon Peres