IT and knowledge management
In the early days of knowledge management, there was a strong focus on information technology (IT). As knowledge management became the latest buzzword, technology vendors were quick to spot an opportunity to sell ‘knowledge management solutions’ and many of the companies that led the way in knowledge management were quick to buy – to their cost. Having made significant investments in the latest systems, they then found that people simply did not use them and so the systems ended up being confined to what became known as ‘the knowledge management graveyard’. These companies learned the hard way that knowledge management is about people, processes and technology – in that order of priority.
That being said, technology is an important enabler of many, if not most, knowledge management initiatives. Technology can support and enable knowledge management in two main ways:
- It can provide the means for people to organise, store and access explicit knowledge and information, such as in electronic libraries or best practices databases.
- It can help to connect people with people so that they can share tacit knowledge, such as through white pages, groupware or video conferencing.
Much of the early focus on technology was driven by an over-focus on explicit knowledge – on ‘getting things down’ and into high-level databases. However, given the current view that up to 80% of an organisation’s knowledge is always going to be in people's heads, there is a growing interest in technologies that support communication and collaboration between people.
Technology adds value when it reduces the cost, time and effort needed for people to share knowledge and information. However if it is not closely aligned with organisational needs and with people’s ways of working, or if it results in information overload and so people can no longer make sense of it all, then even with the best technology in the world, you will end up right back at square one: people still cannot easily find the knowledge an information they need. The importance of this cannot be overemphasised.
The reality is that technology can only fulfil some of our needs. And how well it fulfils them depends critically on managing the knowledge behind them - content management, assigning knowledge roles etc. There are many tools that can help enable individuals and organisations to be more effective at accessing and sharing their knowledge. How well we exploit these opportunities depends more on good knowledge management than on finding the ‘best’ piece of technology. In other words, technology by itself does not create shared knowledge: it needs to be supported by, and integrated with, relevant people and processes. Tom Davenport, a prominent author on knowledge management, is often quoted as offering the following rule of thumb: your investment in technology in terms of both cost and effort should stay under one third of the total knowledge management effort – otherwise you are going wrong somewhere.
So, what kinds of technology are we talking about? The following is a brief and simply overview, aimed at giving the non-technical manager an overall idea of some of the knowledge-enabling technologies currently available.
Groupware
Groupware is a term for software specifically designed for groups of people, not just individuals. As the name suggests, groupware allows groups of people to share information and to coordinate their activities over a computer network. Examples of popular proprietary groupware packages are Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Exchange. Groupware packages are diverse in the functions they offer. Most include a shared database where team members can work on common documents and hold electronic discussions. Some include group schedulers, calendars and/or e-mail. Others focus on real-time meeting support. Combined, these pieces allow team members to work on a single document, discuss ideas online, maintain records, and prioritise and schedule teamwork and meetings. A true groupware package should include several of these functions, not just one.
In recent years, intranets have emerged as cheaper and more open alternatives to proprietary groupware products so many companies are giving up proprietary groupware in favour of intranets.
Intranets
An intranet is simply a private Internet. Internet-type services are installed onto an organisation’s internal computer network which enables it to then provide web pages and related services such as e-mail, discussion boards, access to shared documents and databases, and collaboration tools such as shared calendars and project management tools. An intranet can convey information in many forms, not just web pages but documents, tables, spreadsheets and images; it can host applications and databases. Above all, it provides connectivity that allows people to collaborate, wherever they are located.
Intranets can support knowledge sharing in a variety of ways, including:
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Ease of access and use: the use of World Wide Web browsers provides a low cost and user-friendly interface to information and applications.
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Universal access to information: information can be kept on any 'server' on the network, and can be accessed from anywhere within the intranet.
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Connecting people with people: intranets can simplify interaction between people in different locations through applications such as email and discussion boards.
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Informal networks: publishing information and making contact can be quick and informal on an intranet.
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Providing a ‘one stop knowledge shop’: an intranet can provide a single access point for internal information and knowledge, as well as providing ‘gateways’ to the Internet for access to external information resources.
Connecting people with people: collaborative tools
Collaborative tools are simply electronic tools that support communication and collaboration - people working together.
Essentially they take the form of networked computer software that lets different people coordinate their work activities.
There are a number of key considerations and characteristics to bear in mind when looking at collaborative tools. These include:
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Time: Is the collaboration taking place simultaneously (e.g. videoconferencing) or at different times (e.g. email)?
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Place: Is the collaboration taking place in the same location or at different locations?
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Information richness: How much and what types of information can be conveyed? For example videoconferencing conveys body language and tone of voice, whereas e-mail focuses almost exclusively on the written word and given this lack of context, can be prone to misinterpretation.
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Social presence: How well can the tool help people to connect with each other and form relationships? For example an email has low social presence while a face-to-face meeting has a high social presence.
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Technology: What technology is needed? How comfortable are people with technology? How easy to use is the tool? How much training will people need?
In short, no one tool is ideal for all situations.
Collaborative tools can provide a number of benefits, such as:
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allowing people to work together in teams, over a network, irrespective of location or time
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enabling the sharing of tacit knowledge between a wide range of people
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the ability to access the knowledge of experts wherever they are located
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savings on meeting costs - travel and subsistence, meeting rooms, etc.
The various tools can be provided as part of a groupware package, over an intranet, or in some cases as standalone tools. Common collaborative tools include the following:
Email
A simple electronic version of written mail, and undoubtedly the most widely used collaborative tool. Messages are sent via an electronic network and attachments can be added such a copies of documents and presentations. Email can be used between individuals, or to broadcast messages to a wider audience.
Discussion boards
Discussion boards (also known as message boards, bulletin boards or chat rooms) give people the ability to post and reply to messages in a common area. Sometimes a leader or facilitator will moderate these boards. Their purpose is to provide an ‘informal meeting place’ a bit like a café. People can ask for advice and share information around topics of interest. Discussion boards are often used to support communication within communities of practice.
Videoconferencing
Videoconferences can either be done using specialized video facilities, or from people’s desktops using computer software. Videoconferencing works well for situations that require a degree of trust and relationship building, for discussing issues and exploring ideas, and in situations where you don’t need a detailed permanent record to be generated automatically. Consideration needs to be given to the quality of the video link, as many of the benefits can be lost through poor quality. Also, be aware that not everyone likes, or feels comfortable with, videoconferencing. An alternative is audio (telephone) conferencing, which tends to work best when participants already know each other.
Project support tools
There are a number of tools that enable work groups and project teams to share documents and exchange messages across different locations in ‘real time’. For example, when a group is working on a shared document, there needs to be a tool to make the document centrally available, allow people to make changes, synchronise the changes made, and ensure that the most up-to-date version is clearly available. Similarly, remote project teams can take advantage of ‘electronic whiteboards’ to brainstorm together, generate lists of options, draw or map concepts visually to aid understanding, display and analyse data together etc.
Workflow tools
Workflow tools are developed to model typical processes that take place in organisations. They enable people to work together on shared tasks, with some of the core process knowledge embedded in the design of the workflow software application. An example would be a purchasing or transaction process, starting with the creation of an order and ending with the supply of goods. Where several people and a sequence of documents and processes are involved, automation can help speed up the process and also provide information about what stage the process is at, at any given time.
E-learning tools
E-learning is a rapidly growing field and uses information technology to deliver learning and training to people electronically at their desktop. There is a wide variety of tools and technologies available to support e-learning, many of which include facilities for learners in different locations to work together on assignments, case studies and projects.
Virtual working tools
At the highly sophisticated end of the spectrum, technologies are emerging that allow the knowledge and expertise of a person in one location to be directly applied in another location in real time. Such technologies allow knowledge to be not only shared, but applied, remotely. For example, in 2001 a pioneering surgical procedure was tested in which two surgeons in New York operated on a patient in France, using joysticks and voice commands to direct three robotic arms in the operating room. This was the first instance of remote surgery on a human. Similar technologies have already been used quite extensively in fields such as engineering.
Connecting people with information: managing content
Whether you use an intranet or some other form of groupware to network and share documents, applications and collaborative tools across your organisation, you will need processes in place to ensure that users can easily and quickly find the information they need. You need to consider content management. There are three critical aspects of managing content:
Collecting the content
Including issues such as: where will the content come from; who will collate it; how will they find and evaluate sources to ensure that quality and reliability of content; how will they ensure it meets users’ needs both now and in the future, as needs change; how will they weed out out-of-date content; how will you ensure that your content complies with issues such as copyright, legal liability, data protection, and information risk and security?
Organising the content
How will the content be organised so that people can easily find what they need, when they need it? How will content be classified and indexed, and what terms and language will you use? Will you use taxonomies? A thesaurus?
Retrieving and using the content
How will people find and access the information they need? What combination of navigation tools will you offer them - menus, maps, search engines? What balance will you strike between ‘pushing’ information to users (e.g. through alerting services) or waiting for users to ‘pull’ information out for themselves (e.g. using search engines)?
Be aware that while there are a number of content management systems and software packages available, an important element is people to manage the content; this function is often best performed by people with a background in librarianship and information management. Some examples of tools and processes used in content management are:
Taxonomies
A taxonomy is a hierarchical structure for organising a body of knowledge; it gives a framework for understanding and classifying that knowledge – how to group it and how the various groups relate to each other. In content management, the purpose of taxonomy is to organise information so that users can more easily navigate their way through it. Taxonomies can be generated either manually or automatically using a software programme.
Thesauri
A thesaurus is a list of the various terms and language that are used to describe a body of knowledge, and which specifies the relationship between the terms: antonyms and synonyms, broader terms and narrower terms, etc. In content management, the aim of a thesaurus is to enable content to be indexed in a variety of ways so that different users who tend to use different terms can still find it.
Search engines
A search engine is a piece of software that carries out searches for information across multiple sources. Search engines vary widely in their level of sophistication. Some simply allow users to search for documents that contain a specific word or phrase, which can leave users having to sift through great deal of irrelevant information. More advanced search engines allow users to construct more specific searches, enabling them to narrow their search and reduce the amount of irrelevant material retrieved.
Portals
A portal is a website or a web page that provides your main point of entry into an intranet or the Internet, and which gathers and integrates information from various sources into a single location. Portals are essentially ‘personalised gateways’ - a kind of one-stop-shop for information that is personalised, either to an organisation’s needs or to individual people’s needs.
The purpose is to avoid information overload by providing at each person’s desktop access to the specific information and tools they need to do their job, while filtering out those they don’t need. Think about your computer desktop for example: you will probably have arranged your applications and files in a way that suits you, making the ones that you use most the easiest to find. A portal does the same thing, except through an intranet or the Internet. On the Internet, for example, you may have set up a personalised portal on AOL, Yahoo or Freeserve.
Portals are relatively new in organisations, largely because an effective portal is technically difficult to create, and so the technology is still evolving.
Knowledge creation technologies
As well as technologies designed to enable the sharing of knowledge, there is also an increasing number of tools aimed at supporting the creation of knowledge - helping to generate information and knowledge from data. A few examples are briefly mentioned here for general interest only:
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Data mining – tools that analyse data in very large databases and look for trends and patterns that can be used to improve organisational processes.
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Information visualization - computer-supported interactive visual representations of abstract data to help improve understanding.
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Decision trees - provide a structure in which alternative decisions and the implications of taking those decisions can be displayed and evaluated.
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Root cause analysis - a method or series of actions taken to find out why a particular failure or problem exists, and correcting those causes.
More information
Four articles by David Skyrme Associates available online:
Intranets: sharing organizational knowledge
Insights, No. 25
Getting to grips with groupware
Insights, No. 7
Is content king?
I3 Update No. 59
Portals: panacea or pig?
I3 Update No. 44
