How to Establish Knowledge Management Systems in Business

Knowledge management systems help employees share relevant information.

Knowledge management systems organize data using enhanced context information to understand relationships and find patterns. Typical applications of KM systems include planning, project management, business intelligence, help desk and training. Useful KM systems collect, tag and store data to meet the information needs of various users, including the ability to share knowledge through effective distribution processes.

Instructions

1. Investigate your knowledge management tool options. Knowledge management systems vary widely in capability, initial and maintenance costs.

2. Decide on evaluation criteria for performance and cost. Use this return on investment criteria to assess the utility of the knowledge management system being tested.

3. Start small. Create and test the chosen knowledge management system on a small project or department. Involve key stakeholders on the test team, including someone with a strong technical background in information processing or knowledge management and naïve users.

4. Describe the information needs of management, team members and support staff for the chosen test project, remembering that each staff position needs different information and knowledge to do their jobs.

5. Select a set of representative data and documents from which the team will capture data. Add context information to the basic data based on the information needs of the team members. Typical context information answers the questions: who, what, when and where.

6. Add relationship information for the data and documents. Relationship information may include -- how much, how long, part of, similar to, owned by, causes and is-a. Once a schema of context and relationship information works successfully on an existing data set, create a process to capture and annotate new data and documents.

7. Develop a user interface that allows stakeholders to query and interact with the analyzed documents as well as sharing and disseminating information through the KM system. Collect qualitative and quantitative performance data. Write a report that includes analysis of return on investment, lessons learned and recommendations.

8. Use the report findings and recommendations to expand the KM system to other departments and projects within the business. Provide staff training on creating, enhancing, accessing and sharing knowledge using the KM system.

Tips & Warnings

• Using a certified knowledge management professional may help make the decision between optional tools and context information needs.

• Because knowledge management represents a set of technologies, you will probably not find a single piece of software that does everything your business requires from a knowledge management system.

References

• Federal Computer Week: Knowledge management in the cloud: Catalyst for open government?
• California State University at Los Angeles: Knowledge Management
• University of North Carolina: Introduction to Knowledge Management
• CIO: Knowledge Management Definition and Solutions