Knowledge Management Resource Center
Welcome to the Knowledge Management Resource Center. Here, you'll find a wealth of useful information on knowledge management, and links to many resources that provide more detailed information. Read on or follow the links below to learn more.
Contents
Introduction: Why Knowledge Management Matters
In today’s knowledge economy, a company's ability to manage and leverage information represents one of the core means for gaining competitive differentiation. Success today is predicated on a company’s ability to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time, and by its ability to leverage information to improve services, sales, and productivity.
An organization’s knowledge management capabilities are front and center in almost every customer interaction, and have a direct impact on how customers experience and regard the organization. Rewarding Web self-service experiences often depend upon a customer’s ability to find and retrieve information from the knowledge base. Agent productivity in the contact center, too, is largely a function of the company’s knowledge base and its effectiveness in helping agents resolve customer problems. An organization’s knowledge management system delivers a vital feedback loop with customers and is instrumental in establishing the customer service metrics that assess how well the company is meeting customer needs.
To foster this collaboration, organizations need enhanced ways of producing, authoring, capturing, disseminating, and assessing knowledge. In this new environment, knowledge management has gained increasingly strategic importance. That's why knowledge management represents a multi-billion dollar market today.
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Knowledge Management Defined
Knowledge is the combination of experience and information, which together can be used to formulate understanding and a decision. While the capture and distribution of knowledge within an enterprise has traditionally been a strictly controlled process, the new information-driven economy calls for more flexibility and greater collaboration, both within an organization and with customers and partners.
Within today's enterprises, the discipline of knowledge management has become a formalized process for facilitating the transfer of knowledge between individuals. In this context, "knowledge" refers to tacit knowledge, the information that one employee may know, but that isn't necessarily formally documented or shared. The goal of knowledge management is to capture, share, and maintain this less formal, but critically important, information. The challenge with knowledge management is that historically, people aren't willing to stop and document the knowledge they have every time they send an email or answer a question.
Successful knowledge management in enterprises is more than a project, worklfow, or technology. It requires a true ecosystem, one comprised of a range of elements that must operate in concert:
- People. For those companies embarking on a knowledge management initiative, a fundamental culture change is required. Knowledge can no longer be viewed as power, something that must be held close, rather than shared. Organizations need to build a culture of collaboration, where all stakeholders understand the part they play in sharing knowledge, where its easy to contribute to the knowledge base, and where those contributions are encouraged and rewarded.
- Process. Disciplined workflows for creating knowledge, and for reviewing that information not only before, but after it is published to make sure it stays current.
- Technologies. A technology infrastructure is needed to facilitate and streamline the knowledge capture process. These technologies must make this information easily and readily accessible to those who need it. They need to provide insights into how information's being used, what's valuable, and what's not, so that knowledge management systems are continually improved.
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How Knowledge Management Differs
from Content Management
Companies today often use Web-based content management systems (CMSs) to manage knowledge-based processes and sites. However, CMSs were not designed for knowledge management—and because of several critical gaps in product capabilities, many organizations are falling short in their efforts to foster greater collaboration.
At first glance, it might seem the fundamental characteristics of CMSs and KMSs are essentially the same given that both deal with creating, managing, and publishing information. However, there are a several fundamental differences between a typical CMS and a KMS, specifically with regard to how information flows through development and publishing processes. Following are a few reasons why this distinction is so vital today.
- Daily work depends on granular snippets of knowledge. The absence of discrete pieces of unstructured information—essentially snippets of knowledge—is often what stops us from completing the task at hand. The kind of how-to information varies based on industry or type of job. For example, an accountant may ask, “What account should I post a chargeback to?” A software administrator may ask, “What is the sequence of patches to apply in delivering this workaround?” A consumer may ask, “How do I set the alarm clock on my iPod?” These pieces of information are not likely to be easily found in product or training manuals.
- Knowledge has a shelf life. Today’s knowledge is dynamic and has a shelf life. For example, the account to which a chargeback should be posted might change over time. Or, when a new software release is delivered, the information about applying patches becomes moot. Or, as a new iPod becomes available, the old information is outdated. So today’s business-critical knowledge needs to be captured, reviewed, and published quickly, and updated and culled frequently.
- People don’t (and won’t) take the time to document what they know. The kind of information discussed here is tacit knowledge, i.e. knowledge that is in people’s heads but rarely documented. To capture this tacit information, it is critical to make knowledge capture easy. Further, this knowledge capture needs to be done as part of the work process and not as a separate document or content publishing task that an employee might, or might not, engage in some day.
- Expertise is distributed. Tacit knowledge is not restricted to a few in-house experts. For example, customers might develop greater expertise for a particular product than the company representatives with whom they interact. This means that the notion of authorship expands to a much wider variety of people, from dedicated authors and publishers to product experts, rank and file employees, and even customers participating on blogs and forums.
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| Knowledge Management Library |
Knowledge Management Implementation Guidelines
Knowledge Management Case Studies
Useful Links
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CMS vs. KMS: The Process Implications
It is important to understand the implications of these new demands on recognized workflow processes. Instead of the more static create/manage/publish flow that embodies most CMSs, organizations need to embrace a more fluid capture/route/convert workflow—and be able to cohesively measure the entire process from within one KMS. The table below summarizes the differences between the two approaches.
Route vs. Manage
Information management is important, but in an environment that emphasizes knowledge capture, the ability to route information to the right individual or teams for verification and approval takes on even more importance. To facilitate this process, organizations need to harness category-based permissions, which allow for authoring and technical reviews based upon preassigned skills and specific team member responsibilities.
Convert vs. Publish
Organizations that place a premium on quickly publishing information from multiple authors need a system that supports authoring, routing, and publishing in a production environment. Given the specific business needs that dynamic, knowledge-rich sites serve, it is important to associate knowledge management processes with the “conversion” goals of the organization. Conversions can be broadly defined, but generally imply a discrete outcome—i.e. a purchase transaction, a closed service request, a business referral, or a completed loan application. In addition, organizations should offer proactive and reactive methods for finding information. Options could include alerts and subscriptions, or integrated search and retrieval mechanisms.
Measure
The ability to holistically monitor and measure critical elements of the entire workflow process is a fundamental difference between a KMS and a CMS. Following are some of the core elements to measure:
- Capture effectiveness. Tracking contributions of authors, and the value of those contributions for rewards and recognition is critical, so that authors have an incentive to divulge the tacit knowledge in their heads and take the time and effort to document it. This also helps discourage information hoarding since, in the old model, information was power. Given that there is widespread authorship, it becomes critical to distinguish the expert authors from the beginners.
- Route efficiencies. In the route process it becomes critical to measure time in the workflow and identify approval bottlenecks. Given that knowledge has a shelf-life, it also becomes critical to measure the speed of knowledge updates and ensure a timely flow.
- Conversion success. In the convert process, the whole objective is to drive the user to the best solution for his or her needs. This is only possible by providing a means for capturing feedback from users and customers, such as ratings and comments, discussions on content, or surveys. Further, document ratings need to be captured, and automated review tasks need to be initiated for documents that receive poor ratings.
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Implementing Knowledge Management in Enterprises: Key Guiding Principles
When organizations consider investing in an enterprise-level knowledge management (KM) initiative, they generally conduct a detailed analysis of how to effectively tackle a project of such magnitude. Companies want to know how to best prepare for such projects, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to measure results that are generated from their KM implementation. Here, practitioners who have been through successful large-scale knowledge management initiatives share their insights and lessons learned.
1. Over Communicate
“You can never underestimate the change management requirements that go along with projects like these,” according to Jodi McBride, director of knowledge and training services at Pitney Bowes. “You need a shared vision, supported and driven throughout the company from the highest levels of the organization.” Communicate regularly throughout all the phases of the project with business stakeholders and end-users. Follow a communication plan that keeps all parties included and responding. “You are going to be taking people outside of their comfort zone and they need to understand what you are doing. You can never over-communicate with a project like this,” said McBride.
2. Recruit the Right People for the Project
Identify and recruit the right people with the right skill sets from the start, making sure their skill sets align with the assigned tasks and responsibilities. Maintain a consistent vision throughout the implementation project. A knowledge manager at a leading mobile communications company suggests that practitioners ask themselves, “Whether the people who defined the specifications have been involved all the way through the implementation. Sometimes, as people change in a project, it is easy to lose sight of what you originally thought versus what the new folks thought as they were introduced into the project.”
3. Solicit End-user Input in the Solution Design
Involve end users in content identification, design, and testing. Consider involving different representatives from different departments. “At Pitney Bowes, we created a role called ‘content ambassadors,’ which included representatives from different departments within the contact centers. A content ambassador’s job was to help identify sources of content; validate, enter, and test content; help design the user experience; and provide feedback on which information should be made public for employees and customers. Without a doubt, their contributions led to greater user adoption,” said Pitney Bowes’ McBride.
4. Encourage User Adoption with Incentives
Employees may be reluctant to move out of their comfort zones or embrace new processes. Help employees understand the desired results and how they will be measured. Then, develop ways to recognize and reward individuals who adapt to the changes in the system to encourage its use.
“Rewarding and recognizing employee efforts to share knowledge is a powerful way to encourage this activity. Consider periodic bonuses to individuals with exemplary efforts, peer recognition combined with cash, and project work available to individuals who actively share knowledge as three incentive strategies,” suggests Ladd Bodem, principal and co-founder of market research firm ServiceXRG.
5. Identify Content Gaps and Duplicates, and Scrub Your Content Early
Eliminate redundancy and pieces of content that overlap. Although content scrubbing is an ongoing process, more scrubbing in the early phases of the KM project can help make content more usable and help improve user adoption since users are able to quickly locate the right content and do not have to go through duplicate content. “Our content had always been organized by department,” commented McBride. “For the first time, a centralized knowledgebase provided visibility to content overlaps between teams. Additional time to test and scrub responses that overlapped would have been beneficial in reducing the amount of redundant or conflicting content.”
6. Define ROI Measurement and Reporting Requirements Early in the Process
McBride emphasizes, “Make sure you understand exactly what you are going to look for to get to your ROI and define those reporting requirements as early as you possibly can.” Once live with the new system and process, expect business stakeholders to ask for reports comparing performance to expected ROI from the project.
According to a recently published report by ServiceXRG titled Knowledge Management Strategies: Benchmarks and Best Practices, “There are two distinct types of knowledge management measurements; one type is focused on measuring the efficiency of the KM processes such as content coverage and quality content, while the other looks at the impact from knowledge management. Some impact metrics to consider include measuring deflection, staffing, change in first contact resolution rates, resolution times, agent productivity, and overall success rate.”
7. Don’t Underestimate the Impact of Tangential Benefits
For example, Jodi McBride explains how at Pitney Bowes, “We didn’t anticipate how, having information available from a single source, was going to change how we trained. Our focus this year has been on redesigning the classroom experience to incorporate the use of KIP (Pitney Bowes’ knowledgebase) and create more interactive training materials that better engage the learner across multiple dimensions. This is a dramatic shift away from typical lecture-based training programs. This shift in the classroom is not something we anticipated when we went live, but has been a positive experience nonetheless.”
8. Know the Needs of Your End Users
Understand how language components impact search accuracy. Identify user search behaviors and consider search rules to improve the user’s experience.
“Understand how people use the resources they have available today. Understand the slang for key concepts, and how people from different departments may approach the same information but from different perspectives. These observations will provide excellent input for creating the first round of search rules for accuracy and efficiency,” said McBride.
9. Keep the End Goal Clearly in Mind
Periodically evaluate how well you are adhering to your original specifications. It is important to make sure that decisions on whether to expand the effort or to maintain the effort are based on your business needs and the timing you are trying to achieve.
10. Consider the Impact on Existing Business Processes
Identify and understand all the existing processes that will no longer work with the new system so that these can be addressed. A knowledge manager of a leading mobile communications company notes that, “You need to understand the processes that will change and what is going to break or be different as you go into the implementation phase of your investigation.”
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