Q&A Summary: CM vs. KM
Q&A: Content Management vs. Knowledge Management

With the large number of contributors or knowledge authors, how do you make sure that the content does not get muddied with to many entries for the same issue?

Good search is an effective mechanism for preventing duplicates. If users find what they were looking for to begin with, the duplication problem is avoided. Alternatively, if you embed search as a core part of the processes that lead to knowledge creation, you have a greater likelihood that search will discover the right knowledge content before new content is created. For example, InQuira can be configured to automatically search existing content as part of a user’s process for posting on a forum, submitting an email, or submitting a case. If the search is effective, people find the information they need, and abandon the process that would otherwise lead to duplicate content creation.

The more effective the search engine, the less likely you are to experience massive duplication problems. The search needs to be fairly robust because people articulate their needs in different ways. Being able to understand the nuances of language for conceptual understanding will return relevant information even when there is not an exact keyword match.

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Does InQuira have a built in localization to enable translation to other languages?

InQuira provides translation workflow for keeping track of translations tasks. InQuira also provides side by side translation capabilities for manual translation and interfaces to external translation engines (like World Server). From a translation perspective, InQuira also offers cross-lingual search capabilities, allowing for searches in one language to bring back meangingful results in other languages. This is done using InQuira's semantic, cross-lingual dictionary. This cross-lingual search capability could help companies prioritize which content to translate from the base language.

InQuira can be configured to alert the right people to when localization changes are needed. For example, if a user updates an existing solution article in the master language, knowledge content owners for all associated locales will automatically receive notifications that the master has changed and that they need to update their version. They may do this side-by-side or they can request translations as a part of the workflow.

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If you can spend a little bit more time explaining how knowledge is actually captured from employees?

Culturally, knowledge management is a change for many companies and the real key trick is make knowledge contribution a part of each employee’s every day work processes. It’s easiest to see that in a call center environment where agents are resolving customer problems on the phone and documenting their notes as they trouble shoot those issues. Workflow harvests that knowledge and puts it through the appropriate process for review, approval and eventual publication. But having that similar process for every individual in the enterprise is absolutely critical in making sure knowledge management initiative takes hold. Incentive can help, and do not underestimate the role marketing can play in helping reinforce a knowledge management culture. We see this with a lot of our customers – they launch and internal marketing campaign to complement the KM system implementation. Campaigns that focus on the benefits of contributing knowledge and how it will empower employees to be more productive are particularly effective in encouraging participation. If you can show concrete examples of how the KM initiative will make their lives better, without adding burden to their daily workflow, adoption rates will rise.

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We originally created our KM system to address 80% of our customer questions and processes but now we began striving for that other 20%. However it seems like our KM tool is getting too full and that it’s addressing rare questions and processes. Can a KM tool have too much information?

Yes, it can have too much information. It goes back to being able to find no matter what’s rare or find out what the 80 / 20 rule is. You want to have the analytics to figure out what is most frequently being accessed. Without this you will find that the noise is filtering out the music. So what you want to be able to do is tie it back to search and browse, have the browse be able to present that 80 percent of the information that users need, present it to them right front and center and encourage people to subscribe to changes there. Then have people start drilling down or searching for things in the more rare occurrences. If you don’t know what the interactions are, what the user trends are, what the user behavior is, what content is useful and what isn’t, it’s hard to be able to tune this process.

When companies come to InQuira and they think about implementing InQuira as a knowledge management solution, this is a core question that comes up. They have the search in there and they have the knowledge base, but what they are really looking for is how do I really get started and make sure that the right content is made available to our agents and to our customers. The benefit of having an integrated platform where you have this sophisticated search mechanism, you have the knowledge base with the authoring, and the workflow and you have the analytics that kind of ties it all together is that it allows you to do is really take a look and use the tools that are made available to you to determine which content is used most frequently and that becomes your baseline that you are starting from. So you know that information that isn’t being used, well that’s clear evidence that it’s not meeting its mark in terms of what it was intended to do and it gives you an identifier of how you either to update existing content or create new articles.

We had a customer that looked at it this way, it’s kind of scary when you put really good search in because what it does for you is like giving you a clean window. But when you look through that clean window sometimes you might see a rusting jalopy in the front yard. So unless you have that mix to evaluate the quality of the content it really becomes hard to figure out do we put that in the knowledge base, do we archive that out and I really think that’s at the heart of it and I think you need that integrated platform to tie all those different pieces together.

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Can KM solutions be utilized in a research environment to tag images with metadata and facilitate data mining?

The search aspect of a KM can certainly be used for this purpose, but something like this might underutilize the power of a KM application that is looking at knowledge as well as existing content. For managing an image library, you might be better off looking at an image management or cataloguing solution.

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Isn't versioning an important aspect of CM also?

Versioning is important to content management but to a lesser degree than in knowledge management. With content management versioning is often easier to control since only a limited number of individuals are creating and publishing content for the masses to use. This content is typically created on an infrequent, periodic basis and is published through a formal process that controls who can update what, what specific updates need to be made and when new content versions should be made available to others.

This is not the case in knowledge management where you have multiple contributors who are constantly adding, reviewing and updating information into the system as a part of their daily jobs. In this type of environment permissions and document management are essential to maintaining version control. Permissions ensure that only the appropriate people are adding or updating content where they have some level of expertise or understanding so that you can be assured that what is being created is accurate and useful to others. Having a robust document management capability is also important in managing the KM versioning process so that multiple users cannot simultaneous edit existing information that will cause conflict and confusion about who edited what and which version is the most current.

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What is "CRM"?

CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship. Many companies use CRM software to log and track customer service requests, and as such is a primary tool used by agents in the call center. Further, companies may expose their CRM application to log and review customer service requests from the web. A KM system is a natural complement to CRM systems. KM helps agents and customers resolve problems; CRM often provides the mechanism for tracking those interactions against the individual customer record.

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Is there a reason why the KM approach (find, capture, route, publish) be used for traditional documentation as is normally in a CM system? It would seem that from that perspective a KM system could replace CM. What am I missing?

Yes, the function of managing content is a certainly a key part of the Knowledge Management process, methodology and application. However, the distinction comes in the fact that historically, content management practices and systems have focused more on the creating, managing and publishing aspects of information. The aspects that they have not focused on, are the use of search/find as an integrated aspect of evaluating existing content, and its use throughout the process. The other key aspect that has been missing is the delivery of the content to key users and then measuring the usage of the content for continuous refinement. Finally, the aspect of community or interaction based generation of content is a new trend that is not typically considered in a CMS.

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Can we say "Every KM system is a CM system, but not vice-versa?" Unless every 'bit or piece' of content of CM is by default a part of KM?

While it might be a bold statement, in reality “every KM system is a CM system”. But not every CM system can be considered a KM system. The functional overlap between CM and KM comes from the capture and publish processes. Both systems have the ability to create, publish, organize and deliver information. From this perspective, KM is a viable alternative to CM applications.

However, CM is rarely an adequate replacement for most KM applications. CM lacks the feature robustness and flexibility needed to effectively manage the end-to-end find, create, route, deliver and measure process from one platform. Many CM systems are page-based, designing the web pages themselves, whereas a KM system is records-base, which is designed for content to be dynamically displayed and shared across multiple web applications. The dynamic nature of KM requires content to be updated by the community, whereas many CM systems deploy content out to different locations.

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How do you keep content and knowledge fresh once it is delivered? What is the incentive for the knowledge authors if it is everyone's responsibility?

When knowledge is a natural part of the workflow with many people creating, accessing, updating, and collaborating around knowledge, a natural benefit is that the knowledge stays fresh long after its initial publication. So where you want to focus on is participation. You want to get people involved and the more they are involved and use the content and information throughout their day the better the knowledge ends up being.

To encourage participation you will want to make sure that people have a vested interest in the success of the program and are rewarded for their participation. For call center employees the value lies in the ability to resolve calls in half the time which equates to more performance bonuses since they are rewarded on the number of customer issues they successfully resolve. Product engineers might be encouraged to document solutions to complex problems so that they do not have to spend so much time responding to call center requests and can be rewarded for the number of issues they help solve. Contact center employees can be rewarded for creating articles for web self service applications based on the problems they help solve throughout the course of their day and the number of articles they author that helps to deflect calls by answering more customer questions online.

Again, it’s about getting them to participate and tying rewards to the things they should be doing as a part of their normal workflow. If you separate creating knowledge, the workflow and what they are rewarded for, you will end up in a situation where employees will not take the time to contribute knowledge resulting in a stale, out-of-date, inaccurate system that will provide little value to anyone.

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How important is the format of the content, such as using a consistent font, layout, etc.?

This goes back to how information will be used. In a call center environment it would be difficult for an agent to resolve a customer’s issue if they have to read through several paragraphs to deduce what the solution is or if there is missing or incomplete information. What one person writes and what one person needs often varies based on the individual’s existing knowledge and experience.

Developing a consistent way to create knowledge is important in making it useable by those who did not author the content. We wouldn’t suggest going so far as to dictate what font face, color, size should be used, but to make the information that is created useful you should structure knowledge for reuse.

In order to be reusable, information needs to be captured in a consistent manner that can easily retrieve the precise pieces of knowledge to address urgent issues. One of the easiest ways to enforce consistent knowledge creation is through the use of forms that break up content into more reusable parts that are easy to read (i.e. bullets vs. paragraphs) and speaks in the language of the knowledge end user. This way people are able to quickly get what they need, complete the task at hand, and move on.

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We are currently trying to start a knowledge management solution, would you suggest starting from scratch or trying to back load the information that we currently have?

The first step in any successful knowledge management implementation is understanding the information you have available, the information you need and the differences. Many of InQuira’s customers use the advanced search capability and reporting tools of the software to vet which content is most valuable, and then work toward migrating that information into the new knowledge base.

Alternatively, you could start fresh on a go-forward basis with the new knowledge base, but make existing content repositories either wholly or partly accessible via search. There are benefits to housing that information in the knowledge base directly, but until such time that the quality of content is vetted, it may be sufficient just to make it available.

Another factor to consider when determining what to migrate from your old to new system is the format of the data. Depending on the differences between data structures, it might not be worth the time and effort it will take to reformat your existing data to work within the new system.

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What InQuira can offer in KM?

InQuira offers knowledge base solutions for web self-service and agent-assisted support, and professional services to help organizations implement knowledge management solutions.

For more information, please visit the knowledge management resource center:

  • http://www.inquira.com/knowledge-management.asp


    • For current information on InQuira software solutions, please visit:
  • http://www.inquira.com/inq8.asp
  • http://www.inquira.com/products_overview.asp
  • http://www.inquira.com/pdf/InQ8DS.pdf

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    If a company does not even have a CM system should they start there before jumping to KM as they would not have the maturity?

    Where you start depends on where you want to go. If at the end of the day you business needs require a KM solution, you by all means should start there. That does not mean that from day one you need to have a full KM platform deployed across all departments and countries in your global organization.

    First, start small. Deploy an internal knowledge base so users can get accustomed to creating and accessing knowledge during their normal workflow. Start in one department and roll out to others. Having a success story to share with others will get them bought into the system and encourage them to participate.

    Then when you have your solution successfully implemented internally you can expand to a web self service application that leverages the knowledge that has been created for customers where they can search for answers and other information needed.

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    How do you allow call center employees add documentation and maintain that they should be taking calls?

    It shouldn’t be a matter of either / or. When implemented properly, creating knowledge and taking calls go hand-in-hand. It goes back to making knowledge creation a part of the every day work flow. It’s not its own separate process. It is fully integrated into how the call center employee works. As they handle a customers’ inquiries, agents search the knowledge base to find the information they need to resolve the customers’ problems. Based on what they find the agents have three courses of action:

    1. They find the information they need to resolve the customer issue in a fraction of the time, delighting the customer and closing the service request very quickly.
    2. They find some information, but it needs to be updated with some new information they discovered on the call. Once they finish up the call, they update the solution article move on to the next call. Workflow then routes the agent’s comments to the appropriate experts for review in the context of the case that prompted the agent’s actions in the first place.
    3. They are unable to find the information they need and either create the content themselves based on the results of the call or request subject matter experts develop an appropriate solution, again using the originating case as the trigger for new knowledge creation.

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    Statistically, based on your experience what % of data is unstructure/unorganize/unaccounted for and disperse in companies today?

    We believe that over 50% of the information that people need is unstructured.

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    Is a knowledge management framework the same as a taxonomy? If so, how can an organization arrive at, or develop, a knowledge framework that is useful to both customers and staff?

    A taxonomy is a key aspect of a KM framework, but they are not one and the same. If the question is, “How can one arrive at a taxonomy that is useful to both customers and employees, the answer is ‘with careful analysis.’” Creating a taxonomy is both art and science, and is honed by actual usage. Some taxonomies are likely to be shared by customers and employees. Others may be separate. Some taxonomies are obvious, such as a product hierarchy or a classification of content by format or authors by department. Others may require some understanding of the work process, for example a troubleshooting taxonomy that organizes content by the type of problem that it solves.

    In our experience, asking people to spend time developing the perfect taxonomy often leads to analysis paralysis. A far better approach is to white board a taxonomy with a small group of people (2 to 3), then create it in a simple system like Windows folders. Then have people classify content into these folders and vet if the structure makes sense, for both navigation/browse and search scenarios. Rinse and repeat a few times and then implement.

    Be wary though of being too taxonomy-centric. You can have too much of a good thing. Taxonomies certainly have their place, but they are not the only way to find information, and one has to resist the temptation to over-categorize information.

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    What about the taxonomy of documentation?

    Documentation can be part of multiple taxonomies as sections of the documents may be identified for different purposes. It is likely that documentation will be classified in similar ways to other content/knowledge. For example, typical taxonomies for documentation might be Product/Version/Module, Usage (installation, troubleshooting), Format etc.

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    Is this built on .NET framework?

    InQuira is not built on the .NET framework, but does utilize web services to access functionality from .NET applications.

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    How is this software use in a Wiki?

    Within the web application, users have access to edit, change, and contribute to information, much like a wiki. Links can be made to other content. The user community can then control the quality of the content.

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    Where does SharePoint fit into the Knowledge Management concept?

    SharePoint is departmental tool for collaborating on document creation that improves upon business environments characterized by shared drives and misuse of email. By comparison, KM applications are characterized by dynamic content creation and high-relevance information sharing

    Organizations that have attempted to use SharePoint as a KM application report the software lacks sophisticated workflow and a reputation model, does not directly support of integration into key transaction systems (esp. CRM), and that the analytics are fairly limited in terms of workflow tasks and it. So users intending to deploy SharePoint as a customer- or agent-facing KM application will likely run into limitations and may want to reconsider.

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    Are there KM systems that connect well with CMS systems that house DITA structured technical information (how-to, why, what)?

    Many of the KM systems of the past were silo'd. The ability to connect to CM systems does require an understanding of the layout and access of the content, which can be accomplished with an Intelligent Search system, such as InQuira.

    As DITA starts to be more widely adopted, you will see more KM systems creating bridges or integration points that will allow such interfaces. An interface specification would be to allow consumption of DITA-compliant content and providing any feedback to the authors to improve the content and re-synch.

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    Do you agree that KM holds reusable information easily, but "on demand" knowledge is more related to emergent knowledge which is difficult to house in a database?

    Yes, videos are often linked to by a knowledge content record to improve findability, while the video itself is accessed through other means. The record in the KM system should include description or transcript so that the video can be easily found, along with a link to the actual video.

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    Do you have any information on industry standards regarding salary and level of responsibility required for this type of position?

    The standards vary by industry, and there is little published salary data for knowledge management professionals. The Knowledge Management Professional Society (KMPro) did conduct a salary survey in 2006, but results are available just to members. You can access the KMPro site at http://kmpro.org/.

    Associations with knowledge management practices may be another source for information. We recommend the AQPC (http://www.apqc.org/portal/apqc/site/?path=/services/knowledgemanagement/index.html) and the Consortium for Service Innovation (http://www.serviceinnovation.org/).

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